Fans Toys Rouge - Arcee

“Dad, why do you have a doll?”

“It’s not a doll. It’s an action figure.”

“Mom, why does Dad have a shelf full of girl robots?”

“Action figures!"

The Movie introduced a slew of new characters in a bid to get kids to beg their parents for new toys. Strangely, Arcee was never offered in the original run. There have been quite a few official and third party offerings in recent years, but only Toyworld Leia is Masterpiece scaled. I wasn’t completely satisfied with how Leia looked on my shelf so was looking forward to Fans Toys Rouge. After the delight of Apache and Koot, Rouge is a bit of a let down.

I usually transform these figures to alt mode and back at least once so I can comment on the process. However, when I was attempting to move one of the backpack armatures past a white panel, cracks started to appear on the white plastic. It’s not visible from the outside, but I don’t want to continue and risk actually breaking something. Fortunately, transforming these things is not so important to me so I’ll just enjoy the figure displayed in robot mode.

For the most part, I like how Rouge looks. The colors are bright and the line work is typical of Fans Toys. Her face sculpt could be little more angular, but otherwise looks great. Her metallic eyes catch the light well. While her shoulder pauldrons look fine, I’m not a fan of how they are attached. The armatures look messy and they don't sit quite right on her back. There is a visible gap in her collar bone and a hole that runs from one side of her chest through to the other. While I appreciate that she does not have high heels like Leia, Rouge could have used some heel spurs. She is very prone to falling over. I can not see displaying her without some sort of stand. Conveniently, there are a couple of ports right on her butt.

Her head is on a ball joint. She has a wide range of motion. Her shoulders are also on ball joints. She can’t quite raise her arms out and up to horizontal. Her elbows are double-jointed. She can perform full curls. Her thumbs are fixed. The rest of her fingers are single pinned and articulate as a single unit. She swivels at her biceps, forearms, thighs, and ankles. Her wrists are hinged. She has a waist waggle so she can perform side to side crunches, but she does not have a waist swivel, limiting are posability. Her hips are on universal joints. During transformation or straight out of the box, make sure to pull her legs out at the hip so she can achieve her full range of motion. She can perform full front and side splits. Her knees are single-jointed, but she can still perform full curls. Her ankles are on rockers and tilts. Her toes are on hinges.

Her accessories include a pistol, a rifle, an alternate chest, a pair of alternate hands, and a slew of alternate faces. Her pistol is gray, with some minimal line work and paint applications. Her rifle is pink. They each have a slot on their handles to receive the tabs on her palms. Although easy to use, the tabs are prone to splitting the handles at the seams. The weapons sit securely in her hands, but her grip looks very dainty. Her alternate chest is more angular and less curvy. Swapping out her chest requires mucking with some screws. Unfortunately, the torso tabs don’t line up properly on the alternative chest so I have to continue using the curvier chest. Her alternate hands do not have the awkward looking tabs, but are otherwise identical. They simply pop on and off their mushroom pegs. She comes with a total of six alternate faces. Two are very similar with neutral expressions, one with her red visor deployed, one with wider eyes than the others, and two with surprised expressions. The face swap mechanism is very simple to use.

Rouge will stand (using the term loosely) on my Fans Toys shelf. I will use her as my Masterpiece stand-in for now because her face sculpt reminds me the most of the source material and because her colors are so much brighter than Leia's. I didn't finish transforming her because I nearly broke a piece in trying. Despite being the second Fans Toys offering (Soveriegn was the other), that I didn’t fully transform, I would have still been excited to complete the Autobot cast of The Movie. Her limited articulation and balance issue killed that for me. Ocular Max has a chance to deliver a knock out blow with their upcoming Arcee figure. Still, I can’t wait for Fans Toys to bring on Hoodlum.