Originally written May 2019.
Chromia’s sort of an obscure character, but one that fits in with the rest of Transformers: Siege’s “Early 80’s Cartoon character selection.” Chromia, along with a team of other “Female Autobots” (yes, that’s what they called them, gender politics were primitive in 80’s cartoons) appeared in a single episode of the original cartoon, “The Search for Alpha Trion,” before promptly never showing up on the series again (and never getting a figure made), with the show only gaining a regular female character when Arcee was introduced in the movie the next year.
A few sporadic cameos aside, Chromia didn’t appear again until IDW comics re-introduced her in 2014. In that universe, she was the bodyguard of Windblade, and became an important character in the ongoing events of those comics. Now, thanks to this Siege figure, she has an important role in IDW’s new comic continuity, as a chief investigator for Cybertron’s police.
No matter the continuity, her personality was always that of a seasoned, veteran warrior. Her inclusion here in Siege is mostly based on her lone cartoon appearance, where she was romantically linked to Ironhide (another seasoned, veteran warrior), though many collectors probably want a figure of her because of those IDW comics.
Hasbro actually did make one in 2014 as part of the Thrilling 30 toyline (pictured above), but it was a retool of Transformers: Prime Arcee, instead of her own dedicated figure. This new Siege one borrows a fair amount of ideas from Power of the Primes Moonracer, but is her own dedicated mold. More than that, though, it’s basically a crash-course in what can go wrong when designers decide a figure of a female Transformer has to have a stereotypically feminine body design, but also still work as a Transformer.
Robot Mode
Right away, we run into a huge problem with her design, one that plagues female transformers across the franchise: Huge swaths of vehicle mode parts hanging off her body, or “kibble” as the fans call them. The designers wanted her to have a sleek, feminine body design, like her original character model did, but that character model was never intended to exist in the real world, much less transform. So, to create a figure that could still look that way and actually transform, we wind up with a humanoid body absolutely covered with parts and panels. She has two large pieces with wheels on her lower legs, and an overly large backpack. It folds away (unlike how she’s packaged), but it’s still gigantic, and like it or not, it impedes her look. This is why her previous Thrilling 30 toy dropped the character’s car mode for a motorcycle instead, it was easier to turn into a sleek robot.
One bit of good news: In her stock photos and early prototypes, the overt tech detailing that covers her body seemed to really take away from her looks, making her look like she had some sort of molting disease. In person, the detailing looks more subdued. The downside of this is that she has an odd-looking face, with detail that seems kind of soft and mushy compared to how sharp Siege usually is. Her colors are nice, though. I dig the two shades of light blue, and the bits of red and white on her really pop.
Here’s where, aside from making her look clunky, the gigantic vehicle parts present a problem: She isn’t very stable. Instead of big boots, she has tiny, delicate feet at the ends of small stick legs, and to be honest, it makes her hard to stand up. She can do neutral and spread-legged poses pretty well, but anything more elaborate, and she’s likely to keel over.
That’s a shame, because her poseability is pretty good, like the rest of Siege, with one big exception. She’s got ankles, knees, hips, shoulders, elbows, and head poseability, but while she technically has a waist joint, for some reason, she has a panel covering her pelvis that’s likely to pop off when you twist it too much, effectively neutering her waist joint. Between that, and her stability issues, it’s hard to do much with her.
One bright spot is her weapons, which are actually really cool and novel. Firstly, she’s armed with a small blue pistol. There’s a light blue piece that can be applied to it either as a sight stock, or as an extension to the gun.
Finally, she has a pair of small blue cylinders that her instructions identify as grenades.
They’re pretty neat. She can hold them in her hands, or stash them in her backpack. If you want, you can also instead use them as extensions for her gun again, though this seems…unsafe.
I like the customizability of them, and as far as Transformers go, it’s rare for us to see weapons like these. Aside from her hands and backpack, she also has weapon mounting ports on her arms, and lower legs.
Transformation
Basically, her backpack unfolds into most of a car and snaps around her legs and the sides her upper torso. Her actual body folds up and splits its time between hiding beneath the panels, and folding up into more car parts. Credit where it’s due: It all fits together pretty well. There’s a mild fitting issue on mine with her arms not quite snapping flush into some of her backpack panels, but I can usually finesse the connection after a minute. Also, while the instructions tell you to rotate her head backwards, I found it fits better in its little nook if you just leave it facing forwards.
Car Mode
Chromia transforms into a high-tech, Cybertron-style car, like nothing found on Earth. There’s no two ways around it, though: This car mode looks unfinished.
To be fair, the front half looks nice enough, with a big, transparent cockpit covered in tech detailing. And once again, that tech detailing isn’t as obtrusive as promo pics made it seem.
This mode also makes a tiny bit of Siege’s trademark battle damage appear, in the form of a bit of silver paint on the car’s front.
It’s the back half of the car that’s the problem in that it’s really blatantly the robot’s torso and folded up arms. It’s got a really gappy back end, and while you’re supposed to fill it in with the grenades, which seem to form tailpipes, they don’t do much to help, especially when her robot hands are plainly visible. Her gun can mount on the back of the car as well, and pretty much has to go there to help hide the robot torso. Aside from that, she’s got mounting points on the sides of her car mode. Oh, and it rolls just fine.
Overall
Okay, so, here’s the issue. They were very determined to give her a skinny “female” design, while having her change into a convincing car mode, and wound up doing a poor job of both of those things. Setting aside the fact that just because a Transformer is female, doesn’t mean that she has to have that one specific body type, we’ve seen these ideas done well in the past. Thrilling 30 Arcee managed to transform from a female figure into a car, and have much less of a backpack. The previous Thrilling 30 Chromia, like most iterations of Windblade, sidesteps the problem by having an alternate mode that allowed her to have a slender robot mode without covering it in parts. And the Titans Return version of Arcee didn’t try to make her have the Standard Female Character Design, just giving her a gender-neutral look, and making a stronger figure overall.
Either way, Chromia’s got a clumsy robot mode, an unfinished-looking car mode. She has some neat weapons, but they alone aren’t worth the price of entry. I won’t give it a straight avoid, but I will say that, if you really want a Chromia, be it because of G1, or IDW Comics, then a) The Thrilling 30 figure is better, if you can find it, and b) This figure’s actually shelfwarming, so maybe it’ll go on clearance one day. Either way, this is the first disappointing Deluxe of Siege, and not really worth the asking price at retail.
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