Ode to a Grasshopper
9th June 2012, 12:51 PM
Sorry, no pics as yet. She's not worth the effort of getting out of storage. Anyone really wanting to see pics can find them at seibertron.com (http://www.seibertron.com/news/view.php?id=24994) and/or at TFW2005.com (http://www.tfw2005.com/boards/transformers-feedback/606203-tf-prime-deluxe-airachnid-pictorial-review.html). Once we get the official info please move this post to below the usual opening post @the Mods.
Anyway...
I opened her last night, and TFPRiDE Airachnid is just a terrible toy.
Alt-mode
She has a meh alt-mode with pretty obvious robot feet, gimmicks that do nothing for the toy and don't appear in the show, and an altmode that can't stay level on a flat surface and has no landing gear. It is of course tiny, but that's kind of a given for deluxes these days so I can't really count that against it. On the upside, the rotors spin well and with a bit of fiddling it clips together pretty tightly without any overly obvious panel lines. Aside from the feet the robot parts are reasonably well concealed, with it only being obviously a TF from underneath. You can a bit of her breastplate peeking out from the bottom of the the helicopter from the side, but 1) it's actually kind of funny, and 2) the aforementioned tiltiness helps conceal that as long as she leans the right way.
Transformation
Transformation is boring and fiddly.
FailRobot Mode
The robot mode, though, is where the awfulness truly appears. The chair-head slides up out of the torso, simultaneously restricting movement and making it nigh-impossible to mod. The backpack conceals/ruins the character's distinctive silhouette from the show, as well as the hourglass body-shape of the torso. Unlike a femcon such as Strika where not looking especially 'feminine' is actually kind of cool, here it's just lazy, especially since if the designers had sacrificed the pointless headchair gimmick and put the backpack on a double hinge joint (i.e. the ones with a bar/strip between 2 hinges) the shape of the backpack could have kind of worked with the torso shape rather than against it, as well as lengthening her too-short coat-tail-appendage thingies (those bits that stick out behind her legs). Speaking of legs, she could really have done with the yellow knees she has in the show - that purple and hint of yellow makes a surprising amount of difference to her appearance.
Movement-wise, G1 Ultra Magnus has better poseability than this agile-in-the-show bot. Her arms are somewhat reminiscent of G1 Swindle inasmuch as the arm attachment to the body is located below her pecs (well, robobosom, but same difference), and her shoulder joint is placed closer to where the elbow should be on the arm itself. Coupled with the backpack this renders the ball joint they're attached by pretty much useless in terms of motion. Her clumsy elbow joints' vertical-only movement is hindered by the fact she has stubby dwarf forearms, and their contours ensure that her crappy hands can't actually straighten out from her forearms. The helicopter blades/spider rotors don't really help her to overcome this - they're short, squat, and being free-spinning can't be kept in position anyway. EDIT - apparently they can, there's a tab for the top blade on the helicopter cockpit you can tab it to. So that's a plus, which takes my revised score to...still 0, adjusted for rounding. Amusingly, two of the rotors are on ball joints, but the locking tabs are located under the blades, and thus prevent them from moving forwards to help reduce the impact of their stubbiness. Her legs make PRiDE Soundwave look like Classics Mirage by comparison - their balljoints are too close to the body, and the alt-mode plating bumps into the backpack (oh how I hate that backpack! :mad: ). Her robo-stilettos are all one piece, which coupled with her back-heaviness and high center of gravity gives her little to no stability - they only really qualify as 3-dimensional by default.
The bit that really makes it so bad, however, is that looking at the mold you can see it could easily have been a decent toy with a different design. If they'd:
-scrapped the expense of the Cybertronian badminton racket/weapons and opening cockpit/headchair gimmick in favour of a backpack that folded down and slightly away from the body at her robobooty end,
-given her better shoulders that transformed out of the front of the alt-mode like in the show (with hands that don't look like she crushed her wrists and had the cast set by a drunk potter),
-had the ball joints connecting the legs to the torso reaching further out from the body, and improved the knee swivel-joint's range of motion,
...and...
-given her feet more like those of FE Starscream, with better stability...
...Airachnid could have been a solid toy with good screen-accuracy and decent poseability.
All in all, it's hard to believe this crappy toy came from the same line that gave us the excellent Vehicon mold. It's like the designer set out to make the worst toy with the the most redundant gimmicks s/he could.
I rate this toy a 0/5, rounded to the nearest whole number.
Buy it if 1) you're an OCD show-completist, 2) you like blowing your money on crappy toys, 3) as a birthday present if you have a young relative who's getting interested in Transformers and you want them not to be, or 4) you think I'm exaggerating and no modern toy can possibly be as much of a fail as I and everyone else who has it claims. Even then, do yourself a favour and wait for sales.
Anyway...
I opened her last night, and TFPRiDE Airachnid is just a terrible toy.
Alt-mode
She has a meh alt-mode with pretty obvious robot feet, gimmicks that do nothing for the toy and don't appear in the show, and an altmode that can't stay level on a flat surface and has no landing gear. It is of course tiny, but that's kind of a given for deluxes these days so I can't really count that against it. On the upside, the rotors spin well and with a bit of fiddling it clips together pretty tightly without any overly obvious panel lines. Aside from the feet the robot parts are reasonably well concealed, with it only being obviously a TF from underneath. You can a bit of her breastplate peeking out from the bottom of the the helicopter from the side, but 1) it's actually kind of funny, and 2) the aforementioned tiltiness helps conceal that as long as she leans the right way.
Transformation
Transformation is boring and fiddly.
FailRobot Mode
The robot mode, though, is where the awfulness truly appears. The chair-head slides up out of the torso, simultaneously restricting movement and making it nigh-impossible to mod. The backpack conceals/ruins the character's distinctive silhouette from the show, as well as the hourglass body-shape of the torso. Unlike a femcon such as Strika where not looking especially 'feminine' is actually kind of cool, here it's just lazy, especially since if the designers had sacrificed the pointless headchair gimmick and put the backpack on a double hinge joint (i.e. the ones with a bar/strip between 2 hinges) the shape of the backpack could have kind of worked with the torso shape rather than against it, as well as lengthening her too-short coat-tail-appendage thingies (those bits that stick out behind her legs). Speaking of legs, she could really have done with the yellow knees she has in the show - that purple and hint of yellow makes a surprising amount of difference to her appearance.
Movement-wise, G1 Ultra Magnus has better poseability than this agile-in-the-show bot. Her arms are somewhat reminiscent of G1 Swindle inasmuch as the arm attachment to the body is located below her pecs (well, robobosom, but same difference), and her shoulder joint is placed closer to where the elbow should be on the arm itself. Coupled with the backpack this renders the ball joint they're attached by pretty much useless in terms of motion. Her clumsy elbow joints' vertical-only movement is hindered by the fact she has stubby dwarf forearms, and their contours ensure that her crappy hands can't actually straighten out from her forearms. The helicopter blades/spider rotors don't really help her to overcome this - they're short, squat, and being free-spinning can't be kept in position anyway. EDIT - apparently they can, there's a tab for the top blade on the helicopter cockpit you can tab it to. So that's a plus, which takes my revised score to...still 0, adjusted for rounding. Amusingly, two of the rotors are on ball joints, but the locking tabs are located under the blades, and thus prevent them from moving forwards to help reduce the impact of their stubbiness. Her legs make PRiDE Soundwave look like Classics Mirage by comparison - their balljoints are too close to the body, and the alt-mode plating bumps into the backpack (oh how I hate that backpack! :mad: ). Her robo-stilettos are all one piece, which coupled with her back-heaviness and high center of gravity gives her little to no stability - they only really qualify as 3-dimensional by default.
The bit that really makes it so bad, however, is that looking at the mold you can see it could easily have been a decent toy with a different design. If they'd:
-scrapped the expense of the Cybertronian badminton racket/weapons and opening cockpit/headchair gimmick in favour of a backpack that folded down and slightly away from the body at her robobooty end,
-given her better shoulders that transformed out of the front of the alt-mode like in the show (with hands that don't look like she crushed her wrists and had the cast set by a drunk potter),
-had the ball joints connecting the legs to the torso reaching further out from the body, and improved the knee swivel-joint's range of motion,
...and...
-given her feet more like those of FE Starscream, with better stability...
...Airachnid could have been a solid toy with good screen-accuracy and decent poseability.
All in all, it's hard to believe this crappy toy came from the same line that gave us the excellent Vehicon mold. It's like the designer set out to make the worst toy with the the most redundant gimmicks s/he could.
I rate this toy a 0/5, rounded to the nearest whole number.
Buy it if 1) you're an OCD show-completist, 2) you like blowing your money on crappy toys, 3) as a birthday present if you have a young relative who's getting interested in Transformers and you want them not to be, or 4) you think I'm exaggerating and no modern toy can possibly be as much of a fail as I and everyone else who has it claims. Even then, do yourself a favour and wait for sales.