Binaltech - Arcee

Name: Arcee

Faction: Autobot

Toy Line: Binaltech

Robot Mode

Arcee's robot mode is a mostly white and varying shades of pink (supposedly) feminine form which features several pieces of kibble from her vehicle mode visible. Some black pieces are added to break up the pale colours somewhat, and it actually does work in some weird way.

Arcee's torso is made from most of the mid-section of her vehicle mode and her car boot folded in on itself and seems to feature a design that could be interpreted as an abdominal area, and even a chest (not a very feminine chest however I must say). Her Autobot insignia is located dead center of the chest and is surrounded by a silver border.

Her head is connected by a ball joint connector that allows her to nod, shake, bop or anything she needs to. This head uses a different sculpt to that use by Windcharger and definitely seems more feminine in general. The helmet itself is mostly white with a dark pink border, and white forehead cover and chin guard. Her face is a pale pink and features a sculpted nice and mouth, as well as sculpted blue eyes.

The shoulders are attached to the upper torso by a still pivoting joint that limits its movement, but can be raised up and down to make her more broad shouldered if desired. The upper arms are connected to the shoulder pads by a pivot joint hidden behind the wheels that allows them to be raised sideways as needed. The elbow joints are created with a pivoting joint and a hinge that allows them to rotate on the pivot as much as needed, and to bend inwards by about 90 degrees as well. The lower arms are connected to the hands by a ball joint that allows her hands to rotate and fold in as required. Her thumbs aren't articulated, but the index finger is jointed to fold inwards or out on it's own, with the remaining 3 fingers on each hand being sculpted in a single piece that can fold in the same ways as needed once again.

The inside of the hand features a small clip that enables her gun to the held in it, whilst the forearms feature another peg that can be used to hold her shield.

Arcee's legs are connected to her groin area by a pair of ball joints that allow her to move as required, along with a pivot joint near the top of the upper legs that enable her to be posed as needed on awkward surfaces. Arcee's knees are created by a pair of hinges that enable her to bend her legs inwards (though this joint is very stiff), and to also give her a crab-walk appearance if desired (it's actually for her transformation, but we can pretend it was for crab-walks too). Her vehicle mode car doors are positioned like a pair of leg guards down the sides, but otherwise her lower legs feature nothing too remarkable. Her feet are connected by ball joints, and also have a fold-out back support/heel that can surprisingly support her very top-heavy form!

Vehicle Mode

Arcee's vehicle mode is a white licensed Honda S2000 Hardtop sports car with black frames around the windows, spoilers and even roof-hold, and some of the interior to the vehicle mode as well. He chairs are pink (as you might expect form a girly car) and her steering wheel and gear stick is white, matching her exteriors.

This mode features several added features you would expect to find in a Binaltech toy, such as working wheels, realistic designs, opening car boot and hood (which even reveals an engine if it's been placed inside it), rear exhausts, license plate, detailing, side mirrors with reflective silver paint, headlights, rear lights and other smaller details like an antennae near the back, and of course a clear windscreen.

This particular mold of course also features another fun feature, her roof can either be in a hard top configuration, or replaced with a collapsed rood that's been stored away somewhere. The hardtop roof features a rear window as well.

Accessories

Arcee comes with these three accessories, all of which can be utilized as a part of her vehicle mode, or as a weapon or decoration for her robot mode. The engine/exhaust pipe becomes a gun (and even includes the long barrel, unlike her Hasbro brother, Windcharger). Arcee also comes with a collapsed roof clip on, which can be left in it's vehicle mode configuration even in robot mode (unlike the hardtop clip-on). The Hardtop clip on roof can also be used as a shield (like Windcharger can do with his soft top roof as well).

My Final Thoughts

Okay let's be honest here, this figure is nice, but probably doesn't work as the very girly Arcee we all remember from our childhoods. I do like her vehicle mode's design in this case however, as it does look like a very girl-friendly design and colourscheme, but the robot just doesn't work too well for Arcee herself.

I do recommend this figure for anyone's collection however, especially if you like Alternators/Binaltech/any other licensed toys, you can just pretend Arcee forgot to wear her pretty clothes that day or something.

This figure is very heavy due to it being made from metal rather than the more commonly used plastic of today, whilst this makes the toy much more durable, it also makes it a lot more stiff in some places or even dangerous (especially if you're prone to throwing the toys at people who annoy you).

My one main design complaint about this toy (other than the masculine feel to this female character) is that the figure is lacking articulation that is very common today, like ball joints on every joint, instead opting for hingese, which are just terrible for posing honestly...she does look nice with my Alternators Rodimus though, I do have to say!

If you can find her for a reasonable price (like the standard going price for Alternators, with maybe a little more for importing fees etc) then you should get her, but otherwise you may as well just pass her over.

W is for Windcharger

The Winning Toy


Toyline: Alternators

Generation: Generation One

Faction: Autobot


Robot Mode



Windcharger's robot mode is pretty solid really, especially considering that the toyline that had just ended at the time was Energon, which whilst being fun, didn't have the greatest looking robots aesthetically, by today's standards anyway.

Windcharger's robot mode is mostly red with black parts (such as the arms, legs, head and some other small details and some greay on the upper legs and some detailing as well. Windcharger's Autobot insignia is found on the dead center of his chest (as well as a small one on his left wrist from his licence plate)

Windcharger's torso features a lot of sculpted details like pipes and other internal car parts rearranged to resemble ahumaoid chest and abdominal area. His groin area is silver and black with red lights on either side.
Windcharger's head consists of a silver face with sculpted eyes, nose, mouth and chin, with the eyes being concealed behind a translucent dark blue visor. His face is surrounded by a black and red helmet with an indent on the center, leading to a cap-peak that leads to the visor. His head resembles Overdrive's more than Windcharger's traditional looks.

Wincharger's shoulders are connected to the torso by a pivot and hinge joint combination allowing free movement (assuming there's no obstructions). The vehicle mode wheels hide a pivot joint that leads to the upper arms allowing as free movement as you require sideways. In the middle of his upper arm he has a pivot joint that enables it to rotate 360 degrees and then leads to a hinge that allows him to bend his arm at an elbow joint.
Windcharger's hands are connected to the lower arms by a ball joint that enables them to be folded inwards and rotated as much as needed. His fingers are also articulated to a small degree with his index finger being able to move independantly of the others by a pivot joint, and the middle, ring and pinky fingers connected together and able to move on a pivot as one. The thump is unable to move.
Windcharger's lower arms feature large-ish holes on them where you can put his rehicle mode roof to act as a shield. He also features a smaller hole in the palms of both hands which enables him to clip his weapon into.

Windcharger's upper legs are connected to the groin area by a hinge and pivot join that enables him to raise them outwards by about 90 degrees (obstructions withstanding) and can enable him to raise them forwards and back as far as possible as well. He has another pivot joint near the top of the upper legs that allows them to rotate if needed (for balance reasons mostly). The lower leg is connected to the upper leg by a couple of hinge joints that allows them to bend inwards and backwards (though the backwards folding hinge is a bit stiff). His feet are connected to the bottom of the legs by a ball joint each which gives it some rotation (for balance again mostly).
Windcharger's vehicle doors become a side skirt in robot mode, which could fictionally be used to hold more weapons if you want.


Alternate Mode



Windcharger turns into a realistic and liscenced red soft top Honda S2000 sports car.
In this mode Windcharger features highly accurate detailings, such as his headlights, forwards grill, exhaust pipes, moving steering wheel, sculpted fuel intake, indicator lights, emergency lights, radio antennae, folding chairs (so you can throw things into the boot), gears, an opening boot, windshield wipers, side mirrors, treaded tires, spoked hubcaps and other such details.
Windcharger features the Honda logo on the very front of the vehicle and on the boot, and the Honda S2000 logo on the sides as well, behind the indicators.
Windcharger's licence plate shows an Autobot insignia and the letters "WNDCGR" an obvious abbreviation for "Windcharger".
Windcharger feature's two posisble roofs for his vehicle mode, a folded down one that just plugs into the holes behind the seats, or a soft top roof (that would fictionally be seen to fold out from the folded version) that connects into the same holes as the previous one and into a small gap on the windscreen as well. This roof features a rear window as well.




Legacy

The character of Windcharger was originally for the first series of Transformers toys in the Mini-bot subline (along with characters like Bumblebee, Cliffjumper, Huffer, Brawn, Gears and Hubcap). Sadly however, out of the batch who appeared on screen (ie all but Hubcap) Windcharger seemed to be the least used. He appeared sporatically through the G1 Cartoon until his off-screen death in the G1 Movie, where he was seen along with Wheeljack's corpse being moved by Arcee to make room for the catapult weapon...Though he did appear in a background scene later, but that was hardly uncommon for G1 to do. Windcharger also appeared in all the G1 based comic series, but has yet to make a major appearance as of yet. Windcharger tends to utilise a magnetic power in his appearances.

Windcharger has recieved a few toys over the years. His original toy from G1 was a Mini-bot (as mentioned earlier) which turns into a red TransAm Firebird and was later repainted or retooled into several other characters including Tailgate, Rook and Camaro, he was also used for the basis for Shattered Glass Rook, whom is very easy to make a custom toy of. Windcharger also obviously recieved this toy as well, but was named Overdrive in Japan, and came with an exhaust pipe barrel on his weapon, turning it into a gun rather than a shield as well as die cast metal, like with all Binaltech toys. The Alternators/Binaltech toy was also repainted/retooled as Arcee, Decepticharge and was intended to become a new toy for Black Arachnia and acted as the bases for the Kiss Players character Legion. Windcharger's recently recieved another new toy from the Reveal the Shield line which emulates his original toy but is actually a hybrid of a Camaro and Mustang in design. This new toy even has built in magnets to emulate his ability from fiction.

The name Windcharger has been used for the Japanese name for Energon Perceptor but nowhere else, other than on characters that are connected to or meant to be the G1 character


Is he Cool?

I have to admit, I have a bit of bias for Windcharger, he was the first Alternator's toy I bought and he got me in the mood for collecting figures on mass again. This was also the sort of time when the Movie was announced and was well into my mind (in 2005) so with his realistic alternate mode and fantastic robot mode (for the time) I figured that he could be what the movie figures would look like in time (I was proven wrong of course lol)
Now then, other than my personal reasons for liking him, I still think he's a very cool figure. He features an amazing vehicle mode that is even fun! (not very many car modes are that fun if your honest) and his robot mode works as an homage to both the G1 character of the same name and Overdrive as well.
If you can get this figure, or any of his repaints (I personally have Windcharger and Arcee, whom comes with the full sized gun barrel and the hard-top roof rather than Windcharger's ones) and you can get them for a reasonable price, then I'd really recommend them to anyone.