Kingdom Airazor

-Prelude: It’s been 25 years since the Beast Wars episode “The Spark” aired. The season 1 episode that first introduced the concept of the spark to the Transformers franchise. Also, the episode that introduced us to Airazor, the Maximals’ high-flying Eagle lady. Now Airazor is far from the most prolific of Beast Wars characters despite appearing in the TV series, but Kingdom finally brings us a new figure of her. So let’s say go!

Robot Mode: The original Airazor toy was one of those figures that didn’t really look much like the TV character it was supposed to portray. The Kingdom figure does a much better job. While still relatively small for a Deluxe-class figure, it does look slender and feminine and sports a head that does a great job of looking like TV Airazor. The colors also match with the TV version, so no complaints here either.

Airazor is a very nicely articulated figure, able to pull off all sorts of poses, and has two big wings on its back, too. Now TV Airazor was able to nearly completely fold those wings away in robot mode, which doesn’t quite work for the toy version. The normal configuration is the one you see in most of the pictures above, with the wings flaring out slightly to the side. There are two tiny pegs on the wings (second piece from the middle) for pegging them into the back in robot mode. Don’t try to bend the wings more than 90 degrees on that joint. If you want to fold them into a backpack, use the third and final joint without pegging in the wings, otherwise it won’t work and might snap off the pegs.

In terms of weapons Airazor has two arrow-shaped missiles / blasters, that she can carry on her hips or put on her forearms. They look vaguely like the weapons Airazor used in the TV series, so kudos for that. So bottom line: a robot that does a very good job of looking like the TV character and is pretty good as a stand-alone figure, too. Not spectacular, but easily the best Airazor robot mode yet.

Alternate Mode: Unsurprisingly Airazor transforms into an eagle. Now the basic transformation is the same as it was for the original Airazor (and roughly 95 percent of all bird Transformers ever). The bird head flips out from the chest, the wings unfold from the back, the legs fold in to become the bird legs. Two things make Airazor possibly the best bird Transformer I’ve ever seen, though: one, the arms are very nicely tucked away with the fists vanishing underneath the tail feathers. And two, the legs fold together on multiple joints, becoming the closest thing to actual bird legs that are possibly starting from robot legs, I believe. That said, Airazor still has quite the undercarriage in bird mode, but that’s probably unavoidable.

Airazor makes for a very nicely articulated bird with the wings, the legs, and even the head being very poseable. The missile blasters from the robot mode stay on what were the robot’s hips and you can imagine them working as guns on the eagle as well. One thing that is sadly missing here are the flip-out blades the original toy had (which I assume to be the ‘razors’ in the name Airazor). Sure, she never used them in the TV series, but still, would have liked to see them. Apart from that, though: a great bird mode. Again, possibly the best bird-Transformer I’ve ever seen.

Remarks: Airazor was a regular character in the second half of Beast Wars’ first season, but was abducted by the alien Vok in season 2. She only returned as a disembodied spark at the end of season 3, when she and Tigatron took over the body of Tigerhawk. After Tigerhawk’s death in the series finale, Airazor returned in her Transmetal form in the 3H Production comic series “The Wreckers”. That series was never finished, so her final fate remains unknown, but it was strongly hinted that she did not survive.

While quite a few Beast Wars characters have received new figures over the years, the only new Airazors we ever got were repaints in the Timelines and Collectors Club lines. Kingdom has finally brought us a new Airazor, though, and I for one am very happy with her. The figure itself is not highly spectacular or anything, but it’s a good figure and a near-perfect depiction of Airazor from the TV series. As such, fully recommended to all Beast Wars and Airazor fans.

Rating: B+

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