Arcee's motorcycle alternate
mode is replicated surprisngly well at such a small scale, with no obvious
robot extras to be found at all despite the thin-ness of this mode, beyond
the barely-visible hips near the center of the toy, which are easily ignorable
due to the black plastic they're cast in. Due to Arcee's transformation,
only one side of each wheel has the spoke/wheel cover detailing on it,
but for the size this is rather minor and honestly my only real complaint
here. Arcee's core colors of black and dark blue are on display quite prominently
here, with the blue in particular a really nice, attractive shade of the
color. Unfortunately, taken with the black, this means that the toy is
in need of a lighter color. There's a bit of light silvery blue paint on
the windshield and headlight, but otherwise this mode is barren in paint,
which is especially a shame given all the little mold details on it, like
the Prime aesthetic "curved points" molded onto the main body, and even
the little spokes on the wheels. For a weapon, Arcee comes with the standard
Cyberverse dual-barreled blaster weapon in normal Autobot red. There are
four ports for her to hold it in this mode-- one on each side of the motorcycle
mode, and two on the back seat that are a side effect of her hand-holes
being there. (Also as a side effect, you can't put a weapon into both of
the holes in her seat cover-- they're too close together.) On a lesser
note, it's also quite surprising that this mode has the stability to stand
up by itself without a kickstand.
Motorcycle toys at this
scale haven't tended to translate well into robot mode, and although Hasbro
did an admirable job in terms of both the budget they had and trying to
get it show-accurate, the robot mode falls short on this tiny cycle-bot
as well. The headlight/windshield piece and "wings" are an understandable
piece of kibble, though they are a noticeable one, sitting behind her upper
back as they are. Fortunately, they don't get in the way of Arcee's articulation,
and the wings in fact enhance her silouhette a little at this scale, I
think. No, where this robot mode really suffers are in the appendages.
The arms are in an incredibly awkward pose and position due to their becoming
the seat cover in vehicle mode, and thus are really skinny near the middle
but bulky at both ends of each arm-- and without elbow articulation, this
means that Arcee's arms always look distractingly weird, no matter what.
Also, her legs are overly bulky, being made up of both the sides of the
motorcycle mode and the wheels. Admittedly, having one wheel fold into
each lower leg is a good idea (although one of the wheels doesn't click
into any sort of "set place" due to the transformation), but compared to
her upper legs it just means that they look way too large and fat comparatively.
On the plus side, the silver paint detailing on Arcee's face, chest, and
knees help to break up the dark colors a bit better than in vehicle mode,
though having her toes and/or hands painted would have helped even more.
Her robot mold detailing is quite well done on her face sculpt, though
her chest is a bit off, being a bit too square and giving her an overly
tiny waist because of the transformation. For articulation, Arcee can move
at the shoulders, hips, and knees, with the former two being ball joints.
She can get an okay range, but this is more-or-less average for a Legion-class
figure.
Prime Cyberverse Arcee
is a pretty admirable effort, and has a great vehicle mode (albeit one
without enough paint apps), but motorcycle TF designs tend not to work
well in at least one mode, and unfortunately Arcee is no exception. Due
to her odd proportions in her arms and legs in robot mode, I'd recommend
getting one of the deluxe versions of her instead, since they're relatively
easy to transform, as well.
Review by Beastbot