Perfect Effect PE-DX03 Warden - Pictorial Review

March 2014 has been a killer month for me. Bought around 10 Henkei/United figures to complete my mold collection, few 3rd Party figures, and continuing my quest to complete Botcon 2007 Boxset, Bugbite, and Thundercracker. Now, only Dirge and Thrust to go!

On top of all that, an unexpected figure arrived at a local shop here where I almost cried due to the timing, LOL. Thus, I manage to burn a bigger hole in my wallet with Perfect Effect's PE-DX03 Warden, a homage to IDW Fortress Maximus.

Pic Credit : TFWiki

Fortress Maximus is no stranger in the Transformers universe. After his debut in G1's The Rebirth, Fortress Maximus became a regular in the franchise as himself, an iteration of himself or as characters having the same design as he does (Grand Maximus, Brave Maximus).

Fortress Maximus has a lot of backstories, depending on which continuity you're referring to. But for this review, I'll be taking IDW G1 continuity as my reference as Warden clearly homages that design.

Came to existence during the hard period of war, Fortress Maximus was portrayed differently in this continuity, well-known for his mass-killing of Decepticons, as opposed to a weary Autobots with pacifist nature that had seen too many battle.

Running a tight ship, Fortress Maximus is the warden (hence the name) that's in charge of Garrus-9, a penitentiary for both Autobots and Decepticons. And that itself make him a target by a lot of the inmates and the worst happened when the Decepticon forces lead by Overlord run down the prison and Fortress Maximus was almost rip to shred first by Overlord and then the angry prisoners. And it didn't end there, until Fortress Maximus was rescued by the Wreckers.

Pic Credit : TFWiki

Unlike in G1 cartoon where Fortress Maximus is a big robot in which Spike Witwicky form the head of Cerebros who in turn, becomes Fortress Maximus's head, IDW Fortress Maximus is a normal size robot that might just tower few others. This actually (if I'm not mistaken) roughly follows Marvel Comics G1 continuity where Fortress Maximus is a normal size robot (roughly the same as his other Headmasters group).

However, Fortress Maximus underwent a big reconstruction process to alter his size, making him twice the size of an average Transformers. With this increase in size, Fortress Maximus needed a new head to bridge the gap between his and Galen's (his Headmaster before Spike) size. And this is where Cerebros comes into the picture.

Pic Credit : TFWiki

Perfect Effect PE DX01 Motobot RC (Pink Version) - Pictorial Review

This time, the choice of review would be a tad bit different than usual. But first, let us see the background of this important Transformers character.

This bot first made an appearance in the 1986's Transformers The Movie, and stayed all throughout the franchise till this day, keep on being updated and reimagined. Although not always great (and there were worst time), the bot have a special place in every TF fans all around.

The bot....she, is Arcee

Not the first female Robot (Fembot) being introduced but she became a regular and can be seen in most of Transformers continuity (maybe not all). Not to be fooled by her appearance, Arcee was an excellent gunner and marksman. During Season 3 and Season 4 of Transformers G1, she can be seen joining missions with Rodimus Prime, Ultra Magnus, Springer and others.

With a female character, there's bound to be love story. Although not much (nor apparent), Arcee was said to have feelings for Hot Rod which withered with his transformation to Rodimus Prime in which she grew closer with Springer.

In Season 1 and Season 2 of Transformers G1, we have our human friend, Spike, being taken cared of by Bumblebee, Arcee somewhat held the same responsibility with Spike's son, Daniel, especially in the last 3 episode of US G1 where Daniel became Arcee's Headmaster partner (although the 3 episodes were ignored during the Transformers Headmasters continuity)

It's interesting to note that there's several version of 'explanation' on where fembots came from. In the animation, it was made clear that there were fembot even before Arcee. In Marvel UK, Arcee came to being as a respond by the Autobots to the human accusation of them being Sexist (WTF?).

But the worst of all.....the origin introduced in the IDW comic....

Yes....I understand...
Pic Credit : Web

Transformers Energon
Pic Credit : Web

Arcee made recurrent appearance in other series such as Headmasters, Energon, Animated, Prime as well as the second movie, Revenge of The Fallen, also in vast amount of publications.

Let's get back to G1 Arcee. Despite being popular, Arcee was damned to never have her G1 toy. There's a lot of rumors as to why this happened, some said the popularity of a female character to not be appealing to boys and another was the abomination of the prototype design.

There was an effort to release a G1 Arcee toy under the Titanium Line but it stop with the death of the line.








There's a few versions of Arcee toys post-G1 in which mostly depicting Arcee as either a motorcycle or car. But one of the most popular of all would be iGear MGT-01 Delicate Warrior

Pic Credit : Web

Yes, the fan rejoice! The G1-accurate incarnation of Arcee. I was fortunate enough to own her and I was pleased. However....the release used her G1-accuracy to make people forget...it was an overly expensive release with crappy quality. "Delicate Warrior" was not just a name I guess.

Despite all that, to each their own i guess. I could understand fans wanted a G1-accurate version of her in which, Delicate Warrior is the way to go.

PE-11 Scouting Force

Now, let me go ahead to the main event. Perfect Effect, a company that is known for releasing an updated version of Frenzy, Rumble and also other G1 cassettes.

However, their breakthrough release would be PE-11 Scouting Force, their take on G1's Reflector.






On August 2011, Perfect Effect release a concept images of what seems to be a homage of G1 Arcee (in robot mode) and prototype of it next to some Classics-verse figures. Many fans (myself included) hold judgement for her due to the fact that her alt mode is a futuristic motorcycle rather than car. But due to my dissapointment with Delicate Warrior, I opted for her on a whim and found myself really happy.