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Sabrblade wrote:

SW's SilverHammer wrote:So Seibertron, in your opinion, do you think this figure works better as a representation of a timelines/allighned Slipstream or Prime Starscream?

"Aligned Slipstream" is the same thing as "Prime Slipstream".

Sorry i screwed up, i was kinda out out of it, anyhow what i meant to say is: does mold work better as the Timelines/aligned Slipstream or transformers Prime/aligned Starscream

SW's SilverHammer wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:

SW's SilverHammer wrote:So Seibertron, in your opinion, do you think this figure works better as a representation of a timelines/allighned Slipstream or Prime Starscream?

"Aligned Slipstream" is the same thing as "Prime Slipstream".

Sorry i screwed up, i was kinda out out of it, anyhow what i meant to say is: does mold work better as the Timelines/aligned Slipstream or transformers Prime/aligned Starscream

Ah, that makes sense.

Seeing as how "female" Transformers don't have to deliver babies vaginally, I don't see why they should have wider hips, like human females.

It's 2013, people. A figure, ESPECIALLY A ROBOT, doesn't need to have Barbie Doll proportions to represent a female character.

GuyIncognito wrote:It's 2013, people. A figure, ESPECIALLY A ROBOT, doesn't need to have Barbie Doll proportions to represent a female character.

Right, of course not.

Today, Monster High doll proportions would be way cooler.

In fact, I think that's why Slipstream's bulbous, ridged cranium works once you actually have her in hand. I look forward to someone taking a crack at a replacement head, but only because I still really want a proper Animated Slipstream. Even if that never happens, this figure turned out fine.

The new head isn't horrible, it's just not a very feminine figure to me (though I agree that's an odd statement to make since TFP Starscream's body seems effeminate to me). If the head looked more like her bio card head, then I'd be much happier. It's not. I knew going into it that this was one of the Subscription figures I was looking forward to the least, so on to the next one. Breakdown and Ultra Mammoth are the ones to which I'm looking most forward.

GuyIncognito wrote:Seeing as how "female" Transformers don't have to deliver babies vaginally, I don't see why they should have wider hips, like human females.

It's 2013, people. A figure, ESPECIALLY A ROBOT, doesn't need to have Barbie Doll proportions to represent a female character.

With all due respect to you Guy, if one has to start down that road, then there's really no point in having gender in robots in the first place. Transformers isn't exactly the most well thought-out piece of fiction, and sometimes you just have to go with the obvious. If Slipstream is supposed to be a humanoid female robot, then she'll need to have humanoid female proportions.

She doesn't need Barbie proportions per se, but a recognizable female physique would serve it better, like FE Arcee. By human standards, FE Arcee would have a rather athletic physique, but is still recognizably female to the human eye. Even if you photoshopped away her chest area and made it flat as a board, she'd still look female.

The truth is, unlike Arcee, Slipstream is a retool of a toy that was designed in the image of a gaunt, somewhat bird-like male TF. Had she been designed from the ground up as a female TF, I'm pretty sure she would have different proportions--again, NOT necessarily Barbie-like, but recognizably feminine. That certainly seems to be the case with TFA and PRID Arcee.

I'm not bashing the figure in any way. All I'm saying is that had she been designed as her own toy, she'd have had more suitable proportions for her gender.

Sabrblade wrote:

SKYWARPED_128 wrote:To be fair, the head sculpt isn't really helping. Maybe getting a Shapeways head from TecromDesigns might improve it.

Just my two cents' worth.

The head looks much MUCH better in hand in person. That close up pic above doesn't quite capture her good side (no offense, Ryan ).

I couldn't find any other pics of the toy in Google, but I guess you're right--it does look somewhat better in the pic below the closeup.

SKYWARPED_128 wrote:With all due respect to you Guy, if one has to start down that road, then there's really no point in having gender in robots in the first place.

To be fair, Transformers did actually start off that way, with the robots having no gender. Bob Budiansky wrote the original character bios and the Marvel Comics with that very mindset, but the cartoon kinda went with its own thing and introduced genders with the female Autobots in "The Search for Alpha Trion" and Arcee in the movie. Since the cartoon became more widespread than the comics did, it wound up setting the mold of TF genders more than the comics did.

Sabrblade wrote:

SKYWARPED_128 wrote:With all due respect to you Guy, if one has to start down that road, then there's really no point in having gender in robots in the first place.

To be fair, Transformers did actually start off that way, with the robots having no gender. Bob Budiansky wrote the original character bios and the Marvel Comics with that very mindset, but the cartoon kinda went with its own thing and introduced genders with the female Autobots in "The Search for Alpha Trion" and Arcee in the movie. Since the cartoon became more widespread than the comics did, it wound up setting the mold of TF genders more than the comics did.

My point exactly...sort of.

Anyways, thanks for the info. Interesting--I never knew it was the cartoon that started the whole female bot thing.

All hail the human incarnation of tfwiki itself.

So real quick sabrblade, are Bob's notes about ratchet here for the cartoon or comic?

Huh, interesting. Best guess is that he must have wrote that before deciding upon the no gender rule.

In this interview, he notes that Hasbro had spelled out a "no girl robots" rule that must have led to his treating the characters without gender:

One of the things I liked a lot about the Marvel series, it focused a lot on the fact that these characters were, though living, they were actually ROBOTS and there were reasons for their existence and how they came about. This is the ONE part of the Transformers continuity where they don't have (not without a good explanation) "female" Transformers. What are your thoughts on female Transformers and do you think there's room to explore that dichotomy in the Transformers mythology?

BOB: Well, I remember bringing up that question early on with Hasbro, "are any of these female?" And then I think Hasbro's attitude was, 'this is a boy toy. We don't wanna have, you know, girl robots.' So, I said, "OK, just want to clarify that." Then of course, I think it was in 1986 they came out with the movie, and they had the token female character. Don't ask me to explain it. (laughs) I don't understand it. I think what I came up with was Creation Matrix, however that worked out explaining their existence, their 'livingness' was asexual. There was no female, there was no male, there was no need for them having different sexes. So, I just left it at that and what other people have done beyond that, I don't know. I was just… you know, like I said, I early on brought this question up and I was given a certain direction by the Hasbro executives I was dealing with and I went with it. It's their toy, so if that's what they want, that's fine with me. Now, if somebody wants to change their mind and says, 'oh yeah, there should be a whole other bunch of female Transformers,' then again, it's not my toy, they can do that.

There's also this:

It's kinda odd though that a one paragraph note, of a concept, brings up gender roles and the dichotomy between male and female transformers.

SW's SilverHammer wrote:It's kinda odd though that a one paragraph note, of a concept, brings up gender roles and the dichotomy between male and female transformers.

In the words of BW Megatron, oh. we simply have a thing for intelligent conversation.

Sabrblade wrote:

SW's SilverHammer wrote:It's kinda odd though that a one paragraph note, of a concept, brings up gender roles and the dichotomy between male and female transformers.

In the words of BW Megatron, oh. we simply have a thing for intelligent conversation.

I think we have a nice "back an forth", even when we have our disagreements *cough botcon 2013*

Sabrblade wrote:Huh, interesting. Best guess is that he must have wrote that before deciding upon the no gender rule.

In this interview, he notes that Hasbro had spelled out a "no girl robots" rule that must have led to his treating the characters without gender:

One of the things I liked a lot about the Marvel series, it focused a lot on the fact that these characters were, though living, they were actually ROBOTS and there were reasons for their existence and how they came about. This is the ONE part of the Transformers continuity where they don't have (not without a good explanation) "female" Transformers. What are your thoughts on female Transformers and do you think there's room to explore that dichotomy in the Transformers mythology?

BOB: Well, I remember bringing up that question early on with Hasbro, "are any of these female?" And then I think Hasbro's attitude was, 'this is a boy toy. We don't wanna have, you know, girl robots.' So, I said, "OK, just want to clarify that." Then of course, I think it was in 1986 they came out with the movie, and they had the token female character. Don't ask me to explain it. (laughs) I don't understand it. I think what I came up with was Creation Matrix, however that worked out explaining their existence, their 'livingness' was asexual. There was no female, there was no male, there was no need for them having different sexes. So, I just left it at that and what other people have done beyond that, I don't know. I was just… you know, like I said, I early on brought this question up and I was given a certain direction by the Hasbro executives I was dealing with and I went with it. It's their toy, so if that's what they want, that's fine with me. Now, if somebody wants to change their mind and says, 'oh yeah, there should be a whole other bunch of female Transformers,' then again, it's not my toy, they can do that.

There's also this:

Except none of this really works when you think about the lead time for developing the 1986 film. Isn't there usually a 1.5 to 2.5 year process of getting an animated movie made? It's mind boggling to think about how early on that the process of the animated movie, including Arcee, had begun which means you ought to toss out all of those rules about no genders just like Autobots are cars and Decepticons are jets/military vehicles nonsense.

"Rules are meant to be broken." They're just guidelines. In the case of a fictional universe like Transformers, just initial thoughts until something better comes along that throws a curveball to everything that came before it (i.e. Aerialbots, Stunticons, Jetfire, Constructicons, female Transformers, etc).

With the exception of Strika, female Transformers ought to have the female look pretty well covered or else it's just a female persona attached to a male body which is a whole other conversation.

Seibertron wrote:Except none of this really works when you think about the lead time for developing the 1986 film. Isn't there usually a 1.5 to 2.5 year process of getting an animated movie made? It's mind boggling to think about how early on that the process of the animated movie, including Arcee, had begun which means you ought to toss out all of those rules about no genders just like Autobots are cars and Decepticons are jets/military vehicles nonsense.

Well, they were working on the basic Marvel stuff as early as '83, so that's some time to plan that stuff out. Though, I don't think they would have been planning the movie as early as '84 since the cartoon had only just come out September of that year. Wouldn't they have had to see how well the show would perform before deciding to do a major motion picture?

And, besides, the cartoon and comic were operating mostly independently of each other. While Budiansky and Furman would keep genders and fembots mostly out of the comic (barring Furman's use of Arcee in the UK version), the cartoon pretty much ignored any adherence to what the comics were doing and did what it wanted to, which evidently was to bring in fembots.

Seibertron wrote:With the exception of Strika, female Transformers ought to have the female look pretty well covered or else it's just a female persona attached to a male body which is a whole other conversation.

Far be it from me to interject on your work Seibertron, however it would be very interesting to hear your and the rest of the podcast roundtable's thoughts on the issue of gender in transformers and how gender should be potrayed in the character models and figures of transformers. For example, whether or not there should be male and female robots or simply just genderless robots. or should they potrayed as diverse in both genders, or diverse yet androgynous. I know its a bit of serious topic for something like this, however it has been subject of debate on the site.

I always liked how Arcee's creation in the UK story "Prime's Rib" implied that the Marvel-continuity Autobots introduced the alien concept of gender into their race solely to improve relations with humanity. Like the only reason Transformers ever referred to each other with the pronoun "he" is that we fleshlings are too dumb/narrow-minded to relate to fellow sentients unless we can assign a gender to them, and we tend to perceive clunky neuter-looking things as somehow male.

I'm still 3 years behind in IDW, but I also liked its take on gender being forcibly introduced, even if things did get a tad inconsistent. Hell, it wouldn't be out of the question for it to go completely bonkers and have Jhiaxus cook up a THIRD gender for Transformerkind! I mean, it wouldn't be that much weirder for TFs than Chromedome and Rewind's civil union, would it? (Again, I'll catch up someday and don't want the details of that spoiled; just tell me whether or not I have any idea what I'm talking about here)

The oddest complaint I've heard about this figure so far is that being hunched over makes her somehow less feminine. I think it just makes her look like Timmverse Killer Frost: female but...seedy?

It is time to present to you for your consideration, the 3rd figure to grace mailboxes from the Transformers Collectors' Club subscription service 1.0. Following on the heels of Scourge and Slipstream, comes Circuit. Just like Circuit's G1 Action Master counterpart was a repaint Action Master Axcer, TFSS Circuit is a repaint of Hunt for the Decepticons Axor. Despite the difference in spelling Axor is a homage to Axer. Click on through below to see the complete gallery.

Convention & Club Exclusives Circuit

This dude makes a lot more sense now. Nice work.

LOST Cybertronian wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:Oh my.

Circuit is not just a Movieverse character... he's specifically from the "Twilight's Last Gleaming" timeline.

To Fun Pub, I only have this to say:

And here I was thinking Movie-verse (Tyran cluster) was completely off-limits. Silly me. After some looking, it's the Gamma (comic) tangent of Tyran 707.04 Delta, or the main movie, referred to in Withered Hope.

But you know? I don't care, to me he's G1 Circuit, and that's that.

JelZe GoldRabbit wrote:And here I was thinking Movie-verse (Tyran cluster) was completely off-limits. Silly me. After some looking, it's the Gamma (comic) tangent of Tyran 707.04 Delta, or the main movie, referred to in Withered Hope.

Tyran 208.28 Gamma.

Now that I get to see more pictures the more I regret not getting the transformers Collectors' Club subscription service 1.0. I don't even know what made me not to want this guys,,,I will make sure I get my TFSS 2.0 this time.

This gallery makes me wish I had bought Axor when it was out. It didn't interest me at the time (I don't even remember seeing it in stores, actually), but it's pretty nice looking, and I like that mold.

Seibertron.com is proud to present a gallery of the latest Transformers Collectors' Club Subscription toy. This time around we get Deluxe Class Breakdown in his Generation 1 colors. This is just the newest figure to utilize the classics Sideswipe mold while reusing the head from the G2 Breakdown in the BotCon 2010 box set. Click on any of the images below to view the full gallery.

Convention & Club Exclusives Breakdown