Name: Airazor
Series: Beast Wars
Allegiance: Maximal
Function: Aerial Recon
Alternate Mode: Hawk
Thanks to Tiby for loaning me Airazor for this review
HAWK MODE
Height: 8cm Length: 18cm Width: 14.5cm
A baby blue, yellow, blue and chrome blue hawk, with some red and brown highlights. The base colour is very light blue, while the body itself is a chromed royal blue. Her legs and are amber and brown while there are yellow patterns on the wings, tail and around her eyes. There are bright red elements on the turbines at the base of her wings, which don't fit into the blue and yellow theme here, but otherwise this is a good colour scheme. The colours are more unified than those of the original, and while a range of blues might seem unlikely, there are plenty of striking birds with blue plumage, so I'm not at all concerned by the profusion of blue here. It's nothing like the brown hawk we saw in the BW show, mind you.
Being a Transmetal, it's a pretty robotic beast mode. There are piston like features on her wings, turbines on her shoulders and the lines remind more of an airliner than those a bird. Her sculpting is pretty good overall and the painted details are subtle and compliment the sculpt. As with most Transmetals, Airazor wears her name in a white on top of her back.
There's not really all that much play value. Her legs move around a bit, since they're the robot arms, but her ankles are a tad loose and she can topple forward. Her legs are larger than they should be, but not by much, so I can forgive it. A weapon that folds out would have added a lot to the play value of this mode, which is at the lower end of the scale for a Beast Wars deluxe.
A much more focused paint job than that of the original version, with less competing for your attention. It helps that they're steered away from the chrome lavender too - so many colours clash with that, to a easier to-match royal blue. The sculpting is great and the paint job is well thought out, so this is a good bird mode. Sadly, Tiby's is suffering from some chrome flaking.
VEHICLE MODE
Fold the legs away. Unclip the front sections of the wings and fold them around underneath her to form pontoons. They have struts to add to the effect. They really do look like pontoons, but the fact remains they're pontoons on a bird. She sort of looks like a Cessna plane, but is too back heavy to really stay upright in this mode. As with a lot of the Transmetal moulds, this is really more of an add on than a true third mode, which is a good thing because whilst the pontoons work well, the mode on the whole doesn't.
TRANSFORMATION TO ROBOT MODE
There's a lot of internal hinging I'm going to skip here since it's hard to visualise without the toy in front of you. Detach the robot chest from under the bird mode, swing the robot arms out to the sides, flip out the robot head and reattach the chest, this time at the back of the bird rather than the front. Open the bird up by pushing the wings down, fold them down 90° to reveal the robot legs. Lift out the robot legs, you have to splay them slightly to clear the tail, swing them over and push the bird head up into the robot chest. You'll have to unclip the robot chest and reclip it to get this right. Fold the bird tail onto her back, rotate the wings so they're pointing down and fold them back. Slide the wings up (over the turbines). Fold down her feet, position her limbs and you're done.
ROBOT MODE
Height: 13cm Width: 12cm
Most of the chrome now disappears, along with much of the baby blue plastic, which is now limited to her waist. She's mainly amber, with mid blue upper arms while her feet and the claws attached underneath her wrists are brown. There is red paint washed on her chest, which has moulded fur along with her thighs. There is a metallic blue dome on her left chest (and an unpainted mound on the other side, just to give her a chest). Her head is amber with mid blue eyes, and looks very organic and birdlike. The colours here are very similar to those of the original Transmetal - if a little darker - although the addition of brown brings the colours here closer to the original toy and of course the show character based on that toy. The colours here aren't really any better or worse than those in bird mode, nor those on the original - they work well however.
On her back, underneath her bird tail, Airazor has a Beast Wars rubsign, which isn't actually visible in either mode but can be revealed in this mode. Oddly, for the Armada repaint - an Autobot - this was replaced by a moulded Decepticon symbol!
This robot mode really does look feminine, she's skinny and her feet are reminiscent of women's shoes - sensible shoes, I'm happy to report. And of course she has the busty chest that the Beast Wars designers seem fond of.
She has a pretty big backpack with those wings hanging off her back, and it's heavy. Her hips are stronger than on my non-Fox Kids! version, so she stands up nicely. The wingtips are low enough that she can rest on them, meaning there are a lot of stable poses. The other major feature of this mode are the bird feet, which are on hinges on the back of her wrists. She has giant slashing weapons on her hands! They look great, and make her look pretty dangerous too. It's interesting to note she has holes in her hands despite not having any sort of detachable weapons. Perhaps they had originally planned something that never made it to the production of the toy. While the robot mode doesn't really need it, a ranged weapon would help her bird mode.
This is a very poseable mode - the head, shoulders, elbows, hips and knees are all ball joints, as well as the hinges on wrists and hinged ankles. Coupled with the wingtips, these joints give you a lot of play value in this mode. Also you can fold the wings over on her chest to form a giant shield or armour plate, although I suspect this is more simply by accident than design. The colours are a good halfway between the show colours and the original Transmetal.
VARIATIONS
A repaint of the original Transmetal Airazor, as mentioned. The mould was reused in Armada for a character of the same name.
OVERALL
Airazor has well painted bird mode which lacks a weapon but works well overall, especially with improved colours this time around. The vehicle mode is okay without being anything special, and shares colours with the bird mode. Her robot mode has great articulation and has good colours, although it carries a significant backpack. Having said that, the hips are stronger this time. Airazor is one of the weaker Transmetals, but they've addressed some of the shortcomings we saw on the original - and the Transmetals generally of a high standard. Recommended over the original, despite being fairly similar in robot mode - 7.5/10
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