Generations Arcee & Chromia

[Toph]

These two arrived in the mail today. First thoughts follow.

Chromia-
Here's what everyone is interested in: what's new and what's reused.
Reused- neck piece, entire torso front, upper arms, hands, outter thighs, toes.
New- head, forarms, clip over biceps, inner thighs, lower legs, torso back. (And of course all the obvious motorcycle stuff)

Chromia completely reinvigorates this mold in my eyes. The robot mode is different enough from the other four versions I already own, that she feels almost new.
Her motorcycle has a really awesome fantasy vehicle feel to it, and is just fun to play with.
I would like to see this version used again, but it needs to be a really clever usage (IE, not some random g1cartoon female) or else it may really start getting boring.
I'd kill to see a prebeast Blackarachnia from it (new head of course).

Arcee-
I'd REALLY hoped she was a case of being really unphotogenic, and she would look a lot better in person....
But if anything, she looks worse. You can really see how stupid her bad anatomy and terrible posture really are.
Her transformation is likewise uninspired and terrible.
Her hands are weirdly designed with peg holes instead of the standard 5mm circles. The weapons can be held by others, but she cannot hold anything but her own.
On top of that, to reinforce her hands odd design so they don't snap, she has a slight bar under her hands that prevent her weapons from pegging in all the way, and thus don't sit well in her fists.
Her deco is terrible, and kinda all over the place with terrible decisions.
She does have a gorgeous vehicle mode, though. But then, aside from her thighs, it's completely independent from her robot mode.

I'll be honest. I've never been an Arcee fan. I always found her design to be boring, and her character soooo uninspired and stereotypical.
But hell... Even I felt a hole in my collection from never having a g1 arcee. Just like everyone else, I've waited 28 years for this very toy.
I honestly can't tell if this toy really IS as terrible and ugly as it seems, or if it's a case of waiting 28 years and feeling insulted by a lazy piece of mediocrity.

Either way, the mold should not be reused.

[Philip Ayres]

There's two versions of the Arcee hands

www.allspark.com/content/2014/11/generations-arcee-variant/

[Toph]

Mine's the open hand

[Bogatan]

Dec 22, 2014 21:24:52 GMT Toph said:

Arcee-
I'd REALLY hoped she was a case of being really unphotogenic, and she would look a lot better in person....
But if anything, she looks worse. You can really see how stupid her bad anatomy and terrible posture really are.
Her transformation is likewise uninspired and terrible.
Her hands are weirdly designed with peg holes instead of the standard 5mm circles. The weapons can be held by others, but she cannot hold anything but her own.
On top of that, to reinforce her hands odd design so they don't snap, she has a slight bar under her hands that prevent her weapons from pegging in all the way, and thus don't sit well in her fists.
Her deco is terrible, and kinda all over the place with terrible decisions.
She does have a gorgeous vehicle mode, though. But then, aside from her thighs, it's completely independent from her robot mode.

I'll be honest. I've never been an Arcee fan. I always found her design to be boring, and her character soooo uninspired and stereotypical.
But hell... Even I felt a hole in my collection from never having a g1 arcee. Just like everyone else, I've waited 28 years for this very toy.
I honestly can't tell if this toy really IS as terrible and ugly as it seems, or if it's a case of waiting 28 years and feeling insulted by a lazy piece of mediocrity.

Either way, the mold should not be reused.

Legends Arcee collected from post office this morning and shes so much better than expected.

Either you and I have very different views on the mould or the Takara paint scheme makes a whole world of difference. I suspect its a bit of both.

Anatomy I agree with to a degree, basically the torso is too small, its a scout sized chest on a deluxe hips and stomach. It's a little bit odd, but it just about works for me though.

The hips are odd, the construction is different and as a result its easier to widen them giving Arcee really wide hips. In almost every photo Ive come across on line the pin in the hip is completely visible, but with the legs straight down and the hips fully pushed in the pin is almost totally hidden. It looks much better like that.

For more dynamic poses the hips do have to be wider, but then it's not so obvious. No problem with posture in my opinion.

The light piping is scary, the eyes are so bright, the probably capture crazy IDW Arcee.

I like the transformation, it's kind of like a simplified and symetrical version of the CR cars.

The hands are weird, but I assume it just wasn't practical to have hands with a 5mm hole on the ends of such thin arms so fair enough. If the little ridge was added to strengthen the hand it would have been nice if the gun handles had been shortened on the guns.

The colours on the legends version are so much better than the photos of the Generations one. The black does the mould no favours, especially on the hips which just makes the width so much more noticeable.

Yeah vehicle mode is perfect except fo hte incredibly narrow wheels which look silly. I think part of the CR vibe is due to the car mode being largely kibble.

My favourite random bit is that the pink gun (though the Generations painted gun would be nice) plugs in to the shoulder pad giving her a shoulder mounted weapon like the original Autobot cars. Also there are various ports for the guns and swords to plug in to, but it would have been even better if the swords and guns could combine.

I think I'll grab a Generations one to mess around with, either shorten the gun handles or trim the hand and see what else can be done with it.

Purely because of the HOC figure, I would be really happy with a Paradon Medic repaint.