When it comes to MP Arcee, people are either in the "love" or "hate" categories, with most of the hate being directed at one defining characteristic of the toy - the sagging bust line. Now, I guess it shouldn't surprise me, as this bust line isn't exactly screen accurate, and apparently there's a large number of collectors who would sacrifice articulation for the sake of "looking right".
Over the past few years, the community has developed some solutions to this problem, which generally involved replacing the robot chest piece, which on the official toy is kind of a pain in the ass. Then there's the colour matching and other aesthetically related items. Well, Rose & Toys has heard our collective cry of laziness and took it upon itself to make a Knockoff that aims to solve this problem once and for all.
Presenting the RT-01 Robot Rose.
So the box art kind of sets the tone about what to expect, which is effectively a Knockoff of the MP Arcee figure with some extra goodies.
Now the face plates are different, though I can't remember if that's because they're new or because of the usual QC quibbles of Knockoff products. Otherwise, the rest of the kit is there as the official set, which includes three guns, blast effects, holster, and... vehicular tool of doom. The plastic on my tray was sturdy enough to keep the contents inside the clam shell, but not so much to actually hold the halves of the shell in place.
The new additions are the two chest pieces, which I will go into a bit more in depth later. There's two flavours - the standard G1 cartoon style, and of course there's the Playboy Mansion flavour because if you're going to do a chest piece, go big or go home. Sadly, there's not rubber or silicone to gleefully grope as I write this up.
Without droning on too long, the figure side of this release generally does what it's supposed to - turn from a Cybertronian vehicle into a robot form. It holds together fairly well, but as you start handling the thing you're going to start to realize things are off. Paint apps are messy, some parts come off easier, and other typical things you expect from a Knockoff.
So if you hadn't quite grasped the fact this was a Knockoff by handling the vehicle mode, the transformation into robot mode will tip you off. Not that it's any different from the official toy, but rather, the instruction manual only gets your maybe 3/4 of the way, and that's only if you've done it before because the quality of the document itself kind of sucks.
As I mentioned above, QC issues aside, the only real difference between the official and this release is the faces. The official Takara one is on top, and the Rose & Toys version is on the bottom.
The actual figure pretty much behaves the way the official toys does, and even has the functional visor and die cast feet. Articulation is the same, albeit featuring parts that have rougher looking finishes and rough paint finishes. About the only thing the official toy can do that this one cannot is hold its weapons, which is weird....
... or maybe it's not so weird, given that this is what a hand looks like.
With that out of the way, lets get to the real reason you bought this - the Chest plates. So this version of the figure is tooled so that the chest piece is just tabbed in, and not held by a pin. This way, they can be swapped out and changed with relative ease (relative, because QC is still not great). Both chest pieces are the same size and will cover up to the collar area. This certainly looks better and more natural, at the expensive of reducing the range of shoulder motion you get. Effectively, you end up blocking the joint that allows you to have the arm cross the chest.
I'll let you guess which chest plate I stuck with.
Ultimately, RT-01 provides a much nicer looking MP Arcee alterative, but doesn't quite deliver the experience of owning and playing with a well made Transformer toy due to the various issues. I know it's a Knockoff and it costs less than retail, at the same time there are people who swear by Knockoffs as being just as good as the real thing. Maybe there are in some instances - this is definitely not one of them.
But if you need an Arcee to look all sexy in your collection, we I think this is your primary choice.
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