Bot Reviews: Transformers: Studio Series 86 Deluxe Arcee

Somewhere along the way, I started getting really invested in the various modern attempts to make a good Generation One Cartoon-Arcee figure, and this is just another link in that chain. I think part of my interest is that it’s a difficult design to render accurately, as a lady-shaped robot that somehow had to become a full car, with only a tiny robot-mode backpack for spare parts, and trying to make it work calls for a higher level of engineering.

Ocular Max’s Azalea (reviewed here) still feels like the best rendition of the character, but that had the budget and engineering of a Masterpiece to pull it off. On the official, mainline Generations front, things are a bit more mixed. I’m pretty fond of the unorthodox approach taken by Earthrise Arcee, basically a hyper-poseable action figure with an entire altmode on her back that you can just eject and discard, but I seem to be in the minority on that one, with even HasTak itself immediately deciding she needed a do-over. Regardless of whether or not I thought it was a necessary do-over, it was the strange method this new Studio Series 86 release took that appealed to me, because they literally went back to the beginning.

The first proper mainline G1 Cartoon-style Arcee figure ever released was 2014’s Thrilling 30 Arcee, and when I reviewed her a couple years back, I said that she was a surprisingly good figure, with a few compromises, including an oddly humanized, “fanservicey” body (which the Masterpiece would also, distressingly, do), and janky hands. Well, for Studio Series 86, HasTak decided to dig up this 8-year-old release, and extensively retool her, for better accuracy and articulation. Going so far back is a compellingly odd decision for a 2022 release, and I just had to grab one to see what the heck it would turn out like.

Robot Mode

A lot has changed on this figure from the Thrilling 30 version. In this mode, basically everything below her chestplate is new, including her lower torso, legs, forearms, and the bottom half of her backpack.

And while the new parts do succeed in improved screen accuracy, they also feel a bit inferior in terms of build quality, being covered in hollow plastic gaps along the backs of her legs, and her thighs, though they’re still not as gappy as Earthrise Arcee’s legs.

Speaking of Earthrise Arcee, since the reason this release exists is an attempt at screen-accuracy, it’s something that demands extra attention, meaning I’m going to talk about accuracy a fair bit.

In some ways, this sculpt’s more accurate than the Earthrise one is, since that one took some design liberties with her waist/pelvis section, and for engineering and stability reasons, had arms and feet that were a bit off-model, all things that are done better on this release. On the other hand, the Earthrise one has a more accurate upper torso, just due to the design reality of it being a solid piece, whereas the Studio one has a torso that breaks apart for transformation. That, and the Earthrise version has her wheels fold away into her backpack, replicating the featureless pylons of the cartoon, whereas the Studio version just has the wheels hanging out around her shoulders. Proportionally, this Studio version winds up with arms that feel a little gangly, though it’s something that’s less of a visual problem in person than in photos.

More importantly, the whole package just feels more meaty and substantial than the relatively light, small Earthrise figure, though this is definitely due to how Earthrise Arcee just ejects a bunch of plastic, whereas Studio Arcee has a lot more Stuff ™ in her body.

Speaking of that, the biggest bugbear when it comes to making this design work is her backpack of car parts, and the attempts to get it as small as possible (hence Earthrise Arcee taking the Just Yeet It approach). Studio Arcee’s somewhere in the middle in terms of making it work. The retooled bottom half makes the whole thing go flatter to her back than the Thrilling 30 release, but also makes it extend lower. Here’s the secret, though: The new bottom chunk of the backpack is on a lever with two pegs, meaning you can just pull it out and pop it off.

Now, it’s not meant to come off, and the Transformers Wiki does warn about the possibility of wear and tear, but they’re extremely doom-and-gloom about any potential issue like that. Importantly, removing it makes for an instantly improved visual, and puts her backpack roughly on the same level as Earthrise Arcee.

Well, it kind of sticks out of her back in a noticeable way, now, but it still looks way nicer, and immediately makes me like the whole figure more. I’ll switch it up between on and off in the photos as we go, though.

I’m glad they opted to keep the same headsculpt as the Thrilling 30 one (I think? If it’s not literally the same one, it’s very close), because I felt the Earthrise one looked too “Young,” and this one does a better job of evoking her character.

Her colors are similarly accurate, casting her in pink and white, with some grey, and a little bit of red (her Autobrand), and blue (her eyes). I’m not sure what particular version of the animated movie they were looking at when they picked her exact colors, but this is a noticeably more faded, pastel pink, compared to the more vibrant shade used in basically every other Generations release (including Titans Return).

The Thrilling 30 version had a color layout that was remixed, and added black, for something that was less accurate but more striking, and the process of changing it around for accuracy has left her with a bit less sauce, I think. Studio Arcee’s also technically missing a couple pops of color on her torso and stomach, which only sticks out because of the figure’s mission statement.

Thank god I got one with good paint on her head, though, since she’s got a painted face, painted blue eyes, and red lipstick, and the potential for QC issues there leaves me anxious (in fact, the first one of these I saw at retail had been biffed real bad). I wish they’d kept the lightpiping from the original release, though! It was a very striking example of the gimmick.

So, I alluded to this uptop, but my biggest issue with the figure is that the new parts on this version make her feel a bit more rickety than the solid Thrilling 30 one, like the new parts had a lower budget, or less time spent engineering them, or something. The big problem is just that her torso is meant to peg together at the waist, and it just doesn’t work. The tab meant to secure it is too small, and it barely holds together. It stays in when she’s at rest, and being posed, but if you engage her ab crunch, it’s going to come off. If you pop her backpack out, it’s going to come off. If you pick her up and shake her, it’s coming out. It’s not as bad as it could be, but it’s a problem, and a disappointment. I don’t generally modify figures until a review is done, and once this is wrapped, I think I’ll line the peg with either Super Glue or Floor Polish, to see if I can’t tighten it up.

On the positive side, her feet now have little sideways tabs at the back of them to help stabilize her, which looks a lot better than the Earthrise one’s huge stompers, and more importantly, works just as well. Even when she’s got her full backpack on, she’s stable enough to stand on one foot!

The other big story behind this retool is all the articulation they added, and it’s pretty substantial. She now has ankle tilts, a waist joint, an ab crunch (something you never see on mainline figures, ever), and hips with more motion, bringing her up to modern standards, save for her not having wrist joints.

Combine that with what the original version had, and you’ve got a figure that can pose with a lot of personality. It’s a shame that her waist comes undone if you use that ab crunch, though, especially considering it’s the one thing she has over the Earthrise one’s jointage, in exchange for those immobile wrists.

Something else this new version has exchanged: Most of her accessories. The larger of her two guns, and both of her swords are no longer included, seemingly budgeted out, leaving her with only a small pistol, in solid gray.

Granted, that small pistol is the one weapon she actually used in the movie (the other one showed up on the show, and the swords are a reference to her IDW iteration), so it makes a certain kind of sense, and it’s better than Earthrise Arcee’s weird transparent pea-shooter.

But, on an extremely positive note, she can hold it normally! As I mentioned in my Thrilling 30 review, the sculpting on that version’s hands specifically prevented her from holding her accessories in a normal way, being forced to basically cup the base of a gun’s handle awkwardly, and this version fixes that, to my immense relief.

And her newly-tooled legs even made sure to still include bespoke ports on the sides of them to let her holster it there, a nice little bonus (there’s no War for Cybertron-style ports on her, she predates them, and they didn’t add any).

You can also just hand her the old version’s guns, if you have them.

Though regrettably, something about the sculpting on the new hands stops her from holding the swords very well.

Transformation

Surprisingly, this retool actually really heavily reworks her transformation. Granted, you’re still doing the same basic thing of unfolding her backpack, and cramming the robot inside of the car shell, but aside from that, almost everything actually works differently. In a strange, clever bit of repurposing, her arms now point upwards, and you cram her hands into empty spaces beneath her headlights that were present on the Thrilling 30 version, but weren’t used for anything.

The new transformation’s fairly intuitive, save for one irritating issue: There’s panels on the sides of her car mode, meant to connect the front and back halves of her shell, that often don’t want to sit flush, unless you really carefully and tightly connect pegs inside of them to holes on her shoulders.

You basically have to do a careful combination of micro-adjustments to the position of her shoulders, and squeezing the panels down, in order to make it all hold together.

It’s doable, it just took me awhile to figure out, and it doesn’t stack up well next to the Thrilling 30 transformation, where everything effortlessly slid into place. One upshot, at least, is you don’t need to plug both of her guns into the underside to complete the transformation and hold the car together. Her one remaining weapon can still stash underneath her, but it isn’t mandatory.

Vehicle Mode

The split between old and new in this form is very direct: Front half old, back half new.

But despite that back half being new tooling, it looks nearly identical, and the only obvious sculpt difference in this mode is that the car is marginally less clinched around the middle, making it an exact, screen-accurate midpoint between the hourglass-shaped original, and the solid slab of Earthrise.

And outside of accuracy, this altmode works really well! It’s probably the nicest this swooshy retro-future Barbie dream car’s ever looked, even if there’s some gaps around the driver’s seat that aren’t supposed to be there.

The whole thing’s pleasantly shaped, and I appreciate that the fin at the back isn’t clear plastic, like the Earthrise one, but properly filled in. Those seats are still way too small for most minifigures, though.

It’s a fairly solid alternate mode, too, save for those side-panels that like to become gappy. Once you actually wiggle everything into place, they stay in, but I find myself anxiously squeezing and adjusting them as I noodle with the car.

The colors are, again, nice and screen-accurate in this form, entirely two-tone pink and white, save for the clear windscreen, the red Autobrand, and a bit of gray around the sides (which the Earthrise one left off of her, though that one included accurate gray seats, compared to the white ones here, and the Lifeline repaint added them back in). Again, the worst I can say is that it’s less cool than the remixed layout of the original, with its extra black highlights, but there’s a different mission statement at work.

There’s no real gimmicks here, but this car mode rolls really nicely on its four tiny wheels, without the undercarriage-related struggles of Earthrise Arcee, a welcome relief. Oh, and again, you can stash her weapon underneath her, without disrupting the car’s rolling action. It’s about all you can ask for, here.

Overall

What an odd figure this is. It’s a great idea on paper, since Thrilling 30 Arcee basically needed just a few fixes to be definitive, and this is basically just the action figure equivalent of patching a video game. And it does, technically, succeed in its three-part mission of making her more screen-accurate, fixing her hands, and adding more articulation. But the execution leaves something to be desired, with the new parts introducing new problems, between the waist that just doesn’t hold together, and the fiddly car-mode panels. She lost the rock-solid construction of the older version, plus most of her accessories, so this feels like more of a lateral move than it should have been. But it doesn’t fully sink the figure, plenty of that goodness is still here. She looks great and poses well, doubly so if you just pop the backpack off. That waist is disappointing, though, and I hope I can fix it.

As for the inevitable comparison with Earthrise Arcee, it’s hard to call it, mostly due to what an unusual Transformer Earth-cee was. I think I can boil it down to this: Earthrise Arcee makes for a better Poseable Robot Action Figure. Studio Series 86 Arcee makes for a better full-package transformable figure, but that’s after averaging it out with all the issues. If you’re one of those people that disliked Earthrise Arcee (so, not me), this is probably the better figure, but it’s hard to give it an unconditional recommendation, especially in an era where Bumblebee Arcee, Legacy Minerva, and Shattered Glass Flamewar all exist, and are all, on average, a bit better than this gal. That makes me sound down on her, but I’m not, I like her, she just falls short of the excellent current crop of lady Transformers.

For over 100 Bot, Non-Bot, and Retro Bot Reviews, click here to view my archive.