Victorion team-members comic art

I may have missed the team name before, but the six female Autobots making up Victorion are called the Torchbearers.

The comic art of all six have been released, and they are still green and red, but not as brightly painful to look at as the pre-production toys did at SDCC.



I feel that most of the names are a bit weak (uncreative), or awkward to say... almost like it was the final thing to do, and it was a last minute rush job that was thought up while submitting the forms to the trademark office.

For some reason I have trouble with Rust Dust's name. I keep thinking it's Rush Dash. Or Rash Dust.

The original comic scans that revealed Victorion also had a much lighter shades of the colours too and it worked better than the toys on display at SDCC.

Wonder if the headsculpts are going to look as femine on the toys as that artwork. Annoys me when they do femmebots as just recolours of male characters - especially since it doesn't happen that often the other way round - bit of a double standard and a bit patriarchal in thinking

Cybertron Override would be the exception to the rule I guess. Maybe Japanese Airazor too.

The Torchbearers?

Is that because they are an all female team? That's just awful. Agreed on the names. Hopefully the bios will justify the names a bit more...

Also, I hate those ebay ads at the top of TFW. I keep clicking it thinking it will take me to the picture gallery....

Agree with the names sounding tacked on at the last minute. They do not need girly sounding names, but some that roll off the tongue would have been nice.

Colour scheme is still pretty awful, I want to support this combiner but it keeps getting harder and harder.

Pyra Magna's a rather morbid name, considering that "Pyra" is Latin for a freaking funeral pyre! :eek: So her name means "Pyre Great"*... so she's really good at cremating?! :confused: Sounds like a name for suited for a Decepticon.

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*Yeah, the word order's wrong. It should be "Magna Pyra," same as with "Magna Carta." Latin adjectives come after a noun if there's a verb in the sentence, e.g. "pyra magna est" ('the pyre is great').

Man, Sarah PD's art is really nice.

The names sound like 80% of transformers names already in existence, but I agree Rust Dust is probably the weakest. And I thought they were supposed to be teal and red, not green? Would probably clash too much though.

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Originally Posted by BigTransformerTrev

Wonder if the headsculpts are going to look as femine on the toys as that artwork. Annoys me when they do femmebots as just recolours of male characters - especially since it doesn't happen that often the other way round - bit of a double standard and a bit patriarchal in thinking

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It probably doesn't happen that often because male tf characters have far outnumbered female tf characters for the past thirty years, and even less of those girls actually get toys. ;)

I love ultra-feminine and curvy girl robots, but I don't see anything wrong with female characters being repaints of male characters - especially when the toys don't have any typically masculine identifiers in the first place. They're just robots.

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Originally Posted by tinyJazz

I love ultra-feminine and curvy girl robots, but I don't see anything wrong with female characters being repaints of male characters - especially when the toys don't have any typically masculine identifiers in the first place. They're just robots.

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I love my femmebots like that as well (feminine, curvy etc though I do think Strika is awesome!). As for recolours from male bots I don't mind them but as stated earlier I feel they should have at least a female touch like a new headsculpt. Otherwise why bother stating it's a femmebot if the toy is not in some small way going to acknowledge it

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Originally Posted by BigTransformerTrev

I love my femmebots like that as well (feminine, curvy etc though I do think Strika is awesome!). As for recolours from male bots I don't mind them but as stated earlier I feel they should have at least a female touch like a new headsculpt. Otherwise why bother stating it's a femmebot if the toy is not in some small way going to acknowledge it

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Sure it's nice, but I don't see it as a requirement. And females don't have to look stereotypically feminine, either. What about androgynous women? Tomboys? Does Strika's toy "acknowledge" she's a female? Does Whirl's toy "acknowledge" he's male? Why bother stating Whirl is male if he doesn't look like it?
If you don't need male identifiers for male robots, then you don't need female identifiers for female robots. Unless you think male is "default" and female is "other".

We've already seen the head sculpts for the toys. Apart from Rust Dust , they're all new anyway.

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Originally Posted by tinyJazz

What about androgynous women? Tomboys? Does Strika's toy "acknowledge" she's a female?

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No but she was a new character and female from the start. Not a recolour of a male robot. As I said, I have the Universe version of the toy and really like her. My main problem with my TFSS Slipstream is she really just looks like a recoloured TFPrime Starscream - a new headsculpt would have gone a long way to furthering my enjoyment of the figure (that I paid a LOT for) and made her look like at least a female clone of Starscream like she was portrayed in Animated.

I'm not saying it has to happen (female touches/headsculpts for female toys), just I think it's a nice touch and something I prefer with my toys. Not trying to argue that it should be a hard and fast rule. I guess it's just I have so few femmebot toys I like them to stand out as female a bit and it adds some diversity to the figures in my collection rather than them all looking the same. Thats all I'm saying really.

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Originally Posted by tinyJazz

If you don't need male identifiers for male robots, then you don't need female identifiers for female robots. Unless you think male is "default" and female is "other".

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No I don't think like that, and I'm not sure I like the implication. I don't think liking my femmebot toys to have at least a vaguely female face (sometimes - again - I love Strika) makes me sexist or something. It just means I like variety in the look of my toys and it's a personal proclivity. I'm not sure how we got here from me simply saying that I hope the headsculpts on the new toys resemble the artwork that the original link in this thread was about.

My two cents. Don't like the artwork very much, sure it's better then I could do but still don't like it, though I do understand they are a work in progress (I hope).
Also if we're going to have giant humanoid robots and they are to have humanoid genders why shouldn't they have humanoid bodies.
In other words masculine AND feminine bodies, not just a bunch of dudes that some of them happen to be women when they talk.
Pretty sure when people voted for a female combiner they weren't thinking of a bunch of male molds made female because of "girl" colours and heads :rolleyes:

Yep exactly. And if all robots with "girl" colours were female, then what of the Technobots and Seacons? On the topic of colour, I don't really see anything particularly feminine with green/red. Just seems like a silly colour combination, with the two being natural opposites on the colour wheel which makes it difficult to stare at for too long. It also potentially confuses the heck out of fans that are colourblind into thinking "why is this Autobot combiner painted in Decepticon blues/purples?!"

Their headsculpts (at least on the art), isn't exclusively female - just looks like a group of young Cybertronians to me. Whether male or female, Victorion's combiner head is as appealing as Beast Wars Neo Saberback's... don't really see the need to give him/her a native American Indian chief's headdress...

Since all the members are girls, does this make Victorion female as well? The combiner name sounds quite male - perhaps it should be changed to Victoria-ion.

Why don't we call the 'male' TFs bro-bots, or he-bots? Why is it only the 'female' ones that get lumped with 'femme-bots'? (which sounds like some kind of pleasure device)

Femme is also a lesbian identity. So it really should be fembot, unless the fembot you're talking about is also a femme-bot ;) or you're speaking French.

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Originally Posted by BigTransformerTrev

No but she was a new character and female from the start. Not a recolour of a male robot. As I said, I have the Universe version of the toy and really like her. My main problem with my TFSS Slipstream is she really just looks like a recoloured TFPrime Starscream - a new headsculpt would have gone a long way to furthering my enjoyment of the figure (that I paid a LOT for) and made her look like at least a female clone of Starscream like she was portrayed in Animated.

I'm not saying it has to happen (female touches/headsculpts for female toys), just I think it's a nice touch and something I prefer with my toys. Not trying to argue that it should be a hard and fast rule. I guess it's just I have so few femmebot toys I like them to stand out as female a bit and it adds some diversity to the figures in my collection rather than them all looking the same. Thats all I'm saying really.

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Uh, yes? I agree. I really think we're on the same page here. It's nice to have curvy, feminine female robots, but you can also have female robots that don't look stereotypically feminine. There are plenty of male tfs that can pass as female characters if repainted. I'm saying all varieties of ladybot are fine and good, and I'm not demanding privileging one over the other. And obviously, I'm not here to police your collection, buy whatever you like :p

Although I mustn't have been clear on the point I was trying to make about comparing Strika and Whirl. The toys don't appear immediately as "this is a girl character" or "this is a boy character", only because you're told by the accompanying fiction what their gender is.

I'm sorry you bought funpub's slipstream and I hope you can get Takara's Slipstream later. :o I have no real love for funpub.

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No I don't think like that, and I'm not sure I like the implication. I don't think liking my femmebot toys to have at least a vaguely female face (sometimes - again - I love Strika) makes me sexist or something. It just means I like variety in the look of my toys and it's a personal proclivity. I'm not sure how we got here from me simply saying that I hope the headsculpts on the new toys resemble the artwork that the original link in this thread was about.

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Whoa, Trev, I'm not accusing you of anything, sorry if it came across that way. Maybe you should re read my comment? :/ it's just an example of how some people think.

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Originally Posted by tinyJazz

Femme is also a lesbian identity. So it really should be fembot, unless the fembot you're talking about is also a femme-bot ;) or you're speaking French.



Uh, yes? I agree. I really think we're on the same page here. It's nice to have curvy, feminine female robots, but you can also have female robots that don't look stereotypically feminine. There are plenty of male tfs that can pass as female characters if repainted. I'm saying all varieties of ladybot are fine and good, and I'm not demanding privileging one over the other. And obviously, I'm not here to police your collection, buy whatever you like :p

Although I mustn't have been clear on the point I was trying to make about comparing Strika and Whirl. The toys don't appear immediately as "this is a girl character" or "this is a boy character", only because you're told by the accompanying fiction what their gender is.

I'm sorry you bought funpub's slipstream and I hope you can get Takara's Slipstream later. :o I have no real love for funpub.


Whoa, Trev, I'm not accusing you of anything, sorry if it came across that way. Maybe you should re read my comment? :/ it's just an example of how some people think.

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All good - glad we got is sorted and thank you for clarifying :). I thought we were on the same page too so was kinda at a loss to why the conversation seemed to be heading where it was.

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Although I mustn't have been clear on the point I was trying to make about comparing Strika and Whirl. The toys don't appear immediately as "this is a girl character" or "this is a boy character", only because you're told by the accompanying fiction what their gender is.

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I've seen quite a few new TF comic book readers call MTMTE Whirl a she - presumably primarily due to Whirl's holomatter avatar, yet very few do the same with Ultra Magnus. Maybe it's prexisting canon with Robert Stack's voice? Ambius' mo? That it's based on a friend and preexisting character? Or that Whirl's non standard body - all thin and angles and no hand or face make it easier to see Whirl as not-male?

Amazon.ca has stock photos of the newly toned-down Victorion (compared to the original colours in this gallery):

http://i.imgur.com/CU1fwT7.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/QKrtbLA.jpg

They've given her the same coloured reading glasses as masterpiece Hot Rod:
http://i.imgur.com/mT4hZXr.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/BDDsiCQ.jpg

I actually liked the stronger colours better

I kind of agree. The green was the better of the two colours in the old bright/eye-burning colour scheme, so I would have preferred that the red was softened instead of the green. Now it looks (custom) faded.

Hmmm I have a feeling the in-hand colours will be somewhere in between what we saw then and this processed image

That shade of green is almost prototype teal.

I'm wavering, I was a firm no but the fence is getting closer. I agree that the actual colours might be more like a halfway point between the early photos and what is presented here.

shame about the elbow joints in the combined mode:rolleyes::cool:

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Originally Posted by UltraMarginal

I'm wavering, I was a firm no but the fence is getting closer. I agree that the actual colours might be more like a halfway point between the early photos and what is presented here.

shame about the elbow joints in the combined mode:rolleyes::cool:

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no mate it's retro styled CW arms. just like how the Victorion combiner was back in the 80s.

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Originally Posted by griffin

I kind of agree. The green was the better of the two colours in the old bright/eye-burning colour scheme, so I would have preferred that the red was softened instead of the green. Now it looks (custom) faded.

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It looks better now that they've desaturated at least one of the colours, I guess they wanted to keep the more "powerful" and emotive red rather than wash it out to a coral.
Although if they wanted to keep the eye-burners, I think it would look fine if they'd broken it up with blocks of white or black.

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Originally Posted by UltraMarginal

I'm wavering, I was a firm no but the fence is getting closer. I agree that the actual colours might be more like a halfway point between the early photos and what is presented here.

shame about the elbow joints in the combined mode:rolleyes::cool:

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I didn't even notice until you pointed it out, yikes! :p

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Originally Posted by BigTransformerTrev

I actually liked the stronger colours better

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As much as I hate saying it I agree.

I think they've washed the green out too much against the solid "red".

Will be curious to see what the in hand colour actually is.
My daughter wants her regardless.

I wonder if Hasbro will promote her as just another combiner or try and play the girl market with a "now you can have your own girl Transformer too!"... I'm guessing they'll market to boys but it would be brave, bold and interesting if they were to test the marketing amongst girls.

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Originally Posted by Bladestorm

As much as I hate saying it I agree.

I think they've washed the green out too much against the solid "red".

Will be curious to see what the in hand colour actually is.
My daughter wants her regardless.

I wonder if Hasbro will promote her as just another combiner or try and play the girl market with a "now you can have your own girl Transformer too!"... I'm guessing they'll market to boys but it would be brave, bold and interesting if they were to test the marketing amongst girls.

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I think I saw a Hasbro ad somewhere which had in big bold letters 'First Female Combiner Ever!' so they could possibly try specific marketing to girls with this.

I think since this is a fanbuilt combiner it just shows that the TF fans appreciate some gender-diversity with their toys :)

I don't like either variations of the colours we have seen, there's just too much contrast and too much use of each colour, I feel like it really needs more neutral colours to break it up. As it is now the red seems to eat up all the sculpt details.

Well they softened the teal look but but the red... I mean how much of this has been adjusted in photoshop?

I reckon they need an ink wash to bring the details out.

I don't think it was the tone of the colours that was the issue, it was more the lack of breakup between the colours that made them look so bleary. Even with all that teal toned down into a pastel, they still don't look great. They desperately need to more breakup between their parts. Look at the nightbird head chick, there's still so much unbroken blocks of red in there it's terrible.

Only reason I'd buy these toys was if I was good enough at repainting themself or able to afford someone like Cheetimus to do it for me.

Sorry to be negative.