Blackarachnia
(Transmetal 2)
Beast mode is a Transmetal
2 black widow spider. The primary color of this mode is transmetal red,
rather than black, unlike other black widow spiders. This mode looks very
nice, and, like most other Transmetal 2s, has a nice "freaky" look to it.
There are very few extras in this mode; only part of Blackarachnia's robot
mode feet sticking out of her abdomen, the back of her robot mode head
on her beast mode rear, and her robot mode arms sticking out from under
her head. While the head and feet extras can be easily ignored, the arm
extras are extremely noticeable, and make this toy look like if has ten
spider legs instead of eight. There are a few nice features in this mode
as well; for one, Blackarachnia has a little disk on her upper abdomen
that can change her spark orb from that of a Maximal's to that of a Predacon's.
Part of her spider mouth and jaw can shoot out like a grappling hook- a
nice effect, although there is no trigger or anything to fire it; you can
only pull it out and let it reel itself back in.
Robot mode is not as
nice as the beast mode, but nice still. The details on thie mode, as well
as the other one, are very nice and asymmetrical. My main complaint I have
with this mode are that there are an enormous amount of extras on it- over
half of this mode's weight is extras! (The majority of them are not put
on the show version.) These include her extremely large shoulder pads,
her spider thorax and upper abdomen on her back, two other shoulder pads
that point upwards, and all eight of her spider legs. These greatly take
away from the movement of the toy, although most of them do look nice.
Her jaw-grappling-hook becomes a weapon in this mode, which is nice, except
it doesn't fit in her hand very well- her fingers get in the way unless
you have in an exact position. Wanna know why the production of this toy
was delayed about six months (May 1999- November 1999)? Because of this
purple bra that overlays her other transmetal red bra. Hasbro originally
made it removable, but since parents obviously complained about this, they
tried to glue the bra onto the rest of the toy. When that didn't work,
they had to mold them all on. Here's an idea, Hasbro- FORGET THE STUPID
THING! Anyway, there is another nice feature- Blackarachnia has a "roundhouse
kick" action in her robot mode. When you push back her head, she's supposed
to have her torso and legs automatically revolve once- but it doesn't work
as well as it's supposed to, and her arms always disconnect from her body
when you do this.
Blackarachnia has a
sort of third mode as well- in her robot mode, you can rotate her large
shoulder pads down to create her "defense mode", which is essentially just
her with a shield covering her. This mode reminds me of Transmetal
Airazor's "shield mode".
A very nice toy in beast
mode, but this toy suffers heavily from extras and supposed "action features"
that don't work very well in her robot mode. Very hard to transform the
first few times as well.
Review by Beastbot