Strongarm

Seven years later... Strongarm is a by-the-rules cadet who always follows protocol. She bravely tackles any situation to capture her targets. So I was supposed to be getting Robots in Disguise Strongarm, back when that was a thing, and thus I never bought one when I saw her in stores; but then the figure never arrived, so this is my first toy of the character. Strongarm is one of those people who's decent at their job, but incredibly annoying to work with because she insists on doing everything precisely the way the bosses demand. Guidelines are great, but if you can't improvise to adapt to on-the-ground conditions, you're no good to anybody. The RiD (2015) toys were uniformly chunky, but Legacy slims that down quite a bit. It's not quite as drastic as when they completely butchered Animated Bulkhead in 2022, but she's not going to be blending smoothly into an existing RiD collection. The sculpt has plenty of parallels - the angle of the chest, the persence of wheel wells on top of the shoulders - but one thing that's definitely better here than it was before is the paint. Back then, you had to get the Takara release if you wanted anything more than big blocks of solid color, but this modern version of her has the appropriate stripes she's meant to - and no giant clunky Autobot symbol to cover them up! We'd be remiss, however, if we didn't mention the head. The shape of it is dead-on, with the wide, angled sides, the exposed face, and the pointy yellow crest on the forehead, but it looks larger on the body than you'd expect. It's likely because the chest on the RiD robot was physically wider than this one can be, and if they'd made the head proportional to that, it would have gotten lost between her giant shoulders. Strongarm moves at the knees, thighs, hips, waist, wrists, elbows, biceps, shoulders, and head. Although she was a cadet on the cartoon, designer Mark Maher said he likes to imagine she's been promoted to a full officer now thanks to all the craziness she dealt with in the run of the cartoon. How sweet! Her only accessory is a simple black blaster, which is theoretically compatible with the blast effects, but at some point you have to question the value of that feature when none of these toys ever come with any. Like, Iron Man toys have hands compatible with repulsor blasts, but they also come with repulsor blasts so we know there's a point to it; what's the value in designing Transformers weapons that work with something and then not giving customers access to that something? Strongarm is a retool of Elita-1 and Minerva, though the entire upper torso is new. The kibble on the shoulders has been redesigned to be attached to the arms rather than the car's hood, but if you've played with either of those other figures, you already know how to convert her. Just remember when you're going back to robot mode that the car's doors can swing around to be little wings, like the original cartoon model had - since they're not out when you buy the toy, you might never realize they're there if you just assume you already know how to work her. Strongarm's altmode is some sort of police SUV, as evidenced by the light bar on the roof. That and all the car's windows are molded from smoky translucent plastic, which honestly isn't a great choice: the windows end up looking solid anyway, and the underlying plastic is so dark that the tinted red and blue lights on the bar end up being too dark as well; they might as well have been painted the colors they're supposed to be. It would certainly look better. I didn't know Strongarm was a retool when I grabbed her: she was just something new on the shelf at Walmart, and a character I'd been waiting for for years, so I just piked her up right away. I was a little disappointed to see this mold being used again, but the changes that have been made make this easily the best use of it so far. -- 01/09/24