Unlike most of the Beast Hunters versions of previous Prime characters, Airachnid's Cyberverse Beast Hunters debut is a smaller version of her usual design, with no extra spikes or other design elements added. Thus, her vehicle mode is a fairly small helicopter, and in terms of the general "construction" of the mode and proportions, it's pretty darned close to her deluxe version. That is, there's fairly minimal mold detailing here, even for a toy with the Prime design aesthetic, and the design is overall fairly simplistic, with no landing gear or the like molded into the bottom. Her propellers are also molded to look a bit like her extra "spider legs", though in this mode this means that they looks a bit overly spiky for propellers (in other words, those parts, at least, fit right in with the Beast Hunters aesthetic!). They also spin quite freely, so that's a plus. There's also some minor robot mode extras visible, mostly because of the paint detailing on them; the feet are rather obvious on the back end, as well as her obvious gold kneecaps further up the helicopter tail. Her purple waist is also technically visible if you look at the toy from or an angle that's straight-on or at a view looking up at the vehicle, but this isn't visible from any normal angle so I don't count it as a bonafide robot "extra" in this case. Other than the aformentioned gold and purple paint apps that make some robot parts stick out, this mode is very very monochrome, being almost entirely black. There's some silver paint on the windows, but they aren't of a shade that really works as a great accent color that makes the toy pop or anything. Airachnid's weapon is the bow weapon that comes with many other Beast Hunters Legion-class figures, and in this mode she has three ports that it can plug into; one on each side (a little below the back end of the painted windows) and one on the underside of the nose.
    Airachnid's transformation is also remarkably similar to her deluxe-class figure, with the only major differences being that her nosecone simply folds back behind to reveal her head and that the two side sections of the 'copter mode simply fold back to allow her arms to fold out. Interestingly enough, in some respects this tiny toy actually looks BETTER than her deluxe version; her arms are much more proportional and-- though still a bit two-dimensional-- look much more like her actual show-model arms than on her deluxe. Her legs also aren't quite as 2-D, either. However, she still has the issue of a pretty obvious section of her vehicle mode just sitting behind her head, which looks pretty unsightly. Unlike her deluxe version, this toy's propellers can't fold around her body to look more like her extra spider appendages, but at this scale this can't be realistically expected, and it's not like that did much on the deluxe toy anyway. She does have the top of the helicopter on her back, but it fits in with her overall silhouette at nearly every angle and doesn't get in the way of articulation, so I don't mind it. Her paint apps also come out a bit more in this mode; she's still mostly black, to be sure, but a nice dark metallic shade of purple on her lower arms and waist becomes obvious, as does some gold, silver, and red on her well-done face sculpt. (The mold detailing on her robot parts is also quite well-done for the size, and at least give her a little bit of intricate detailing on her toy.) Airachnid can move at the shoulders (at two points; one only slight), hips, and limited back-and-forth motion at the hips-- slightly below-average even for a Legion toy, and I wish her knees could bend back a bit further. She also has tiny feet-- which is show-accurate, but makes her a little hard to stand up if she's not in a "standard" pose. As you'd expect, Airachnid can hold her crossbow in either of her hands, though the side ports from helicopter mode are now on her shoulders and work pretty well, too.
    Cyberverse Airachnid is, surprisingly enough, overall a BETTER toy than her deluxe version, especially when you take her smaller size into account. She still certainly has her share of issues-- some obvious robot bits in her bare-bones vehicle mode, somewhat 2-D legs, a blatantly obvious section of vehicle kibble behind her robot head-- but the deluxe version shares these issues and a few more to boot. She looks better-proportioned, certainly has better arms, and a pretty fitting weapon to boot (even if it wasn't made specifically for her). In every way except articulation, this is superior to the deluxe version, and unless you're a scale stickler, I'd go for this one over the deluxe if you want a toy of the character.

Review by Beastbot

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