Running some Masterpiece catch up today with a look at the recently released MP-51 Arcee. This is classic G1 rendition of the female warrior in her pink and white get up with futuristic convertible alt mode. Straight outta 2005 :). She features a slim frame with lots of poseability capturing the original animation. She comes packed with two pistols, a holster, a rifle, energy blast effects for all three weapons, and 3 alternate faces.
All in all I thought it was a sharp version of the character, with two asterisks. One, the chest is oddly low. Seems like they did that to allow arm movement, as she can grip her pistol with two hands straight arm, just like a famous shot from the movie. The chest cuts right into that, as they designed it there anyway, so I’m guessing things were moved around to compensate. Second, the backpack is heavy. Not the worst, and from the front it’s no big deal. She really pops well when combined with Ultra Magnus and Hot Rod, they all have those movie colors on point and stand out among the other pre-movie bots in a line up.
We’ve run her for a session, read on to check out some key shots or hit the full gallery over here:
–> TFW2005’s MP-51 Masterpiece Arcee Gallery
She’s in stock now and shipping from TFSource!
Bee427
View attachment 29651682
Alph
Emgo's comparison shows pretty clearly just how Takara fudged things up with the chest. It looks a million times better with a chest that actually…you know…is a complete chest. Like imagine if they'd just chopped off the top third of Optimus Prime's chest for the sake of improving his butterfly joints, that's exactly what happened here with Arcee. Her chest was never "saggy", it just wasn't complete.
fschuler
The curvy chest on the KO…while a bit gratuitous…actually matches pretty well with her other curves. She won’t look right in alt mode anymore, lol, but the proportions aren’t bad.
Arcee is just about impossible to get perfect. I think TT did a decent job on her overall, and NewAge did as well from a somewhat different direction. I would imagine anything that looks about perfect in both modes would have to be such a mess of panels and complexity that it wouldn’t be any fun to handle…if it could be done at all.
Paco Grande
It looks fine to me in hand and that topic has been beaten to death. Having said that, I think it could have looked MUCH better and avoided tons of controversy if they went with a fake chest. But people are already complaining that she’s a “shellformer” and the chest is the only part of the car that is actually used for bot mode. I believe Arcee absolutely must be a shellformer to do her design any justice at all. TT was most likely trying to make some fans happy by actually using the car hood for the chest piece. Or they ran out of space in the alt mode for a fake chest. TT typically puts a lot of effort into making the alt mode look perfect for car bots (see Hot Rod) and they succeeded in that aspect of her design. Most Arcee designs have really terrible alt modes.
NewAge recently did an Arcee that is pretty much the sculpt of the MP but they went with a fake chest. I think their chest looks much better but the alt mode suffers a lot for that awesome bot mode. And I think the alt mode would have looked much worse at MP scale. At Legends scale it’s the size of a Hot Wheels car so it’s more forgivable.
Nova Maximus
They let the horny get to their brains.
A sad fate that could plague us all.
![[IMG]](https://robotoybase.com/image/cache//data/productphoto3/p30/TB2NDEnewfH8KJjy1zcXXcTzpXa_--250852858-1000x1000.jpg)
Not as bad as FT's marketing team tho.
mrspingly
The chest in my picture above isn't the Takara one. It's the improved one with a better angle.
But I agree, the official chest is an eyesore.
Superquad7
I dunno what TakaraTomy was thinking on that chest. Gracious.
mrspingly
Thanks. I shall give that a go. I already have FT Rouge and MMC Azalea, but I was intrigued to see what the MP was like, as the alt mode is excellent.
I think that Azalea is my favourite, as she by far the most fun to fiddle around with!
4249david
Yeah, those legs need moving back about half a centimetre each. Her centre of gravity is pinpoint accurate. It's like no other figure you've had before
mrspingly
As I said in the post, I know that the backpack wasn't right in that photo. I had hoped that would avoid a comment like this.
She was leaning with it correctly arranged as well. The reason it's not transformed correctly in the picture is because I had been experimenting with making it look less ugly by removing a pin, like this.
View attachment 29641614
Looks better from the front, but the gap is ugly. She's leaning forward even there, though, with a much lighter backpack. For the photo I originally posted above, I popped the other half of the backpack in.
artimus prime
Not fair to say she likes to lean forward when you have her backpack sky-high and forward. She's really well balanced. *as long as her lower ab joint is toleranced right* If that gives out, she's an alt mode display.