In the 80's, there was a strict code that toy manufacturers stuck to. Boys toys were trucks, tanks, soldiers, with awesome weapons and fortress play-sets in manly colours like dark blue, grey, red, and black! Girl toys were horses, kitties, dolls with shoes, dresses, and dream house play-sets in girly colours like pink, and pink, and pink. Also while girl toys had both male and female representation, boy toys (mostly) only had male characters as toys,despite the associated saturday morning cartoon having many female lead characters in them. The thought was that boys wouldn't want to play with girls.
The 1980's were weird.
Fast-forward to today and now we have action figures of all the female characters we want! Still pink, but we have them!
Elita-1 was a character that came out of the Transformers cartoon in the 80's. Though she featured in only one episode, she apparently has the major role of being the leader of a resistance of all female Autobots back on Cybertron who fight against Shockwave. She's also Optimus Primes girlfriend from long before he was even called Optimus Prime. Millions of years later she was rebuilt and is now his sister. Don't ask me how it works, I don't get it either.
but I digress
So now, 33 years after she popped up in the Transformers cartoon, we have our first toy of Elita-1! About goddamn time! Instead of the indescribable car-thing that she transformed into in the cartoon, she now transforms into an (almost) sleek jet plane! Changing Elita-1 from jet to robot is quick, and in her robot mode she looks... well huge. She has big chunky forearms and huge calves, but that's fine, I like big women.
The stuff that comes with Elita-1 don't quite work for her. The tiny pistols don't quite fit into her hands, so I keep them on her shoulders Optimus Prime-smokestack style. The "Autobot Enigma" (that yellow cube thing) is... just a cube of plastic that fits into her Prime Armor slots, then fit into her shoulders and looks terrible. So instead of armor I cobble them together to make a big gun, that works out well!
Even with the pop-eye arms and huge bell-bottoms, Elita-1 is still a good action figure, and can pose while flying and shooting her laser, posing heroically and pointing with her entire fist, doing the Ironman (though her arms are too short), and.... walking. ACTION WALKING!
Standing side-by-side with her boyfriend/brother, Elita-1 certainly looks bigger. The Optimus toy there is from 2006, and has a lot more plastic in him though, meaning Elita-1 is mostly hollow plastic, and is very light in-hand.
So as the first figure of Elita-1 (barring the stupidly expensive convention exclusive that was a repaint of a terrible toy), I think she's alright! She's a heavy retool of a recent Starscream figure, though there are enough differences between the two that I don't feel like I've bought the same toy twice, so that makes me happy.
Anyway, I'm going to go play board games with my friends now.
