Bot Reviews: Transformers: Studio Series Core Arcee (Rise of the Beasts)

Okay, so, Rise of the Beasts is still a while away, but as is typical for a toy line revolving around a movie (and this qualifies for more franchises than Transformers), the merchandise is already starting to hit shelves. Now, like I said back when I reviewed Studio Series Last Knight Hot Rod, I’m a fiction-first kind of guy, which in this case means I’d never usually buy into this stuff without watching the movie first. What if it stinks and I hate some of the characters? What if they do or say something horrible? That’s the person who sat through five Bay movies talking, though, and Rise of the Beasts at least doesn’t seem like it’s going to be one of those.

That being said, what’s out there is a pretty well-cut trailer, and in the middle of that, we got a look at our new Arcee design, and it rules.

It combines the best bits of her G1, Energon, Prime, and IDW Comics looks all in one package. I think it might have impressed me more than all the Beast Wars stuff, and that stuff is laser-pointed directly at me. And it helps that on the merchandise side of things, the main Studio Series release of this design is a tiny little Core-class figure, since she changes into a small motorcycle. So, I don’t know how deep I’ll realistically go on this line once the film is out, but I can say that a tiny replica of a design I like is right up my alley.

Robot Mode

Arcee’s slick-looking, athletic robot from the front. Between the headsculpt and wheels on the backs of her legs, it’s like someone took a shrink-ray to her Bee movie design (reviewed here), which gives it a good sense of character continuity.

In terms of her size, she’s a little bit shorter and skinnier than your average Kingdom or Legacy core, though she’s a bit more complex parts-wise, so you can see where that mass went.

I will say that her shoulders scan as being a little too low on her torso to my eyes, but you can easily fix it by raising them a bit on their transformation joint.

The backpack is a bigger issue, though. Basically, she’s got an entire motorcycle front hanging off her backside, and a sideways front wheel above it, behind her shoulders. It’s not so much the fact that they’re there (it’s only a Core, and they had to go somewhere), it’s moreso the fact that they’re completely free-floating on the single joint on her backside, and don’t peg or lock in any way. And while there’s enough friction that the assembly isn’t flopping around, it will move around when you pose her, so it doesn’t feel great. You can pop the wheel off (it comes packaged unattached), but that doesn’t really fix it, since the motorcycle front can’t raise much higher, and at least the rear wheel kind of looks interesting as a silhouette enhancement.

On the positive side, I like the headsculpt. It basically feels like they took Bee Movie Arcee’s panelly cyberpunk face, and tuned it down by like 25 percent.

Plus, they gave her kind of a determined-looking grin, and that really suits her. Shame about the big gap on the top of her head, but I guess that’s a consequence of the ball joint it’s on.

In terms of screen accuracy, the only real thing from the front that’s different from her film design is the sculpted and painted headlights on her chest, the whole thing seems pretty accurate to what’s in the trailer otherwise.

The wheels and backpack are a different situation. From what I can tell from the trailer, she can either stash both wheels on her feet (like the single split wheel on this one), or move them up to her back. Either way, she doesn’t have that backpack in the film. Still, pretty good for a Core class.

Her colors are interesting, and it seems like she has a lot of paint apps, especially for a Studio Series figure. She’s got light pastel pink, and white, the typical Arcee colors, but she’s mostly a deeper shade of red, which makes me think more of Arcee’s Dark Cybertron-era IDW design, a neat thing to reference.

Outside of that, she’s got small gray, black, and blue accents, and does a neat thing with her eyes, where they’re mostly black, but have blue pupils. It’s just a really good look, overall. There’s a QC problem on mine, a bit of blue leaked onto her face, making it look like she’s shedding a single tear. After I’ve written this, I’ll see if I can’t fix it with a combo of Exacto knife and Gundam marker (update: As you can see, it worked).

For build quality, outside of the free-swinging backpack, she manages to feel really solid. In particular, the fact that she has gigantic wheels on the back of each foot means she is incredibly stable on her feet.

Arcee’s articulation is standard for a modern Core, which is to say pretty good. Bottom to top, she’s got swivel knees, ball joint hips, a swivel waist, ball joint elbows and shoulders, and a ball jointed head. Her backpack can kind of get in the way of some poses, but those giant footprints make her nice and stable, and it’s surprisingly easy to make her look dynamic.

For features, while it’s not called out in the instructions, you can flip Arcee’s wheels out for a rolling mode. It makes her very tall.

And, impressively, wile it takes a bit more doing than her normal form, she can stay standing on her wheels, somehow!

It’s a really fun feature. Her other accessory is a little black box that fits into her hand as a gun.

You can see two barrels at the end, but the boxy shape of it, and the fins at the sides doesn’t immediately scan as a weapon, to me. It kinda looks like a taser, or something.

Meanwhile, if you pop that back wheel off, you can also have her hold it in one of her hands. It’s probably not an intended feature, though. You can sort of pass it off as a shield, or a melee weapon, maybe.

Transformation

One thing I like about this is that you can leave that rear wheel on, it’s all integrated. Outside of that, this is a much more straightforward transformation than the last bikeformer I reviewed, Flamewar/Road Rocket, despite playing in the same space of “spin the waist, contort the legs around the body, compress the arms into the seat.” There’s one exception to that ease, though, and that’s clipping the arms together to form the seat/back end of the bike. Put simply, the shoulders and upper arms need to peg together in a really specific way, and need to be lined up dead-on to make it work.

So dead on, that the first time, I spent about ten minutes struggling with it, trying to peg them together. It doesn’t help that the forearms attach in a different way, one that involved putting one above the other and sliding them together, instead of pegging them in sideways. I’ve got it figured out now, but it took me awhile to learn it, and it’s possible I just broke them in or something.

And at the very end, you plug the boxy little weapon into grooves at the bottom.

Vehicle Mode

Arcee changes into a tiny little motorcycle that tries not to look like a folded up humanoid robot, and to her credit, it mostly works.

Her fists hang out of the back, and you can sort of see her head behind her rear wheel, but it mostly looks like Not A Humanoid, and arguably does a better job of it than the larger Legacy Arcee/Road Rocket/Flamewar bike.

The colors are also largely the same, maybe with a bit more red, and some dark metallic gray for her opaque windscreen. Most impressively, her wheel rims are painted a nice-looking gold, it really adds to the whole look.

Based on the singular photo we’ve seen of her altmode, screen-accuracy is about what’s plausible for the scale. Which is to say, the front end and wheels are nicely accurate (save for a visible mushroom peg at the back), but most of the rest of the details wind up looking different, by necessity of the transformation. But on its own merits, it looks pretty bike-like.

On top of that, everything on it holds together nice and securely, though there’s one odd bit of construction: There’s some sharp mold flash on the top of the sculpted windscreen, and I do mean sharp, it’s outright unsafe.

I don’t know if that’s just a thing on my copy or not, but I might take some nail clippers to it, or sand it down after this.

For features, both wheels roll nicely, first of all. As for the kickstand, there isn’t one. However, the little fins on the sides of her weapon prove to have a use, as the bottom-mounted weapon can actually keep her standing. And for additional straightness and stability, you can partially slide the accessory out of the groove its in, for additional support.

Really, my only criticism of this mode is that the specific scale of it is funky enough that I don’t really have any figures that can ride it.

It’s too small for 3-and-a-quarter inch figures, and too big for most minifigures. But that’s the Studio Series Scale for you, I guess. I did manage to get Siege Battle Master Firedrive to sort of ride it….

but Rung was too small, and my Takara Legends Targetmasters have the wrong kind of hip joints.

Overall

This version of Arcee’s got way more good than bad, but she’s not quite the star I’d hoped it would be. The colors and sculpting are really nice in both modes, and she’s stable enough to pull off a lot of poses. But her backpack really brings the whole thing down, and even if it couldn’t be reduced in size (partscount and budget being what it is) I wish it could peg in or something, so the whole thing would feel a bit more stable. And the transformation, while mostly good, took me forever to figure out, thanks to how specific the connection on her arms has to be. At least it makes for a good-looking bike (funky, non-rideable scale aside).

That scale comment is something I keep coming back to: I feel like a lot of the smaller issues I have could be mitigated if she had a larger, Deluxe-sized figure, with the space and parts count that it brings, but the scale mandate of the line doesn’t allow it. Not to slam it for what it’s not, but all the issues really bump that into the limelight.

But as a Core, she’s still pretty fun, and I like pulling off all the dynamic robot-mode poses. So, I’d still recommend her, but it’s not a “definitely go grab this right now” kind of thing, it’s more of a “it’s okay, maybe wait for a sale?” kind of thing, especially considering the usual sticker shock of the Core class.

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