Delta Magnus wrote:To me at least, the problem with Victorion is the bare bones effort that was put into her. If they'd made her all original molds and she'd still looked kinda bulky I wouldn't have minded so much (Strongarm and MP Road Rage pull off the bulky fembot look very well IMO, mainly because they do still have some gynoid characteristics). The fact that they were minimal effort retools of existing (VERY obviously male) figures with new heads and boxy tits slapped on is extremely lame. They could have at least given them proper reshells so they at least looked different in vehicle mode from their mould donors, as opposed to just being "red and teal Dead End" and "red and teal Alpha Bravo x2".
And more to the point, they look great in the comic art, which makes me very disappointed that they don't look better in toy form.
(I do like her combined mode though, I will give them that.)
As for Strika, Road Rage and Strongarm, both Strongarm and MP Road Rage do have fairly feminine proportions despite being bulky and well armoured (though G1 and CHUG Road Rage are both pretty awful). As for Strika, she gets a pass by virtue of being a Vehicon General, and like her fellow generals not even looking particularly humanoid. Their whole thing was how unusual they looked, with Jetstorm's blade legs, Thrust's monowheel, Tankor's claws and tread feet and Obsidian's...everything.
Ehhhh I don't buy the bare bones comment. Each of the individual figures have a serious amount of remolding, all have new heads (well, one of the car bots has the Night Bird head, but whatever), and they came up with new hands/feet for this girl. I would say they've put just as much effort into Victorian as they have every other combiner so far. If you're saying they should have put even more effort into Victorian, or that all the combiners have been bare bones efforts, I would certainly disagree but I wouldn't be able to realistically argue against that opinion, because at least it's internally consistent.
Outside of that, the Hotspot and AB molds are pretty lithe, and can easily be construed as strong feminine bodies. The only reason Strongarm is viewed as female because it was stated to be first - had the Dead End mold been a lady first and then a male second, I doubt you'd be as vocal about it. These robots are more androgenous than anything else, and our reading gender into it is... well, exactly that - reading gender into it.
