Airachnid is one of those toys that will test show-characters-only completists. She’s not a very good toy! And so show-characters-only completists will end up owning toys like this instead of toys that are pretty sweet (Hot Shot, Dead End) but never made a fictional appearance. It is a joke we play on ourselves.
Seriously, Airachnid’s not that great. It’s not that she’s nearly immobile in robot mode, it’s not that she looks devoid of paint, it’s not that she can’t make that sweet third spideresque mode she has on the cartoon, it’s not that her robot arms are kind of hilariously gimpy, it’s … well, it’s all of those things, combined.
Airachnid has very little poseability. She has joints, sure, but everything on her that isn’t a joint works together to keep those joints from having any real range of movement. She can’t turn her head because even though the neck is balljointed, the helicopter mode’s cockpit seat is attached to the back of her head and that kind of keeps it from doing anything. She has knees and hips, but those are similarly useless joints. To make matters worse, she doesn’t stand well. If she’s not holding her weapons, she’s incredibly backheavy and will topple… unless she’s kind of bending forward a bit. Which, again, isn’t very practical since her movement’s so restricted.
I said she “looks” devoid of paint. She does have paint. It’s just that so much of her is black and what paint she has isn’t used in the best way that it could be. She’s got paint outlining the windows of her cockpit, on the insides of both of her thighs, on her stomach, two paint applications flanking her hips, a good number on her face, and a tiny bit of paint on the Decepticon symbol on her sternum. Oh, and her two “electro-stinger” accessories (designed after the “Null Rays” Knock Out suggested to Starscream as weapon replacements in one episode) are both extensively painted. She has her knees painted gold and purple in her stock photography, and those must have been costed out, but I’m pretty sure I’d rather they had sacrificed the paint on her hips. Those are supposed to be black and not purple anyway!
With paint!
She’s not a very fun toy. It’s not a great transformation. And she looks kinda dull and substandard. I think part of the problem is her design is too ambitious for the Deluxe size class. She woulda been a great Voyager, I’m sure, but of course that’d make her too huge. And so we have this thing.
I’ve already painted my Airachnid up a bunch. It makes her look better, but she still ain’t any funner. The most hilarious part was painting black over the unnecessary purple on her hips. Oh, you.
God, I am so torn. So excruciatingly torn.
I know I’m going to buy her, but I really shouldn’t.
I shouldn’t have bought her, but I did.
Still, I do get the fun of painting her up better by copying Willis’ custom once again! Mwa ha ha
…
Still gonna buy her. Just because she’s Airachnid.
…
Hell, still gonna buy her, just because she’s a girlbot. -_-;
I… You know what. I’m not gonna do it. I’m gonna believe you and not buy her, and buy Dead End instead.
Try to get a Sue Storm figure as a stand in, to harken back to the Shortpacked comic that had Skeletor as a stand in, for the movie set, that didn’t make a Sue.
Either that, or get a small cardboard cut-out standee of Airrachnia.
Get the Legend Class Airachnia and pretend she’s far away.
Good god she’s horrible! Then she’s not gonna sell and Hasbro is gonna be all ‘SEE? Femme bots don’t sell!’ and we won’t get more in the future >< DAMN IT!
I really don’t know. I think I kind of want to own it just to have a physical example of just how wrong Transformers design can go.
I think that was also the excuse by Bndai for their Digimon-line, after the Birdramon/Garudamon Evolver did not sell. The real reason why it did not sell was probably because it neither has a good Birdramon nor a good Garudamon mode…
A lot of the Digimon females got toys actually. The digivolving line in general was very short on support early on with only a fraction of the main cast being featured. The females got them later on however. Season 2 had Digieggs evolution figures for Hawkmon’s two egg evolutions, and Silphymon. Sure it lacked an egg for Kari but it lacked one for TK too. Season 3 had a digivolution toy for all of Renamon’s main forms, and a Lopmon digivolving toy. Season 4 and 5 barely even had toylines. I think 4 had two digivolving figures if that. I think 5 had none.
The minifigs were also loaded with the girls and that was what the line most supported.
And almost those toys were imported too so what Bandai of Japan did was their limit.
Bandai however did use that excuse for Rita Repulsa. The Power Rangers team had wanted to make her figure of years but were also told “A girl and a villain? Nope.” by the higher ups. Eventually they threw her on this survey on toys fans want most and they got to make a limited collectors figure for the Samurai line.
And I find that hard to believe because Bandai has always been pretty good about getting toys out for female characters for the most part. Up until like one of the most recent seasons (I want to say it was sometime after Dinothunder but before Overdrive) every Power Rangers line would have both male and females for the “extra” figures like bikes, armors, and whatever large scale they have. They still manage to get the powerup versions if they appear in show at least. The Samurai girls I think each have I think 5 4 inch toys for example. Only female villains were really screwed but being a villain in general is hard in that line. Still Divatox, and Camile got toys despite being female villains. And Rita always had trouble for various reasons but there was always intent to work on one. Even Chetara recently managed to get a six inch figure with the rest of the Thundercats cast. They were even hoping to do a two pack for Kit and Kat in that scale before the line kinda went dead. I mean yeah these are all things girl figures should get no matter what but they don’t and for a company to do it with their lines it’s pretty great.
Huh. Looking it up Season 4 had mostly repaints for its digivolving line and then a bunch of Koji/Takuya ones. …And one for JP…
To be fair the other four more or less didn’t matter anyway as far as the show itself was concerned so it’s not all that weird that they didn’t get kids.
Willis is being overly generous here.
She’s a POS.
Hate the character, hate the toy, hate Femmebots.
That’s me. I’m a hater. I’d tolerate Slipstream. Maybe. If she was a dude.
YAY! Chauvinism!
You did a great job on the custom paint! I think I’m going to copy most of what you’ve done if I ever manage to get my hands on one! Then I’ll make her wrestle my TFA Black Arachnia XD
eeg. The last time I felt this uninterested in the current TF lines was…what, 2002? Oh well, at least we’ll get more Generations later this year. Because, ya know, GEEWUN and all.
> …show-characters-only completists will end up owning toys like this instead of toys that are pretty sweet (Hot Shot, Dead End) but never made a fictional appearance.
Of course, your two examples are repaints/minor retools OF show characters! (And if I recall the TFP Dead End toy’s colour scheme correctly, it is UNGODLY ugly to boot)
It’s ugly in the best way.
Ironhide is a better example. I see so many people saying “Ironhide looks great! But he’s not in the show so I won’t be buying him.” or more recently “WOW XXX (Hiding for spoilers. Not gonna be mean because new voyager mold pretty much confirms he’s in the show.) looks amazing! I hope he’s in the show so I can buy him. Otherwise pass”
It’s something I’ll never understand.
The first time I saw pictures of that toy, I thought it’s a Cyberverse.
Luckily, I don’t care that much about Airachnid. Otherwise, that would be a though decision.
It’s still better than 95% of the G1 toyline, at any rate.
Eugh. Makes me happy to stick to my peculiar “show Autobots and Every Starscream Ever” rule for Prime.
Yeah, I decided a long time ago not to pick this one up. Still, not every figure can be gold, am I right? Now if i can just find Hot Shot… now THAT is a Bumblebee repaint I’d gladly buy!
Tell me about it. Having so much trouble finding Knockout, Vehicon, and Hotshot and now I’m seeing people say that Wave 4 is on shelves…
Airachnid looks just terrible. Everyone involved with creating it should feel just terrible about themselves. It should forever be the shame that drives them to make better figures.
Hot Shot is approaching shelfwarmer volume locally. I’ve only see one pack of Wave 4, iuff it’s any consolation.
Proof damn you!
It is consolation. Thanks.
I’m having an off day on grammar and spelling honestly so your iuff felt good too. Thanks.
Work was hard and I’m tired but I wanted to stay up for DOA…
Gotta ask, Willis – since I give less that two hot spits about the vehicle mode, if I end up picking her up, would she be worth my cash if I trimmed/sanded/removed all the little bits that block her articulation?
Other than lopping off the seat on the back of her head, I am not exactly sure what that would entail specifically, so I couldn’t make you a recommendation.
If you really want to go for gold, Boy Blunder, you can remove her helicopter backpack entirely. It’s only held on by two tiny screws, one behind the seat (you can pull off the cockpit glass to reach it), and one on the other side near the coat-tail thingys.
You’ll have to find a way to hold the coat-tails in and re-attach the rotor-spiderlegs with something though, I would recommend Blu-tack (Or Sticky-Tack, whatever it’s called). Her hip articulation will still suck, however.
While i’d be getting one regardless as I’m buying EVERY. SINGLE. FIGURE. in this toyline, I actually don’t think it looks too bad. But then this is a guy who like the toy designs for g1 Ironhide/RAtchet over their animation models so…..
Also I’m not going to touch up the paint on mine as i prefer my figures to remain as they are
What’s weird for me is that the show constantly flaunted her ability to mode change between robot/spiderbot/helicopter/drill as if they writers WERE anticipating some sort of awesomely engineered voyager toy.
The atypically backwards relationship between show and merchandise in Transformers Prime strikes again!
Shame about the joints. Airachnid was one of the characters I liked in Prime. No redemption like blackarachnia just Vile cunning and Venom.
I’ll try and resist as long as possible. Maybe Army building Dead End the Energy Vampire can help.