Friday, April 9, 2021

Wei Jiang - ARCEE!

3rd Party Transformers - Robot Force Deformation Era - Alcee - Wei Jiang 2014

I remember that not long after the 2014 Generations Arcee figure came out, there started to be 3rd party knockoffs of the mold popping up everywhere. A lot of these were resized to be "Masterpiece Scale." As someone who only collected female Transformers (of which the 2014 Arcee was one of the first great ones), I had no clue what this scale meant. Nowadays, of course, there have been three Masterpiece females (Road Rage, Blackarachnia, and Arcee), but the appeal of an upscaled Generations Arcee still didn't appeal to me until very recently. I realized that the Wei Jiang Alcee featured more classic colors than the main Hasbro release. It actually matches the color scheme of the scarce Target-exclusive Platinum Arcee repaint (but without the shiny paint). And I also realized I want as many Arcee representations as possible in my collection. There are a lot of disreputable eBay sellers offering Alcee. I have had several failed transactions but I finally got one. Let's check her out below!







Alcee comes with two clear blue blades, a pink gun, a gray gun, a large piece of car-mode kibble, and an extra head. The extra head is loose in the box without a place on the plastic tray. I feel like it's inclusion is an afterthought, but a really great afterthought because the loose head is way better.




A really nice thing about this figure is that they made the car-kibble removable.
If you look at the 2014 Generations Arcee, this piece is a separate piece of plastic, but permanently attached to the body. If it were removeable, the remaining pieces make a great pair of "wings" true to the Arcee design.




Here are the two heads after I swapped them. It look a lot of hot water to get them swapped.
So, to be clear, the original head has the dopey smile and upturned eyes. The loose pack-in head is the one with full lips and more stern eyes.




















The only defect with this figure is that the front abdomen and pelvis plate doesn't make full contact with the back. I can force it closed, but it doesn't click and doesn't stay. This leaves a gap running up her side.











Just like the smaller Hasbro figure, this version has light-piping for a glowing eye effect when backlit.


































Time for some Group and Comparison Pics!


Here is Alcee with the 2014 Generations Arcee.





And here is Alcee alongside Fan Toy's Rouge and TakaraTomy's Masterpiece Arcee.




I was too lazy to photograph a large group of Arcees in my photo tent, but I snapped 
a quick pic of my current Arcee shelf. It's growing rapidly.






Cheers!





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