Airazor is a basic level Beast Wars toy. She is also one of the first to move away from the first year "spring based" transformation toys and move towards more traditional transformations involving moving and shifting of parts. She is also the first female Maximal introduced to the Beast Wars Transformers toy line, making her the first "official" female Transformer "good guy" released outside of Japan.
Beast Mode:
In beast mode, Airazor is a peregrine falcon. Her color scheme is mostly brown and yellow with grey used for detail work on her feathers. Flip open the panels on her wings to reveal hidden mechanics. A metallic blue is used for the mechanics underneath.
In this form, Airazor has a fair amount of detail including feather patterns on her wings and beast mode head. The grey stripes offer a nice contrast to the brown that makes up most of her body. As a falcon, Airazor has thirteen points of articulation, including her beak and action feature. Pull on the two yellow pieces near the base of her tail and her wings flap.
Overall Airazor has a nice beast mode. Its only drawback is that it looks a bit "blocky" for a bird. Other than that, the detailing and colors are nice.
Transformation to Robot Mode:
Begin Airazor's transformation by flipping her tail feathers up and removing the weapon hidden underneath. Set it aside for now. Now fold the wings up and straighten out the legs. Flip the lower legs around to form the robot legs. Swing the waist piece down and fold down the beast mode head. Flip up the shoulder armor pieces and move her robot arms out. Attach the weapon to the robot arm. She can either hold the weapon in her hand or connect it to the holes on the undersides of her lower arms. Airazor is now in robot mode!
Robot Mode:
Airazor's color scheme brings in a lot more of the yellow hinted at in the robot mode. An additional splash of color is added by green used for her robot eyes and silver for the mouth area. Her detailing is nicely executed with feather details carrying over to parts of the robot mode such as the shoulder armor. Other details such as tubes on the robot head add to a nice looking robot mode.
In robot mode, Airazor has eleven points of articulation. Despite being back heavy, her leg joints are tight enough that she stands firmly in place without flopping over.
Being one of the first Beast Wars basics with a true multi-step transformation and cool detailing makes Airazor one cool toy. Highly recommended. A
Airazor Video Pack Repaint (Brief Review)
Airazor was repainted and repackaged with a video which contained season two episodes of Beast Wars introducing the Transmetals. This version of Airazor was meant to have a "Transmetal" look about her, thus her brown was replaced with a metallic brown and the yellow from the original version replaced with a copper color. Although a nice idea, this toy was definitely an inferior version of the original.
The grade of plastic used for this version of Airazor was inferior to the original. Plus the mold seems to have been filled out incorrectly. The result: Airazor's back heavy parts case this repaint to flop all over the place because the feet are too loose to allow the figure to stand. This repaint is interesting as a collector's item, but one is better off owning the original.
