Here’s our first look at the toy version of Victorion, the first all-female Transformers combiner. Fans voted on her name, gender, modes… colour scheme. Maybe this fan voting thing isn’t so great after all.
Now before we criticise, let’s get a good look at this close-knit group of female robots. Victorion is six separate entities that form into one, after all.
First we have Jumpstream, a Stunticon repaint with a slightly more pronounced chestpiece and very pronounced lipstick. With its odd, wobbling back-and-forth legs, this is my least favourite Combiner Wars series cars. Note the blue and silver accessories, which do not clash with the red and teal at all.
Dustup I like. She’s another Stunticon retooling, but that face is evocative of one of the earliest female robots from the cartoon series, Nightbird.
Or maybe I’m just reading too much into it and they just chopped the ears off of Wheeljack.
Then we’ve got Stormclash and Skyburst, who I am going to guess are sisters of some sort, because there has to be some justification for minor retools of an existing mould.
How many helicopters does that make for the Combiner Wars line? All of the helicopters? Yes.
Red Dust here is a Legends-class figure that forms Victorion’s chest shield. She’s a repaint of sadness.
And finally we have Pyra Manga, that core of the group. She’s a retooling of Hot Spot, leader of the Protectobots.
These red and teal robots combine to form the mighty Victorion, the most colour-coordinated Transformers combiner of all-time!
It really hurts to look at her, those colours. I love the mechanic of putting together all the smaller weapons into a bigger one, but the giant She-Ra-looking sword clashes even further.
Oh well, it could be worse. They could have done her up in Generation 2 colours.
Nah, I take that back. Generation 2 colours are awesome, and I might like the upcoming Generation 2 Stunticons better than the first release.
For those of you unfamiliar, Generation 2 denotes Hasbro’s first attempt to resurrect the toy line. Launched in 1993, some two years since anyone cared, the Generation 2 toys started off with wonderfully ghastly recolors of Generation 1 toys before moving on to feature unique molds. Its where my green, blue and red Dinobots and bright yellow Devastator come from, and it’s the reason Hasbro is releasing G2 recolor sets of Combiner Wars Menasor and Superion.
So the Combiner Wars line comes down to a choice between horrible fan-chosen colours and horrible nostalgia-fuelled colours, but there are still more combiner teams left to revisit. What about the Technobots, who combine into Computron?
Hi there, Scattershot.
All of these fresh reveals and new images come courtesy of Hasbro’s presence at Comic-Con 2015, where they also showed off Platinum reissues of Blaster and Perceptor, the three best seeker jets (Ramjet, Thrust and Dirge) and Decepticon dinosaur city Trypticon.
In closing, Victorion may have high heels, but kudos to Hasbro for not falling for the old women are more fashionable than men stereotype, I guess.
Comments
43 responses to “Transformers First All-Female Combiner Team Is All The Fans’ Fault”
Ok, I’m going to piss off some people in regards to these characters again.
How can a robot have a gender?
Cybertronian, not a robot (I don’t know)
The Fembots have built-in 3D printers, and the Himbots supply half the code necessary to run them. You can Google the rest (safe-search off).
How do aliens in mass effect have genders? How do pokemon have genders? Lets question all made up species having genders.
It’s kinda understandable for biological species to have gender though. The sole purpose of gender is to increase genetic variation for reproduction, but Transformers don’t need variation to reproduce, they just build a new robot and give it life from Vector Sigma/Allspark/Creation Matrix.
Actually gender doesnt refer to biological dimorphism. What you are refering to is Sex. Gender is the state of being male or female (typically used with reference to social and cultural differences). So it is entirely possible for a robot to have a gender.
Gender has referred to biological sex (among other things) since at least the 1300s, it’s only since the feminist movement adopted the term in the 70s and 80s that it took on a psychological meaning. It’s not wrong to refer to biological sex as gender, though it’s commonly referred to as “biological gender” these days for clarity. I figured the context was clear enough from Neo Kaiser’s original post but for your sake, consider anywhere I’ve said gender in this thread to mean biological gender.
In this case the distinction is mostly irrelevant. Psychological gender is a side effect of biological gender, in a species with no biological gender there would be no social or cultural pressures to define gender identity differences.
Those things are natural. Pokemon are like animals and the aliens in mass effect are like humans. Transformers are robots. Robots don’t have genders.
Yet here they are with genders.
Is this some gamergate BS? It’s a fictional show… it can have what ever it’s creators want… get over it.
At least once, and it’s probably been retconned since then, but it was confirmed in some canon that transformers don’t have genders at all.
Then why even say ‘all female’ transformers? It would be just fine to say designed by women.
Heck if I know, man.
I mean they probably do have genders again.
Fuck, I don’t know. I don’t care. Red and teal is a bit much.
Only one I ever remembered was Arcee waaaay back from Generation 1 to HeadMaster days…
And then they did put in females during the Beast Wars series as well. So… they were all retconned? =O
Because, while technically androgynous, (most of) the Transformers identify as males, and for all intents and purposes are males.
http://tfwiki.net/wiki/List_of_female_Transformers
except it’s the opposite – it’s firmly established in canon time and time again that, yes, some transformers are male and others are female since the very first Marvel run; there’s also Elita One (Optimus’ implied lover) in the US G1 cartoon also.
It’s basically just looking at Transformers in the context of the real world.
Most Transformers are designed with more masculine features, e.g. big, blocky; but some have more feminine designs.
Plus, ‘male’ Transformers sound male because they’re voiced by males.
Plus I’m assuming that when they’re referenced with pronouns, he/she is usually used both in real world and within the Transformers’ universe. But don’t hold me on that.
it was the 80’s in Japan – everyone’s points are invalid.
Even if they are genderless: if they can choose their alt form at will based on whatever takes their fancy – plus they are somewhat enamored with cultures they encounter and absorb, why is it such a stretch to imagine they could also choose their robot form and have it be feminine shaped?
That’s the thing, if gender doesn’t exist than ‘feminine’ forms don’t either. It’s just a form they think, whether it be for appearance or practibility.
Now you’re heading down the rabbit hole of why they are bipedal humanoids at all, let alone gendered, and the only in-universe reason that makes any sense with robots is either their creators were or they saw a shape they liked and copied it. The crappy movies say they also acquire personality traits from cultures too, so all you’re left with is they saw a humanoid female they liked and copied form only (while remaining gender neutral) or both form and identity… or a Cybertronian wizard did it (Jhiaxus?). Of course the real answer is $$$$$.
Posted from another comment but you seem like you need the answer too and this will ping you.
Gender is the state of being male or female (typically used with reference to social and cultural differences). So it is entirely possible for a robot to have a gender.
Robots are built, they’re not born. Cyborgs yes.
I don’t get what the big deal is. Looks fine to me.
Menasor & Superion were always better than Devastator imo. I might be snapping them up in the near future
All of those are varying levels of shit. It just so happens that Victorion is the worst one. That new Devastator is how you do combiners
ugghhhhb
Not really the fans fault when all the options were pre-decided and horrible.
Red and teal? Seriously?
what an absolutely heinous pair of colours lol
When I was doing a design course I’m pretty sure this is close to some of the specific colour pairings which we were taught to actively avoid at all costs because of how hideously they clash for anyone without classic red/green colourblindness!
I’m not surprised. Everytime I’ve seen this colour combination it has been mocked. It honestly hurts my eyes.
Yeah. Forget any other considerations, that’s the one thing that has me crying, “OH GOD MY EYES,” when looking at the pictures.
At least it wasn’t pink, I guess.
I am looking forward to the day when two of them like the same guy…
Well as I am for equality… I’m against this.
An all female combiner is not promoting gender equality.
The sword colour is the worst part about it, but I don’t mind the red and teal, and as much as it sucks that the helicopter twins are, well, twins I guess they need to make the feet match so it can stand easily. Most kids (I assume still their largest audience monetarily) won’t even care; it’s a bad-ass robot with a sword, nothing else matters.
Looking at the combined model, it appears the feet are separate pieces attached to the helicopter models. In which case they could have been any shape at all, as long as they were the same length and with a slot for attaching for the feet.
Hmm, if that’s the case that does kinda suck, but I still don’t think it’s that bad considering I imagine most people would leave it in it’s combined mode (presumably the reason people buy these versions, can’t say from personal experience, I was always a Bionicles and Lego sort of kid).
Just like some GoBots…Transformers having female robots is all good with me, imho, they’re pretty cool <3
I wonder if they will be DLC for the new Transformers game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxoaWYmf8lY
Yes robots can have a gender – sex and gender are different, remember – and the gender presentations are arguably female here. But boo for the autobots! Where are the decepticon ones?
The original combiner was Devastator and THAT was the most colour coordinated combiner ever, all in green and purple.
Her sword is pretty good.
The Quintessons built the male Autobots for peasant labour; the Decepticons for war; and the female Autobots for… cleaning and entertainment.
Oh, does that mean robots can have sex too?
I can see why the Transformers fandom is so filled with homosexual fan arts