Bot Reviews: Transformers: Kingdom Deluxe Airazor

There’s usually a hierarchy when it comes to updating Transformers characters. Your a-listers and your first-episode-people come first, so when it’s something like Beast Wars, the one or two updates we got before Kingdom went all-in tended to focus on cast members that was there from day one, and/or had a big, impactful role in the show. That’s why I’m pleasantly surprised that Kingdom gave us a new Airazor so early. It almost feels like a little bit of justice for a character who, I think, got robbed a bit on the original TV show.

Compared to other Transformers TV productions, Beast Wars is known for a small, tight-knit cast full of well-developed characters, but Airazor sort of got shafted. Funny enough, the original toy was designed as a male character, and it was the showrunners that asked that her gender be changed, so Blackarachnia wouldn’t be the only female character on the show.

In practice, though, Airazor would be introduced late in the show’s first season (thanks to her toy coming out in the second year of the line), and would wind up being the only one of the heroes to never receive any kind of day-in-the-limelight focus episode before the season wrapped. And then, early into the second season, she was written out of the show to make budgetary room for the Fuzors and Transmetals, and only made a couple more appearances the rest of the series. It was kind of hard to get a read on her personality compared to the rest of the cast due to her shorter screen presence, but a recent rewatch of the show led to the conclusion that she’s sort of got the personality of a G1 Cartoon Autobot: A rough and tumble adventurer, full of jolly wisecracks. It’s a good personality, and a shame we didn’t see more of her.

Airazor’s original figure was a Basic-class, like Rattrap and Terrorsaur, and pretty good, or so I’ve heard. It’s one of the few show characters I’ve never handled in person. Importantly, because she’s lower on the list of priorities when it comes to updates, Airazor’s never gotten a full, proper, new mainline figure since Beast Wars ended (there was a Transmetal version in that line, though), just a few repaints, and convention-exclusive retools of other figures. So this one was long-overdue.

Robot Mode

See, this is an example of good female Transformer design, though it does owe it to the original TV show design also being that. She’s as feminine as she needs to be, her proportions aren’t exaggerated, and she isn’t carrying an entire altmode on her back, just some wings.

For a first-time update, they managed to make her design really faithful to her TV series appearance, with only a smaller falcon-head on her chest, and bigger wings as the compromises to making it work physically. That being said, she’s a bit oddly greebly compared to her smooth-looking CGI model, mostly on her arms and legs, though she wears all that extra sculpted detailing pretty well.

Speaking of her wings, on the TV show, they improbably shrunk in size when transforming, so on this figure, they approximate it by having them fold in and compress into a backpack that’s definitely present, but doesn’t overwhelm her, and seems to be as tiny as they could make it on a Deluxe budget. Importantly, we’re nowhere near the lows of Siege Chromia, and this backpack actually adds to her silhouette.

Despite not having a Masterpiece figure to crib its design from, Airazor’s headsculpt firmly falls on the good side of Kingdom, making the transition from CGI to physical space flawlessly, especially considering how busy of a design it is, what with the feathered headdress, the falcon-mouth-forehead, and the unusual shape of the face and eyes.

There’s a lot of color on this figure, and it’s interesting to note that there was a clear deco change between the promo renders on the box and the final figure, where the physical figure opted to go for show-accuracy over the render’s toy-accuracy, which mostly means less yellow and more orange.

So, Airazor’s a mixture of greyish-brown bird parts, orange and gold robot parts (the gold being mostly painted on) as well as some light grey. In particular, I like the subtle grey fade on the end of her wings.

Her head, in particular, has a TON of paint apps on it, between the gold and orange head crest, the purple face, and the black eyes with green pupils all seeming to be painted on. Thankfully, none of that paint is messed up on my copy.

I do wonder how they budget these things, because while they’re definitely working with a good division of plastic sprues, there’s a lot of paint on her, in general. They even added a tiny Maximal symbol on her arm. It feels like more than what a typical Deluxe gets, and she makes good use of it.

In hand, Airazor’s build quality feels like the polar opposite of Studio Series 86 Jazz. She feels solid, weighty, and well-constructed. Funny enough, going back to that backpack, there’s a pair of tabs that lock down her wings that don’t like to stay in, but the hinges on her wings are tight enough that the whole thing holds together on friction anyway. She even stands up nicely, since her odd backwards feet give her gigantic heel spurs. Her one actual stability issue is her waist, which consists of a mushroom peg that likes to slide forwards and out when I move it, but a quick community survey confirmed this is just on my copy, and I can just hold it down while twisting anyway.

In terms of her articulation, the full Siege Suite is there, except for wrist swivels, though, to make up for it, she has up-and-down wrist motion thanks to her transformation, something that’s unique on a Transformer. Oh, and you can spread her wings along the singular mushroom peg each outer joint is on, for a more impressive silhouette.

I usually don’t comment on it, but a lot of modern War for Cybertron Trilogy figures actually have pegs in their lower back that are compatible with standardized collector’s figure stands, if you have any (I have one from the Trumpeter Bumblebee model kit), and between her articulation and personality, it plays particularly well with Airazor, and all her flying poses.

Airazor had a varied assortment of weapons on the show: A handheld gun, deployable wrist machineguns, and firing wrist rockets. For the figure, they went with a pair of missile pods for her forearms that resemble the latter weapons, albeit a bit larger in size.

Personally, I kind of wish she had the pistol she occasionally used on the show, but these will do, especially considering that you can pop them off and turn them into handheld weapons (or throwing rockets) anyway. She’s also graced with War for Cybertron weapons ports on the back of her shins and on her hips, on top of the ones you mount her rockets on, which is generous for a Kingdom figure.

Transformation

Airazor’s transformation is a variant on the standard Beast-era “flip up the head, flip in the legs” thing, with a few neat extra steps in there, like the torso elongating on some hinges to add more room to work, the legs and feet rotating like a billion times, and her wrists folding and hiding in her torso. Despite all the little extra bits, I was able to do it perfectly each time, despite losing the instructions.

Speaking of that, there’s this weird third mode not mentioned in the package or instructions that appeared in product shots, that involves swapping her robot head for her beast head, and otherwise leaving her in robot mode, like some kind of Egyptian god. It’s not based on anything (it sort of evokes the “mutant heads” a few of the vintage Beast Wars figures had, but Airazor didn’t), but it’s a funny little extra.

Bird Mode

This bird mode was never going to be totally clean. That being said, on the sliding scale of “hides its robot bits,” it comes in cleaner than Blackarachnia or Dinobot, just not as clean as Cheetor, Primal or Megatron, and about the same as Rattrap.

That is to say, from the bottom, there’s blatantly a torso, with folded-up robot legs and arms, but the fists are invisible, and the whole thing’s properly bird-shaped from most angles. It’s also balanced out by some really nice feathered sculpting on Airazor’s wings and back, and a really great realistic falcon head sculpt.

It really feels like they decided that instead of trying to make her altmode clean (which is a sisyphean task), they decided to just make the bird bits into best parts they could, to cancel the other bits out, and it works for me, especially at this size and price point.

For colors, her orange feet are a bit odd, and you can, of course, see plenty of orange and gold torso bits on her chest, but again, to make up for it, the visible bird parts are well-painted, too, especially that face again. In particular, I really like the ring around her eyes.

The real big draw to this bird, however, is that she has a LOT of articulation. Like Cheetor, this went way above and beyond what I was expecting. Firstly, her neck is jointed with both up-and-down, and sideways swivels, and an opening beak. Beyond that, her wings have three separate hinges each, along with the aforementioned swivelling wingtips, meaning you can do a LOT of different poses with them, and even give them a pretty convincing gentle curve.

They’re not quite bendy enough for her to assume a roosting pose totally convincingly, but the overall effect is still really impressive, and again, she plays very well with a figure stand, if you have one. But even if you don’t, she’s surprisingly stable on her feet, even when assuming a front-heavy flying pose, if you extend her legs just a little bit (There’s joint cuts in the middle of her robot-mode shins to make them into stubby bird legs, but you can use the robot knees if you need to) .

For other features, there’s a couple of mounting points on her hips for her weapons, and the same robot-mode ones on the backs of her legs, but that’s it. That’s hardly an issue, given that the real gimmick here is the super-articulated bird.

Overall

This is a really, really good figure. The robot is poseable and solid, it’s a good transformation, and they made the bird mode incredibly poseable and expressive.

It’s not the first time I’ve said it, but it’s easily one of Kingdom’s best (tied with Cheetor, Megatron and Vertebreak in my books). Not only is it a long overdue update to a character that needed it, but it feels like extra work was put into it, to make it a good update.

I always appreciate a well-designed female character, and this one got her due here. Be sure not to miss it.

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