(NOTE: Because this is a repaint, this is not a full-blown review. This mainly covers any changes made to the mold and the color scheme, and merely compares it to the "First Edition" Prime Arcee toy. For a review on the mold itself, read the review of the "First Edition" Prime Arcee toy here.)
This is an interesting
"What if?" release-- what if Trans-Mutate had actually been formed as a
more normal Transformer, with a proper alt mode and not a mess of a robot
mode? In the Club's "Beast Wars Uprising" universe, this is apparently
exactly the case, and uses the superior First Edition version of Prime
Arcee as a base, thankfully. The colors chosen are pretty much spot-on
to how Trans-Mutate appeared in the Beast Wars show-- she's got a color
scheme mostly made up of a dull greenish gold-- rather olive-looking, in
fact-- and a fairly light teal (with the plastic version being milky, and
the paint being a metallic version of this shade). The two colors contrast
against each other well enough, though it's not anything that particularly
wows me. The greenish olive gold just isn't that great of a color, in my
opinion. The transparent plastic used is a nice cherry red, though, which
looks marvelous against the greenish-gold, and there's a fair amount of
black-- used not only on the tires, but also on the motorcycle seat, parts
of the lower legs, and around the eyes-- that give Trans-Mutate a nice
dark color. My favorite color on the toy is definitely the metallic silver
paint, though-- it's got a LOT of glitter in the mix, and just looks great
on most of the places where it's used, like the wheel hubs, tailpipes,
and sides of the lower legs. The only exception to this is Trans-Mutate's
face-- she had an entirely silver face on the BW show, yet her face is
unpainted greenish gold plastic, with silver only on the crests around
the face. Her entire face should have been painted silver, as that would've
looked MUCH better, not to mention more accurate. As is, her face looks...
unfinished.
No mold changes have
been made to Trans-Mutate.
Trans-Mutate is a nice
idea, but it was much better as a concept than in practice. Trans-Mutate's
color scheme (although okay) isn't exactly fantastic, and putting it on
a design as unique and relatively iconic/well-known as Prime Arcee-- without
any mold changes like a new headsculpt-- just makes it look like Arcee
in some alternate paint job. It doesn't say "Trans-Mutate" to me at all,
even with her color scheme-- there's just too much that's been changed
from the original design to the point where absolutely nothing mold-wise
tells me it's Trans-Mutate. Mildly recommended for BIG fans of the character
that will take any toy of her that they can get, but otherwise... this
is a FunPub exclusive most can skip over.
Review by Beastbot