Gauntlet101010 wrote:ZeldaTheSwordsman wrote:I know how to have backpackless ladies: Give up on insisting on robot modes that are curvy when the vehicle modes aren't, and don't cop out on what integration is possible.
Pretty much this, yeah. It's not like none exist. Prime Arcee is a great example.
It might be a stretch, but Animated Arcee also has very good alt. mode integration. She has a bit of a backpack, but only in the way you'd actually want.
She's also controversial, but I like the Legend Slipsteream / Windblade mold. Wing kibble, but I like wing kibble on plane bots.
Nowadays it seems like the designers have given up. Or, at least, that they're obsessed with making Arcee look G1 in both modes.
Animated Arcee is one of the best fembot toys we've ever gotten IMO. Perfect balance of a feminine design with a workable transformation (the "bell bottom" legs are a stroke of genius). More fembots designed like Animated Arcee would be great, at least providing we didn't go back to the dark times of every fembot being a motorbike. Hopefully, with ER Arcee hopefully having satisfied the mandated requirement for a G1-accurate Arcee, the next rendition of her in a collector line will be more creatively designed.
Regarding jets, HasTak used to be much better about them. ROTF Breakaway/Thrust has a stellar jet mode and a cool robot mode, for example. As a matter of fact, given how similar the transformations are (cockpit sucks into torso with canopy revealing head, engines and wings forming backpack etc) I wish they'd used that conversion as the basis for SS Blitzwing blown up to Voyager, rather than what we got. Now to be fair on HasTak, jets are very tricky to get right, as despite being very big volume-wise there's surprisingly little mass to work with (especially slimmer jets without F15 styled box bodied fuselages), but there's definitely room for improvement. Ironically, ER Starscream has a pretty decent jet mode with a rather dire robot mode, but that's largely by virtue of being an upscale of a 14 year old toy reworked to have the bare minimum of acceptable articulation on a modern figure. Ironically, TR Blitzwing has a pretty decent jet mode, especially for a triple changer, with the only kibble being small tread chunks under the wings and the tank turret on the underside.
What I've noticed HasTak AND 3Ps doing a lot these days is relying heavily on faux parts rather than going the extra mile to have the transformation done properly. Personally I'd rather the robot mode not be 100% proportionally accurate to the character model but have the "correct" transformation than have a marginally more accurate robot mode at the expense of fake parts, a cheating transformation and often a compromised alt mode. This is bad enough with CHUG/SS (did Runamuck really need a fake chest?) but when you see things like modern MPs faking
the entire alt mode, that's pretty disgraceful. Minor bits like Prime's grill stomach I can accept (albeit less so now that Magic Square's Prime did it with no faux parts at all AND a sensible transformation AND a really good robot mode) but when you see things like MP-44 with an absurdly overcomplicated transformation that blatantly cheats and disregards the spirit of the original conversion scheme- never mind one of the simplest and most iconic in the brand- it's hard not to think "Where did we go wrong?".