Review: #290
Name: Blackarachnia
Brand: Transformers
Allegiance: Maximal
Line: Legends
Year of Release: 2015
Size Class: Deluxe
Mold Status: retool of Animated Blackarachnia
PACKAGING:
Officially known as Blackwidow, but known as Blackarachnia in the West, comes in a nice boxed packaging that shows off the spider mode to great effect.
The side has some nice artwork and the stock photos at the back does a good job of showing up the figure.
SPIDER MODE:
Blackarachnia transforms into a gold and black spider, with a splash of red . You can clearly see her robot hands which is disappointing.
She has a transparent red claw from her back. Her eight legs might need some fiddling but can all rest on the table quite easily.
This is a good looking spider mode with credible proportions. It's too bad her pedipalps (the things in front of her mouth) are large flat pieces, these were retooled to form her robot chest, therefore looks quite odd here.
Blackarachnia is a Deluxe sized figure but she is fairly light due to her choice of alternate mode.
Unfortunately, she can be a mess in this mode, particularly her rear legs, they don't actually lock into the spider torso and can be dislodged very easily.
The spider eyes are also remolded here, too bad there is an unsightly gap above it.
The claw can extend as it is attached by a piece of string. Pressing a button at the base will automatically retract the claw with a snap.
The claw allows you to hang Blackarachnia from places which is actually quite a neat gimmick.
A decent spider mode overall, as long as you don't handle her too much.
TRANSFORMATION:
While transformation to robot mode is simple, it can be seen as elegant, if a bit messy. For some reason, the rear spider legs rotate to form the robot legs but the rotation piece feels like it is made of rubber and that it will sheer off very easily. Manipulating the front spider legs to behind the robot's back is also annoying and fiddly. While this will vary with different figures, the balljoints for her hands were very tight, making it easy to dislodge other pieces.
ROBOT MODE:
Blackarachnia's robot mode is where it is at. The remolded pieces along with the fantastic color scheme cements this character from the Beast Wars series, even if the original mode was from a completely different line.
She carries the back of the spider and the front four legs as kibble but it isn't too horrible. If only the spider piece could lock in somewhere though as it likes to flop a bit when posing her.
She had a new headsculpt which looks amazing.
Blackarachnia is tall and slender in this mode, befitting of the poisonous female Transformer.
The spider pedipalps has been remolded so that it folds into her torso not to create her chest. It works well. Unfortunately, all figures have an assembly error that causes the torso to be difficult to push up to close the gap with the head completely.
The spider legs on the outside of her arms are officially positioned so that they point outwards (like spider mode) to mimic the claw arms of the original, but it feels unfinished that way.
The lower shins are also supposed to split apart but it leaves an unsightly gap and reduces stability.
Her weapon is the spider claw again but now detached.
There are pegholes on the inside of each arm for the weapon. Sadly, Blackarachnia suffers from the "elbows bending inwards" syndrome, which makes posing slightly harder.
She is quite poseable, your only issue will be balancing her due to her small footprint. The weapon can also store on her when not in use.
A good looking robot mode if not very playable.
OVERALL:
Blackarachnia is an amazing retool, transforming something as stylized as Animated into a reasonably faithful representation of the Beast Wars character. The robot mode is the stronger of the two modes, and while she looks great as a display piece, there are some inherent flaws in the mold, so she is only recommended if you like the character.
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