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Calvin_0's Review: Generations Deluxe Class Arcee

Name: Arcee
Function: Warrior
Sub-Group: Generation
Class Size: Deluxe Class

"You must do nothing except DIE!"

Arcee is one of the most dangerours Autobots, despite her comparatively small size. She believes the Decepticons must be stopped at all costs. That belief combineed with her combat training, makes her a pure warrior, a hunter who mixes speed and sudden action to strike Decepticons targets whenever she can.


I absolutely love Arcee, she is the main reason I knew about transformers when I was a child, everyone was either into Optimus prime or Megatron, but not me. I remember about asking for my parent for the "Pink sport car lady" for Christmas and all I got was...well...Optimus prime. I was probably the only boy who got disappointed by getting Optimus prime.

That being said, this Arcee isn't the same Arcee that I knew when I was a child, IDW Arcee was much more aggressive and dangerous then the Arcee that I remember. I don't read much of the IDW comics but from what I gather so far, IDW Arcee was some kind of experimental program that apparently failed to meet the expectation of her creator. So I imagine, like every failed experimental subject, she broke out and killed everyone...but I guess she got better since the comic that they included in this figure show Arcee kicking butt with other Autobots with Chromia and Windblade joining in later on. How I wish they would give us Spotlight: Arcee instead.

Anyway to the review...

Alternate Mode

Arcee's alternate mode is a cybertronian sports car. It's an alien design that looks kinda cool.

In car mode, she is mainly pink and white with black highlights and some blue here and there. It doesn't have any out of place robot part and even if you look under the car, you'll only see a pair of hands. It looks nice and solid but that's pretty much all about it, sadly the car doesn't roll very well because some part of her crotch area rubs against the floor, try to roll it and it will get scratched as mine has done already.

Not only that, her arms don't have anywhere to peg in properly, so they will further hinder the rolling capability of the car mode. But the good thing is that this is the only problem of the car mode.

In car mode there are places which you can peg in the weapons, yeah weapons, as in plural. Arcee comes with 4 weapons, one handgun, one slightly bigger handgun and 2 swords in clear blue plastic. So depending on how you peg in the weapons, you can make the car mode look cool or kinda off.

Robot Mode

Transformation to robot mode is quite simple but also interesting. Arcee is kinda of a shell former because she's got the whole car as her backpack. So all you do is flipping stuff open to reveal her head and re-position her legs and arms. But the sequence this is done in keeps this interesting instead of fiddly like other shellformers.

In robot mode she is carries over the same colours from her alt-mode. Well its Arcee, what do you expect? For some reason people don't seem to like the black highlights added to Arcee's palette. Maybe because the black makes her not accurate to either G1 Arcee or IDW Arcee. I personally like the black, it makes her look much more interesting, and in case it is not up to your liking, you can always repaint it yourself or get the takara version or get the an unofficial 3rd party figure.

Now her head design looks more like the Arcee I remember with that kind and almost motherly smile. But since this is supposed to be IDW Arcee, she is a bit out of character with that warm smile. Inaccurate facial expression aside, the head design is very nice, it got a nice paint job complete with lipstick. Also she's got really nice light piping, so expect her eyes to light up with minimum amount of light.

Arcee has a really small body shape, her arms and legs are thin, her body is small, I see that they try to stay true to the character since Arcee has mostly rounded limbs. But don't worry as her legs are able to support her even with the huge backpack.

Articulation wise, Arcee's head can rotate 360 and as a bonus, she can look up but can't look down. Her arms can rotate 180-360 depend on how you move them, almost do a full 180 outward, rotate on the upper arms and more than 90 bend on the elbow, sadly no rotation on the hands/wrists. Her legs can rotate forward slightly more then 90 degrees, not much backward movement as it is limited by the backpack, not much outward movement due to the shape of the legs, but i suppose you can manipulate the transformation joint to get more outward movement, but you still won't get a full split. There's rotation just above the knee, more then 90 bend on the knee (just like the elbow), her ankles can move forward and backward due to transformation. All in all Arcee has a lot of articulation and flexibility even if she doesn't have hip\waist articulation.

Arcee's robot mode look pretty nice and show\comic accurate except for one thing, her hip and thighs are kinda out of proportion with the rest of the body, but its not too bad because her backpack makes her look bigger then she really is, so the hip doesn't look too off.

Accessory wise, well I have already mention the weapons, so I'm not going to tell you again, but you can store the weapons on her thighs and instead of holding them. If you're up for it, you can also attach them to her arms, Megatron style.

Transformation Design: 6, Pretty simple, easy to learn and fun. Transformation to both modes is solid.

Durability: 7.5, Its pretty solid, all the joints are just right, but it's worth to take note that Arcee's hands are small, so they might be prone to breakage.

Fun: 6, Arcee's car mode can't roll well but her robot mode has more play value.

Aesthetic: 7.5, It's not 100% accurate to the G1 or IDW design, but its very very close, unless takara gives us a masterpiece, i don't think we will get a better one from Hasbro. Looks good in both vehicle and robot modes.

Articulation: 8, Arcee has tons of articulation and flexibility and the best thing is, all those articulation do not hinder her ability to stand up properly even with the huge backpack. Another point to note is that it seems like there is a hole for a figma stand on her backpack, I don't have any figma figures so I cant really test it. If I have any complaints, it would be that Arcee cant really pull off any feminine poses because of the design choices...but an expert will probably be able to pull some off with the aid of an optical illusion.

Price: 5, Generation Arcee is still new, so she should be widely available but as far as I can tell, this figure is something that many fans have been waiting for, so she might be a hot item.

Overall: 8, I would absolutely recommend this figure to anyone, she doesn't have many problems, looks good and she is a solid figure. Not to mention, who knows when are we getting another G1 Arcee from hasbro, any transformer fans should want this figure, the only people that probably don't want this figure are fans who already have a 3rd party in their collection.
 
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