Posts tagged with "airachnid" - 1
Posted June 26, 2012 at 11:01 pm


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.
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