Essay contributed by Cliffjumper. Last updated: 27th April 2003.

It's 1985, and Hasbro have had a stupid idea. Not their first, and certainly not their last. These guys are robots, right? Guy robots. So, against all logic, they need chick robots to cuddle up with and pair off with. That's right Transfans, robots get jiggy with it too. So first of all, the idea of Arcee, who was obviously a girl as she was pink, was put in the draft script of Transformers the Movie. Arcee could break gender stereotypes by looking like she was going to cry all the time, pawing at brash young zero Hot Rod and fussing over Hellspawn Daniel Witwicky, who made Spike seem like a bloody good idea.

But Sunbow, already irked that a studio that could actually produce animation had been entrusted with what would become the biggest grossing film of the 1980s*, got their foot in first with the wonderfully titled "Search for Alpha Trion", in which the bearded nutjob was found a matter of minutes into the action. He'd been working with a quartet of female Autobots, called Femmebots by fans, [yes, the same fans who think everything made before 1992 is 'Generation 1', so we'll ignore that designation], fighting Decepticons like a hopelessly ineffective set of Charlie's Angels. This flapping foursome were Chromia, Firestar, Moonracer and leader Elita-1. We soon find out why Elita-1's the leader - she's Optimus Prime's bird. Folks, nepotism will get you anything, even if you're a several-million year old alien robot who turns into a bloody car. Her group had such a success rate against Shockwave's organisation on Cybertron he had no idea they existed.

By the end of the episode, in time-honoured soap opera fashion the other three have hooked up with Optimus' cronies, Inferno getting Firestar [who seemed to be Inferno in drag], Ironhide getting mature boiler Chromia, and Powerglide getting Moonracer as she was the one left over. Considering the titular search took even the cartoon Autobots a matter of minutes, and that I haven't actually watched the episode for 2 years, I'd seriously put forward the motion that Prime's squad only hung around on Cybertron to get some action.

Estimated Damage to Feminism: 8 years regression in representation of women in the media.

Elita-1, despite Prime running off again at the end of Search for Alpha Trion [this after spending four million years hiding from her on Earth while mucking around with his buddies], was somehow defined by Sunbow as important. While minor characters like Megatron, Starscream and, erm, Bumblebee had their origins unknown to us, David Wise decided to stick Elita-1's birth in "War Dawn", presumably reasoning that the damage had already been done, and he might as well get all his bad ideas out in one script. So we meet the naive [no, wait - stupid] Orion Pax, and his two-dimensional bit of fluff Ariel. Next we see Megatron make a grevious error. Not only does he shoot Pax, leading to the creation of his arch-nemesis Optimus Prime, he wastes an energy charge killing the pointless Ariel, which would have come in handy all those times in the cartoon when he shot someone without actually causing them physical harm. So Alpha Trion rebuilds Pax, and at the end of the scene muses about rebuilding Ariel and calling her "Elita-1". So Elita-1's shocking origin is that she's got the same father as Optimus [Ew!] and was built on a whim by a mad fool with a beard. Triffic.

Hasbro presumably weren't on as much marijuana as Sunbow, so thankfully they didn't get any toys. However, next up we have the pinnacle in this stupidity. In the winter of 1986 Transformers the Movie premiered, playing to empty theaters across the world, apart from in Japan were presumably it didn't get past quality control. And we're introduced to Arcee. A brief recap of Arcee's pivotal role in the Movie:
[I] Runs around with Springer and pulls some levers
[II] Looks all upset about Windcharger and Wheeljack being dead; for some reason she thinks it helps if she drags Windcharger a few yards across the floor...
[III] Flirts with Hot Rod
[IV] Starts shooting at the Decepticons after they've started running away
[V] Looks all sad when Optimus dies
[VI] Acts as a big chair for Daniel
[VII] Flirts with Hot Rod some more
[VIII] Protects Daniel from certain death in the crash on Junk. Yeh, thanks for that one love...
[IX] Leaves Daniel to die on Junk by driving off. Too late for that now you silly girl...
[X] Flaps around inside Unicron [oo-er!] for a bit

Estimated Damage to feminism: 25 years.

Hasbro obviously realised what a silly idea it all was, as Arcee didn't get a toy - either because a female figure wouldn't sell to a predominantly male audience, or because Arcee was one of the stupidest characters ever [this didn't stop them with Kup, mind]. Sunbow and Takara knew a bad idea when they saw one, though. The latter decided to do a range of model kits, and chose Elita-1 and Arcee as two of the first four. These were such a roaring success that no more were made, and they now fetch large sums on eBay as fans are willing to pay for their wanted life partner. Sunbow, for their part, featured her for two more years, though Arcee realised she was getting no action from the newly responsible Rodimus Prime, who was too busy putting on black nail varnish, wearing a hoodie and sitting in his room listening to Slipknot to have a life.

Instead she latched onto muscley Han Solo-a-like Springer, who seemed so up for it that they missed the end of season 3 on a two-week holiday in Barbados. However, things didn't go well clearly, as Arcee was back for Season 4 alone, and promptly got binary-bonded to Daniel. Yep, David Wise had had another idea. Surprisingly, this Hellish alliance didn't lead to a Ghostbusters-esque opening of the gates of Hades.

The Japanese had marginally more sense, skipping bonding to Daniel [who seemed fine in his relationship with Wheelie...] and instead having Arcee as the Cybertrons' secretary. Good show!

It's worth noting that the Season 3 episode "Forever is a Long Time Coming" featured another female Autobot, a friend of A3 [a young Alpha Trion] named Beta. Great name there. Marvel are slogging their guts out coming up with names like "Impactor" and "Straxus", and Sunbow come up with "Alpha" and "Beta".

Oh yeh, the comics. Well, Arcee got in some of the UK stuff, amusingly causing the fall of Autobot City, getting shot by some Quintesson and then causing Rodimus Prime to lose the Matrix, all in her first three issues. Nice one. She does get an origin, though - she's a PR tool to stop silly feminists whinging. It makes more sense than being created so that 50-odd 'male' Autobots can have something nice to look at.

In some sections of fandom [presumably those that get out even less than the rest of us] these female Autobots have a kind of fantasy status. They've been the subject of several kitbashes:

http://www.bottsandboltz.20megsfree.com/photo3.html

http://www.protoformproject.com/dvd/kitbash/mk/femmes.GIF

And an Arcee transforming toy was a prized convention one-off a few years ago. More recently, BotCon repainted a Black Arachnia as Arcee for their Wreckers comic. Also, several people were overjoyed by her release as a PVC and subsequently in the American line "Heroes of Cybertron". These releases fetch up to a dollar on EBay so highly prized are they.

FILE UNDER: Stupidity, Repeated.

[*] = Everything up to the comma is a lie.