Originally written May 2019.
Iron Factory’s a company that fills a specific niche, and it’s a niche that specifically appeals to me. For those unfamiliar with them, Iron Factory is a company that creates palm-sized miniature transforming robots designed to be compatible in scale and design with Hasbro’s line of Legends-scale Transformers minifigures. The Legends scale ran alongside the collector-oriented Generations lines from 2014 until 2019. I collected it pretty thoroughly, and resumed now that it’s returned under Kingdom‘s banner as Core-class. While it released plenty of fan-favorite characters, many more never received the Legends treatment, with Windblade being one of them. In fact, there’s a historical angle to this: Miko, their take on Windblade, was the very first minifigure Iron Factory released, long before they got into the more elaborate figures they release today.
Windblade is a relatively new character to the Transformers universe, and was literally created by fans through a series of online polls during the franchise’s 30th anniversary, which determined every aspect of the character, including name, gender (female), faction (Autobot), colors (red and black), alternate mode (jet), weapon (sword), and many other factors. She’d received several figures, and go onto appear in IDW’s Transformers comics (both the original universe and the reboot), as well as Robots in Disguise and Cyberverse cartoons and Prime Wars Trilogy webserieses. Unlike fan characters in other lare media franchises, Windblade proved to be quite popular, which made her omission from the Legends scale curious. Well, not only does Iron Factory’s Miko fill that hole, it does a few unique things with the design and character you’d never see an official release do. Miko was an early release from the company, but has also received a re-release in an alternate colorscheme as Miko the Hunter. I’m reviewing the original, but, aside from deco, this all applies to the newer version.
Robot Mode
Right out of the gate, there’s two things that make Miko a bit different from Hasbro Legends (and Core) Transformers: Her size, and her design aesthetic. No matter who the character was, all of the Legends/Core figures had a unified size, which. to be fair sometimes wasn’t appropriate for who the figure was representing. For Miko, they decided to make the character shorter than a standard Legend, while still being taller than some of the smaller minifigures Hasbro creates. When posed next to Optimus Prime, or Starscream, her height feels authentic to how she’s represented in IDW’s comics.
As for her aesthetic, Iron Factory decided to stylize her a bit. To give it to you straight, they made her cute. Instead of the more neutral, “realistic” look of most Legends (and this includes Iron Factory’s other offerings in this scale), she features big, expressive eyes, a bright smile, and stylized proportions. This look isn’t for everyone, but it’s something we don’t really see out of Transformers, and it’s something I dig, especially considering Windblade’s design was already somewhat anime-esque, with Miko simply leaning into that.
Speaking of that anime-esque design, Windblade features a geisha-style painted face, along with what looks like robotic hair tied into a bun with a gold fan. A feminine robotic body ends in two large, stompy boots with tiny wings on them (two smaller ones reside on her forearms), and is topped with the typical jetformer tradition of two wings on her back, with VTOL fans in them. Her jet mode’s cockpit also hangs off her back, but it’s not too obtrusive, and she’s stable enough to stay standing.
Color-wise, Miko’s mostly contrasting shades of black and primary, Autobot red. Her details are picked out with bits of blue, orange-gold, white and purple paint, with her head having a lot of all of those colors (except the purple) to pick out its geisha-style details. I’ll note here that the new Hunter version has a similar set of colors (with some of the specific shades being different, like a much more metallic gold), they’re just distributed differently (there’s a lot more of that gold on her).
Her poseability is on-par with a HasTak Legend/Core, with a lot of tight joints used for her knees, hips, shoulders and elbows and head. In an extra touch that I particularly love, her wings are actually poseable via joints where they attach to her back, despite not needing to move for transformation. It lets you place them in a few different configurations, and adds a neat layer of expressiveness on top of her already-expressive design. Like I mentioned before, her big boots also make her able to stand up nice and stable (something the original Windblade figure had trouble with).
Miko’s lone accessory is a curved, ornate sword with a red handle, and a purple-painted energy blade, which slides into her hand tightly. Unfortunately, it’s so tight of a connection, that on my sample, the handle of the blade’s starting to have some of the red rub off, though it’s mostly hidden when the sword is being held, so it doesn’t bother me too much. The Hunter version comes with two of the sword, now painted blue, but I’ve got no idea if they’ve loosened the handle, or if I just got a bad sample. Also, she’s got nowhere on her to store the sword, something most of her larger figures do one way or another, though at this smaller scale, it’s not something I’d expect.
Transformation
There’s not much to talk about here, simply because it’s a really simple transformation, like most robots that become jets: Lie her on her stomach, fold out the cockpit, collapse the legs, and adjust some other bits, including flipping her VTOL fans around. There’s not much to it, but everything works, pegs in securely, and isn’t difficult to do, so it serves its purpose well.
Alternate Mode
As decided by the fans, Miko turns into a jet. Specifically, a space jet with VTOL fans. From every angle but below, it’s pretty sleek looking, with a cockpit that stands out in blue and purple. Its back end even manages to do a good job of not looking like the robot’s boots folded up. That being said, her robot hands are blatantly visible at the jet’s sides, and from the bottom, her robot torso is hanging there, though her head stays hidden.
This is pretty typical for a jet of this size, and every effort they could take to hide robot parts was taken, without making the figure too complicated.
In terms of functionality, her VTOL fans can rotate, and she has flip-out landing gear on her nose. She also technically has weapon storage, in that a peg on the handle of her sword can attach to the bottom of her VTOLS, though it still just creates a jet with a sword stuck to the side of its wing.
Overall
Miko feels targeted to appeal to someone like me specifically. I love Windblade as a character and as a design, and I have a big pile of Legends figured I’ll gladly add more to. Beyond that, Miko’s a well-designed, well-engineered, solid rendition of that design, with few flaws that I can find (and they all basically relate to her weapon). The cute aesthetic isn’t for everyone, admittedly, but if you like it, and like Legends figures, this is a great addition to that collection. Even if you don’t have a lot of Legends figures (or the few Core ones out in Kingdom), if you just want a tiny, adorable Windblade, Miko works on her own, too. The original’s a bit scarce, but thanks to the recent Hunter version, it’s easier than ever to get your hands on one of what I consider to be the strongest Iron Factory release I’ve handled, even if it was their first out of the gate.
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