Beast mode is a black widow spider- or at least, it's supposed to be. There's not really much black in her color scheme anymore, and she doesn't have those two red connected triangles on her abdomen identifying her as one. So let's just say it's a spider, shall we? Oh, wait, we can't even call her that. Know why? She's got SIX LEGS! It doesn't take a scientific genius to figure out that spiders have EIGHT legs, not SIX. This is very poor designing, in my opinion. However, the detailing on this toy is very nice- especially on the abdomen, where colors and technorganic wires abound. That's really all I see that's good about this mode, though. The spider legs themselves look odd for the most part. It's quite obvious that the front four legs combine to form the robot legs- Hasbro could have easily disguised this a bit more. The back two legs are what really get me though- not only do they obviously become her hands in robot mode, they are made of cheap, bendy plastic. Considering that these legs are used as SUPPORTS in beast mode, this is definitely not a good thing. If kept in her beast mode for a long period of time, the lower parts of the back legs will start to bend, and stay in that odd bended position even after you take the stress off of them. Another thing I'm not too crazy about is her transparent yellow head- it looks very odd, to say the least. She has a weak "talking" action in this mode- if you pull her front "stinger claws" apart, her larger mandibles move back and forth, and her smaller ones up and down. Very nice, but it doesn't always work, and can easily get jammed. Her spark crystal is visible through a window in her abdomen- a nice touch.
    Robot mode is excellent- it's definitely the mode that was designed first in this mode. My only complaint about this mode would have to be that her claws on her hands are in an odd position- like Skydive, it's hard to position her hands so she doesn't look like she's giving you the finger. Her show accuracy, while not horrible in her beast mode, isn't nearly as show-accurate as her robot mode is. The only major thing missing are the brighter colors. Her posability in this mode is very nice, and her large, flat feet make her stable as well. An interesting note is that, if you want, you can turn her feet downward to make her look more "show-accurate" without any feet, but this makes her feet look too long and awkward. Her large rear end may be a bit odd looking from the side view, but it really doesn't get in the way, and it doesn't hurt the overall look of the mode much, so it's no big deal. The front spider legs fit together nicely to form her robot legs. Her gimmick in this mode is rather weak, however. Basically you lift her up by the waist and twirl her around manually, slashing her claws in a circle. Um, if it's operated MANUALLY, how is that a gimmick? A neat feature in this mode, however, is that she has the same sliding forehead that allows you to add four extra eyes to her robot head, making her look more alien and spider like. For a deluxe, this is a very nice attention to detail. Her robot face is an enigma in itself- from straight on, it looks ugly, but from the side, she looks pretty. Odd...
    A pretty sloppy beast mode, but an excellent robot mode. Don't judge this toy by its bad beast mode appearance- it's actually pretty fun.

Review by Beastbot

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