Name: Drag Strip
Series: Convention Exclusives
Allegiance: Decepticon
Alternate Mode: Sports Car
CAR MODE
Height: 4cm Length: 14cm Width: 11cm
A yellow pink futuristic sports car with maroon stripes on the fenders and spoilers, Drag Strip is a repaint of Animated Arcee. She features a black cockpit including shiny black on the window itself, along with black plastic tyres. There's a Decepticon logo on the roof, superimposed over a silver & purple circle. Her doors are painted maroon while there are twin transparent exhausts at the back. The colours are accurate to G1 Drag Strip, even if her male counterpart doesn't have any maroon in vehicle mode. The colours make the tribute obvious and look pretty good, too.
As with most Animated toys, Drag Strip's vehicle mode is quite stylised. The design of this alt mode is an Animated interpretation of G1 Arcee, and so nothing like the racer for which she's named, but the massive spoiler still gives this vehicle a racing feel. There's a narrow "waist" in the middle here, giving her deeply recessed doors. The spoilers sit on either fender, as sort of winglets - a nice stylised element, but probably not one that helps her aerodynamics much.
There's minimal play value here aside from the wheels rolling. I guess you could count detaching the spoilers, but that just leaves awkward tabs. Most Animated Deluxes have minimal play value and Drag Strip is no exception.
A good vehicle mode despite no play value. The colours work well & make this repaint work well as Drag Strip. The stylised look gives her a very sleek look.
TRANSFORMATION TO ROBOT MODE
Fold the rear fenders down, pull out the hands from behind the canopy, revealing her head. Position the arms. Split the hood, pull down to form her legs, rotate the waist. Rotate the boots so that they're open in front, fold in the shin panels & lift up her feet. Swing the doors down as hip armour.
ROBOT MODE
Height: 17cm Width: 7.5cm
A yellow robot with maroon hip plates, a maroon head and a light blue face with transparent red eyes. Drag Strip has a useful lightpipe and some smatterings of maroon highlights. Her forearms, waist and thighs are black. The Decepticon logo is now central on her chest, and works well there. The wings sit on her shoulder pylons, her red exhausts stick out of the shoulder pylons. The colour scheme works well again and the tribute is again well executed - right down to the somewhat random light blue face that first appeared on G1 Drag Strip. It's notable that her robot mode serves as a sort of double-homage - her colours are also a tribute to Uma Thurman's character in the Kill Bill movies (thanks to Edrazeba for this info).
As you'd expect Drag Strip is quite stylised, with a large head on a stalk of a neck, concave shins and wide ankles. The stylised parts work well together, giving her wider points at the top and bottom of her body. The kibble (fenders) behind her head fit into this theme, which actually helps minimise their visual impact. Her head bears the Princess Leia buns which G1 Arcee so un-subtly introduced in 1986. It's clearly not the male G1 Drag Strip - but the tribute is obvious.
The poseability here is pretty good, with ball joints in her neck, shoulders, elbows and hips while there are rotators below her elbows and hips. The elbow rotators effectively work as wrists. The ankles feature hinges and rotators, giving her feet a range of poses, and while she lacks heelspurs, the big boots mean she doesn't need them. The knees are hinged, rounding out good poseability.
The exhausts slide out as twin transparent red swords, to be placed in either hand, but the handles are a little too wide, so placing them in her hands will cause her thumbs quite a bit of stress - and eventually the thumbs will break off, so you'll need to either sand back the handles or just leave then on her back (which I've done, since I don't fancy the sanding job).
A good robot mode if one that's distinctly more feminine than the other Animated Stunticons. The colour work well and do a good job of this tribute - especially given that she's female & still is very obviously a Drag Strip. The poseability is good, but it's a shame the weapons are so poorly designed - since the idea is actually a good one.
VARIATIONS
As mentioned she is a repaint of Animated Arce. Being a limited exclusive, Drag Strip was likely produced in a single production run, making variants unlikely.
OVERALL
A good toy and an excellent repaint which nails the tribute while also working well as a female Transformer. The weapons aren't well designed even if the concept is good, but the colours work very well and she displays very well. Poseability is decent and this toy doesn't have the cache of being an Arcee car, it's actually stronger toy than Arcee - 8.5/10
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