Elita-1, a female Transformer. Whenever I think of Elita-1 it reminds me of something I saw on a Wikipedia page on how Michael Bay wanted to incorporate the idea of female Transformers into the first Transformers movie but apparently the thought of explaining the existence of female alien robots as well as coming up of a good way of depicting gender with robots seemed too complicated and hard to explain so he ended up not using them, and even though female Transformers would eventually be used in the sequel, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen they weren’t actually that prevalent in the movie. All we really saw of them was maybe 30 seconds in the chase scene in China and again at the end when we see one of them get blasted in the final battle.

Like I said, they didn’t get that much screen time. And other than the fact that they use women holograms instead of men we don’t really have any clear gender definition here.

I guess Michael Bay didn’t want to do what they did in the cartoon and that is just give them a feminine color scheme like pink and design and make their robot forms more feminine looking by giving them boobs and maybe make it look like they’re wearing the equivalent of robot/alien makeup. It worked in the ’80s and did a better job than establishing gender than Challenge of the Gobots did, where they just made them all look androgynous and maybe gave them feminine sounding voices and used the her/she pronouns, and in the case of Crasher, one of the main villains they gave her a pink face and made it look like she was wearing lipstick.

Watching this as an adult I can’t help but be reminded of Connie, the super butch lesbian on Brickleberry.

I feel the existence of female Transformers stemmed from like a focus group screening or maybe of the writers’ kids or somebody asked a bunch of dumb questions like “Are their girl Transformers?” or “Where do baby Transformers come from?” and somebody heard these questions and thought “Looks like we have to create female Transformers now to explain things.”

In the original cartoon Elita-1’s backstory is this. Before the war broke she was originally known as Ariel and was the girlfriend of Orion Pax, the robot who would become Optimus Prime. When the Decepticons started the war, Ariel was rebuilt by Alpha Trion into Elita-1 while Orion Pax became Optimus Prime. During the Autobot/Decepticon war Elita-1 is thought to have been killed in a Decepticon attack and thus is not on the Ark when Optimus and the other Autobots leave Cybertron in search of more Energon. Using the fact that everybody thinks she’s dead, Elita-1 and several other female Autobots continue the war on Cybertron by waging a guerilla war against Shockwave and his forces.

While Elita-1 has been remade and made appearances in other Transformers series she unfortunately does not make any appearances in the Prime Wars trilogy outside of toy-form and while she is featured in the War for Cyberton trilogy it looks like her alt-mode is more reminiscing of her original form.

Originally, I didn’t intend to buy Elita-1, at first I had my heart set on picking up a Power of the Primes Starscream. However when I realized that Elita-1 was basically just a modified version of Power of the Primes Starscream and when I learned that the Combiner Wars line had a larger, Leader Class Starscream which at the same time I found a really good deal on one, I decided to buy Combiner Wars Starscream and Power of the Primes Elita-1 so that I would have some variety in my collection.

When I was a kid I had a Generation 2 Ramjet which was just a recolored version of Starscream because Jets in Transformers are like the ninjas in Mortal Kombat where they’re just recolored versions of each other. Ramjet, was one of the first Transformers I got and I remember I was so excited to get it. The toys already seemed cool because they were robots that turned into vehicles not to mention the commercials for them made them seem even cooler with their ’90s CGI.

It looks like shit by today’s standards, but to a sci fi nerd living in 1993 it was freaking awesome.

Anyway, when I got my Ramjet I found him to be quite disappointing. Based on how he looked and what I saw on the cartoon and commercial I had an idea of how Ramjet would transform. When I got him and looked at the instructions for him I was completely off. Even though it was my first Transformers, never in my mind would I have pictured a Ramjet to be “partsformer”, which meant you had to pull pieces off of him and attach them in other ways as part of his transformation. On top of that two of the pieces you pulled off and reattached were these little caps that were supposed to be his fists, and while you did use them in robot mode you didn’t use them in jet mode, you just put them aside which I was a bit annoyed with when I played with him because I always had to make sure I kept track of those pieces I had to put aside.

Honestly, after opening Elita-1 and giving it a good look I felt some regret buying her. There were just too many things about her that bugged me. While the current design of Elita-1 did show that Hasbro had made significant improvements over the designs they used in the Generation 1 and Generation 2 toylines, there were still a few flaws I just couldn’t overlook. One big thing that really bugged me about Elita-1 is that a lot of the details on her were done with stickers instead of using paint or different colored plastics. The stickers to me just made it so cheap and low quality. Not to mention stickers are just so easy to ruin, or peel off.

Before I get further into Elita-1 I do want to mention that the whole gimmick of the Power of the Primes toylines was that the Deluxe and Voyager class figures were combiners, all you needed was a Voyager class figure to be the torso and head and any 4 Deluxe class figures to be the limbs and you could combine them to create your very own Voltron/Megazord mashup. A clever tactic on Hasbro’s part to get kids into dropping more money to buy figures but I feel just makes it a bit weird. In previous Transformers series, Combiner teams had a common theme amongst them which made combining them make more sense, and in the case of the Constructicons they also had a common color scheme so they fit well with each other. Being able to throw any random figures together to make your own combiner it feels like your piecing together your own Frankenstein’s Monster.

Here’s Elita-1 in the box with all her accessories. You got the enigma, her guns which look more like tonfas and her Prime Armor which can either be pinned to her shoulders as armor or used as feet when she’s in her combiner form as Elita-Infin1te.

Here’s a closeup of the front graphic of Elita-1. You can see what I was talking about earlier about making female Transformers easily identifiable by giving them more feminine features. It does bug me that the designers usually give the female Transformers these helmets/heads that just seem a bit oversized, although I’m guessing the idea is to create the robotic equivalent of a big poofy hairstyle

The back of the box is pretty standard. You got Elita-1 in both robot and jet mode, as well as showcasing all the different accessories.

The little blurb about Elita-1.

How will the resourceful and devoted AUTOBOT warrior wield the POWER OF THE PRIMES?

I’ve said this before but I really miss the time when I was a kid when toy companies would put way more effort into the packaging of toys, I used to love it when they would write some crazy backstory on the back or just cram a bunch of made up facts and stats on the back. I used to spend so much time at toy stores just reading the backs of toys just to learn the backstories. I get it, writing a detailed backstory or bullshitting fake facts and stats takes time and money, not to mention having to translate that text and reprint it in different languages for different markets gets expensive. On top of that too I’m pretty sure some toy executives probably thought “what’s the point kids aren’t going to read the box they’re just going to rip it apart for what’s inside.” It’s just a sad reality of the times we live in and how much kids have changed over the years.

One side of the box. It’s a bit obvious that this version of Elita-1 has a different torso than the version on the front. Although the reason why they are different is because this is Elita-1 in her Elita-Infin1te configuration which has the fuselage from her jet mode as her chest. This would have made more sense if they used a wider shot of Elita-1 with some of the other Transformers mounted onto her.

Other side of the box showcasing the figure with the feet armor on.

The accessories outside of the box. You got the gun/tonfa things, feet/shoulder armor and the Autobot Enigma

Here’s Elita-1 out of the box. Like I said earlier, a big thing that really disappointed me with this was the use of stickers for most of the details. The Autobot icons on the shoulders I guess make sense and would have been easier than trying to paint them on but the stickers on the chest plate and gauntlets look so bad and honestly I feel a bit unnecessary because those details are too subtle to notice.

The Prime Armor mounted on the shoulders. The color scheme on this bugs me. The black on red just clashes too much. According to tfwiki.net stock photos of Elita-1 had her with unpainted, peach-colored plastic which would have fit her color scheme better.

The feet have a little slot where you can stick the enigma so you can keep everything together. So that’s a plus right there.

You can also stick her guns into the armor to turn them into shoulder cannons. I feel the guns should have been redesigned to make them more intimidating, but at least Hasbro came up with a way to keep all the pieces together.

A shot of Elita-1’s arm without the armor on. Note the painted white detail on the gauntlet. It still bugs me that they had to use stickers on her, while something like this was painted on.

One of the stickers on Elita-1’s leg with more bubbling on it. I’m wondering if all the Elita-1s are like this or if I just get a bad 1.

Here’s Elita-1 in her jet mode. Like I said earlier I really like how Hasbro put in the thought to redesign the jets so that they can be transformed without pulling any pieces off and rearranging them, just like how they do it in the cartoon.

More stickers on Elita-1’s back. While I do applaud the detail they put, I really wish they didn’t use such a ginormous sticker here. This thing was fresh out of the box when I took these photos and Transformed like twice just so I can get the hang of it and she’s already showing signs of bubbling, peeling, and other wear. This is why I really wish went another route when adding the details on Elita-1.

I really like how they included landing gear on her. It’s a small detail that I’m sure most kids wouldn’t notice. Also, Elita’s name written on a sticker, a nice touch but, however once again I’m disappointed it’s a sticker and not painted on. I mean, my Power of the Primes Jazz has most of his details painted on he’s only a Deluxe class, Elita-1 is a Voyager class. You would think because Elita’s a Voyager class and bigger than Jazz they’d do the same to her.

The detail on 1 of Elita-1’s tailfins. If they could paint this on why couldn’t they paint more details on?

In jet mode the Prime Armor/Feet can be mounted to the wings like they’re some sort of extra weapon pods or fuel tanks just like on a real fighter jet. Like robot mode, the black pieces just look so out of place on her. Really wish they kept them peach-colored to maintain the color consistency.

That’s basically it for Elita-1. Sorry there’s not that much I can tell you about her but honestly, I really don’t have that much to say about her.

Anyway, thanks for checking this out and don’t forget to check back later for more.