APC Toys Night Countess

(Femme-Bot Friday #82)

Way back in 2016, a 3D printed figure based on the TransFormers Prime character Airachnid turned up on my Facebook feed, courtesy of (seemingly former) YouTuber Daimchoc. Given that Hasbro's own Deluxe class toy was an absolute travesty, any new figure based on that character didn't exactly have a high bar to clear, but this looked to be phenomenal, even in its grey/white prototype form. A painted sample appeared not long afterward, looking incredible and, from the moment I first clapped eyes on it, it has been on my Want List, even though obtaining it seemed unlikely given its provenance. Then again, stranger things have happened...

Imagine my surprise, then, when APC Toys revealed images of their latest TransFormers Prime figure earlier in the year and, rather than being just another minor upgrade to an official TF Prime toy, it was that very 3D printed custom figure, fully painted and very much on the way to a full production run. The moment it became available, I put in my order... And, precisely 30 days later, it arrived, straight from China.

Is this new, Third Party take on the other alluring Femme-Bot Fatale actually any better than Hasbro's? Let's take a look...

Packaging:

The moment the postman handed me the box, I was reminded of some comments I'd read about this figure being extremely light - almost as if the box is empty. I can confirm that is very much the case. Moreover, the box (empty but for the packaging and instruction sheet) weighs more than double its contents: 138g, while Night Countess, her rotor blades and the additional legs for her predator mode weigh in at just 62g in total. On the one hand, that's great - the total package being just 200g means she's likely to qualify for the cheapest postal options, at least as far as UK postage goes. On the other hand, it doesn't speak highly of the materials used... But, who knows, perhaps plastic weight is a red herring anyway.

The box is nicely done - good, solid single-walled corrugated card (which explains the weight!), printed in full colour on all sides, and with a glossy finish. The artwork on the front and back are unique, with the latter being a simpler, more vibrantly-coloured, cel-shaded version of the former, while the art on the sides is alternate versions of the front cover image. Top and bottom are mostly bare, though the latter features a sticker showing QR codes linking to transformation videos.

Inside, the figure and her accessories are safely encased in a foam tray, with the instructions printed in colour on fairly heavy, glossy paper. The images are all monochrome - so one has to wonder why they bothered printing in colour - and extremely dark and muddy, which makes deciphering some of the steps quite difficult... though transformation is fairly straightforward and self-explanatory, even without recourse to the videos.

Vehicle Mode:

About the only thing Hasbro's attempts at Airachnid got right was the appearance of her helicopter alternate mode. This figure was clearly designed with the robot as the priority, so it takes a lot of liberties and delivers a vehicle mode that is rather chubby, like a robotic ryukin goldfish with rotor blades instead of fins, and a stealth paintjob. Everything at cockpit level and above looks fine, albeit perhaps a little squashed. Below that, however, it's a bulbous mess that still leaves most of the robot mode in full view on the underside. I'd hardly expect landing gear (or skids) from a toy this size, but the fact that vehicle mode requires the use of a display stand, yet has no dedicated port for one, is nevertheless quite disappointing. That said, it's not as if Hasbro's version had any form of landing apparatus, and both leave parts of the robot's body visible on the underside.

Obviously this doesn't fit the configuration of any existing helicopter but then, in the TV show, Airachnid's terrestrial vehicle mode doesn't even match the type of helicopter she scanned, which is still one of the biggest liberties TransFormers Prime took with the way Cybertronians adopt terrestrial disguises. The fact that she doesn't have a tail rotor is consistent with the CGI so, technically, there's no way this helicopter should be able to fly. Exacerbating this, the tail looks too short for the size of the main body, and her feet aren't even remotely disguised, right at the back. The extra fins poking out of the tail and coming off the main body look a little unnecessary, and the lack of any particular detail on the main rotor section is disappointing... though this is at least somewhat consistent with the whole 'stealth' motif of the CGI vehicle.

Also in keeping with that idea is the minimal paint job for vehicle mode, with most of the shell cast in black plastic. Going by the photos on the instructions, the cockpit section was possibly intended to be molded in translucent plastic, but the final model appears to be completely opaque, with the canopy windows painted in using a matte purple. Either side of the cockpit are three inset stripes of metallic pink, and the claw-like tips of the rotor blades are painted the same shade of purple as her feet, and one of them is a little blobby on mine.

Possibly the most disappointing aspect of this helicopter form - aside from its complete lack of fidelity to the show model - is that the rotors don't spin very well, barely getting a couple of revolutions before grinding to a halt due to friction. The fact that the blades are articulated also causes a few issues, since they don't straighten out consistently. On the upside, when they're pegged in at the hub, they stay connected very well... I just can't help but feel that freely rotating rotor blades should be the absolute minimum requirement for any helicopter toy and, comparatively cheap though this may have been, I expect better from a Third Party effort.

Another disappointment, I suppose, is the lack of weapon accessories, even if only for this vehicle mode. It's already inaccurate to the CGI, and there are a couple of obvious weapon ports, directly below the rotors' hub on either side which, as far as I can tell, go completely unused in any mode. Given that this is a representation of the sinister Decepticon hunter, one would tend to expect her to be able to deploy some kind of weapons in her vehicle mode. Either that, or there are plans afoot to rework this into a literal robot fish, and the proposed fins will be going into those ports. Out of curiosity, I fished out my Hasbro Airachnid figure, to see if her weapons were compatible but, naturally, they use 5mm pegs/ports, and these appear to be 3mm. The weapon from the Cyberverse Jet Vehicon certainly fits (after an initial struggle), but it then becomes more apparent than these ports are an a weird angle, so anything plugged in points slightly outward rather than directly forward. Better results can be achieved by using the ports directly below the rotor blades, but that just makes the 'spare' ports all the more baffling: they must be there for a reason, surely?

Robot Mode:

Let's face it, it wasn't just Gina Torres' voice that made Airachnid such an alluring villain - far more of a true Femme Fatale than Blackarachnia simply because she was so wilfully (not to say 'gleefully') evil. The design was deliberately slinky, overtly feminine, and apparently took some design cues from Disney's Maleficent. Hasbro's attempt at turning that into a Deluxe class toy was a failure on pretty much every level, so was a pleasant surprise that APC Toys took such a different approach to Airachnid compared to their previous TransFormers Prime figures. Where previous releases have been recreations of the original toys, some marginally upscaled and always with at least some improvements to the paintwork, Night Countess is, as previously mentioned, wholly their own take on the character, distinct and unique, but that its design and engineering are based on a 3D printed, fan-made custom figure which made its online debut about six years ago.

Night Countess' build in robot mode is appropriately slinky, but also somewhat exaggerated. The legs, in and of themselves, are the perfect fit for her height, and the helicopter tail makes for a decent heel spur on her claw-like, alien stiletto heels, but the hips seem enormous compared to her slender waist and slight bust, and the curve of her upper body is so pronounced, and the rotor section so high up on her back, that she can end up looking almost hunch-backed from the sides. The arms are perhaps a little too slender, particularly down at the forearm and the hands, but their minimal bulk is supplemented by the armour panels attached both to the forearms and the shoulders. It's these latter that are a bone of contention for me, because the CGI in the TV show clearly implies that Airachnid's shoulder armour is formed from the side windows of her cockpit canopy. Obviously, those are far too small on this figure, and the arms transform out of the bottom of the nose and sides of the cockpit area... But it just goes to show that perhaps there are still better ways to make an Airachnid toy, yet to be properly explored.

The sculpt of the body is quite impressive in its detailing considering it's based on the fairly bland and simplistic TFPrime art style. Where a lot of Third Party Femme-Bots seem to crank up the robo-boobage, Night Countess takes a far more modest approach. In terms of shape, it adds a few more angles than the comparatively flat-chested CGI (quite sensible, actually - boob armour is just asking for trouble), giving a more humanoid almost-curve to the underboob. The sternum area is rather more deeply inset compared to the CGI, giving a somewhat exaggerated cleavage, and it's painted with a dark purple. The collar area is nicely detailed, with a touch of silver on the rim at the front, but the back section of the raised collar suddenly becomes unpainted purple plastic, because it's molded as part of the same section as the neck. The waist is nicely detailed, with a subtle curve to the belly, but the whole block is painted purple, but the CGI's pink highlights just below the chest have not been painted in. Her pelvis is almost nothing like that of the animation model, but it seems as though the designer tried to cram in details from over the hips (pretty much where the 'skirt' hinges are) onto the front of the pelvis. It has the right sort of layered armour look, but it curves back around the waist more, and the main, central panel bends backward, where the CGI has it either bending slightly forward, or simply hanging straight down. It features some gunmetal paint on the inset details on either side, with some thin pink 'glow' applied to the top of the central section and over the hips. Her legs carry on the tradition set by the upper body, being angular, but with more changes in angle to give a softer, rounder appearance. In particular, either the inner thighs are larger and rounder, or it's just that the black outer panels don't extend quite so far round the front of the thigh. The gold kneecaps are present, but less elaborate, and have been used to emphasise the curve of her legs, pushing the shin further back from the knee itself. Her slender arms are mostly quite accurate to the CGI up to the shoulder joint, which is much simplified, and only features a band of gold paint around the front, with the shoulder mass itself left as unpainted purple plastic. Her ridged forearms correctly feature gold paint on the cuffs, but the hands are entirely unpainted, where she should have the effect of black, fingerless gloves with gold knuckles. Given the small size of the parts, the omission here is at least somewhat understandable.

As mentioned above, Night Countess doesn't come with weapon accessories, as such, but her rotor blades reconfigure into the three additional 'stinger' legs of her default form, and the six legs of her predator mode are provided as a pair of additional attachments, to make her appear all the more dangerous. The articulation of either set isn't exactly optimal, however, and the rotor blade legs are especially awkward as there's no way to stop them rotating - their own weight will cause them to drift out of whatever position they're set into. The predator legs are a bit longer, but the weird jointing makes posing them effectively a bit of a chore. I feel it's a bit of a shame that she wasn't given at least one of the Cybertronian artifacts/weapons from the TV show, or perhaps an alternate head sculpt or two (perhaps one featuring the telescopic inner 'vampire' jaw) to add a little more to the package. Then again, her hands are in a fixed, open pose with no grip or attachment ports/pegs, so there aren't exactly a lot of options for mounting traditional weapons.

On the subject of her head sculpt, while it's not entirely faithful to the CGI, it is phenomenally good. The wider-eyed look isn't quite so threatening as it could be, though it could perhaps be perceived as eager, and the bobbly detailing seems a little unnecessary, but the painted linework does a decent job of framing her eyes and the overall sculpt is pretty good. The mouth isn't great - hovering somewhere between a soft, slightly open smile and a pout - but, on that score, the original CGI didn't exactly give the figure's designer much to work with. Paintwork is largely excellent - sharp edges and fine details, though the gold trim on her cheeks doesn't appear to be quite so bold as it should be, and the brows aren't arranged in quite the same way as on the CGI. The central crest features the gold 'jewel' in the centre of her forehead and a band of gold running back over her crown. The face is painted gunmetal, with the lips seemingly painted with the same dark purple as the 'cleavage' on her chest - the only other use of that paint colour on the whole figure. About my only complaint would be that the secondary horns on the back of her head only have the required coating of gold paint on the front section of the head - the unpainted tips are on the back section, which has no paint at all. It's understandable, given the construction of the head, but it's nevertheless disappointing that the gold paint ends so early and abruptly.

Predator Mode:

I've left this till last because, personally, I find it to be the least appealing aspect of the figure, in-hand. Don't get me wrong: I'm glad that a way was found to give an approximately Deluxe class Airachnid her full predator mode, but the way it was achieved on the original fan-made custom left something to be desired, and APC toys' production run version is still lacking something... Frankly, I hate to admit it since it's fairly contentious, but that something is probably ball joints.

I also have to admit that, initially, I had trouble getting the legs to work at all... The instructions imply that one should simply plug the legs into the available ports on Night Countess's back, with only the legs transformed. However, they don't peg in particularly well and, being connected at that angle, their articulation becomes exceptionally unhelpful. However, this changes when you flip up the side panels of the rotor section and expose the insides of the ports: the legs peg in more firmly, and they end up virtually perpendicular to the ground, allowing the legs to move in as natural a fashion as their hinges allow. The hinges themselves are fairly stiff and well able to support the figure's minimal weight, but the plastic of the final segment of each leg - the longest part - is so thin, she's very much inclined to wobble, and I'm concerned that one of more of the legs may break if she were to, for example, fall of a shelf in predator mode.

The most significant problems for the main figure in this mode are that the armour on her shoulders (or, more specifically, the pegs on the tips) seriously inhibits her arm movement with her body at this angle, and none of the 'abdomen' section pegs together in any specific arrangement. It is possible to use the pegs on the tail, as with vehicle mode, but the legs themselves and the side skirts effectively remain loose, and all to easy to knock out of position when posing. The arms are the bigger problem, as the vehicle shell sits over the shoulder ball joint and, even without the extra tab on the tips, they would clash with the back of her torso as they're lifted up/forward, which generally results in the shoulders coming unpegged from the torso.

This figure has a fairly neat, elegant transformation, with a few caveats. Certain aspects - like the shoulders in robot mode, or the sides of the nose in vehicle mode - don't tab together especially well. The former are prone to popping out while trying to pose the arms, while the latter sometimes just refuse to tab in securely on one side, though that's possibly because the arm or hand on that side isn't perfectly arranged.  The arms themselves make use of a double joint - the ball-jointed elbow plus a hinge at the end of the forearm - to compress down, and then swing back and forth for transformation on (somewhat loose) angled mushroom pegs. The upper torso twist, where it rotates on a ball joint and hinges back almost 180°, so that her head ends up tucked in behind her waist, is quite clever, but it ends up leaving her waist looking hollow from the sides. The legs really don't do much between robot and helicopter mode: the calves peg into tabs on either side of a protrusion from the back of the engine, and the two halves of the tail peg together. In predator mode, they shorten slightly by shifting the feet and calves up on a hinged internal joint, but then the only real connection point is between the two halves of the helicopter's tail fin, while the 'skirts' simply fold in wherever they can and remain loose. The upper body is left largely unchanged, though obviously the head needs to tilt back so it remains facing forward after the change in her body's orientation. The instructions aren't entirely clear on how to attach the legs, but the intention seems to be that they peg into the sides of Airachnid's backpack. This just about works, but the pegs aren't quite long enough to make a firm connection, and it leaves the legs at an extremely strange angle that, for me, led to problems getting her to stand at all, regardless of what I tried to do with the legs. A better result can be achieved by folding up the side panels of the engine section, and plugging the supplementary legs into their inner face. It means Airachnid is hanging lower, but I honestly think it looks truer to the show model.

While Night Countess is undoubtedly better articulated than Hasbro's abysmal effort, she's far from what I'd consider to be ideal for a figure released in 2022. The main seven joints - neck, shoulders, elbows, and hips - are all ball joints. This isn't necessarily bad in and of itself and it still tends to be the best solution for the neck... However, in this day and age, and particularly on a Third Party figure, it feels like an outdated shortcut when it comes to the limbs. Given the size of the shoulders and elbows, those choices are understandable, and the hips are at least supplemented by an upper thigh swivel joint. Ultimately, we get a head with a fairly expressive range of tilt, shoulders that, in theory, should be able to rotate a full 360°, but soon clash with the backpack, and which can raise out to the sides by about 30°, but end up unpegging before they're moved very far. The ball-jointed elbows double as the bicep swivel, and can bend a little over 90° before needing the transformation hinge to supplement their range. The wrists are also on ball joints, but they were so stiff, I had to unscrew the forearm to make sure before I tried moving them. They only really allow the hands to rotate, and I still worry that the hands will shear off if I try to move them too much. She has no waist joint, but the mid-torso transformation joints can be used to turn and tilt the chest, thus breaking what little continuity her body shell actually has. The hips can travel through about 180° forward-to-back, favouring the backward swing due to the shape of the upper thigh. Her knees only really bend through the regulation 90°, but the curve of the leg makes it look a little more. Her feet are basically immobile, but the heel is hinged and, small though her footprint is, it's reasonably easy to get her in a stable pose... it's just never particularly dynamic.

In predator mode, the jointing of her legs is certainly not conducive to particularly dynamic posing, and even getting her balanced on all six knifepoint feet can be tricky - the legs themselves are quite wobbly, and it takes a lot of fine tuning to find her centre of gravity. While it's possible to adjust her pose by rotating the legs at their connection pegs into the body, the firmest method of connecting them leaves her hanging perilously low. The first joint on each leg swings it forward or backward only, then there are two joints on which each leg can bend... but the balance of segment length between each joint is off - possibly for structural reasons - and the final segment - the longest part - is the one that lifts her the most. Just one more joint, in about the middle of the longest segment, might have made a difference... but the animation model has the first two segments longer and straighter, with the first angling up more steeply from the body to start things off. Whenever I tried pegging the legs into the engine section while still folded down, something about the angle of attachment seemed to make it almost impossible to arrange all six legs flat on the ground, let alone in any kind of walking pose.

For a Third Party figure costing a comparatively paltry £50 at her initial release, Night Countess is mostly satisfying... Not great but, as a full production figure based upon a fan-made, 3D printed design created about seven years ago, it's turned out very well. While the figure is incredibly light in-hand, most of it feels quite sturdy... though I'd rather no drop her, as I suspect the rotor blades and predator legs - flexible as they may be - won't stand up to much punishment. Considering the official Deluxe class Airachnid from Hasbro was undersized, simplistic and poorly articulated, yet would have cost £18-20 at the time, I certainly feel that Night Countess is worth the additional £30, even if she is in no way equivalent to a contemporary Leader class toy... Robot mode looks fantastic and, considering APC Toys' other releases are barely upgraded from the original Hasbro molds (albeit already the superior First Edition molds, where available), she's a far more worthwhile addition to a TF Prime collection than either the Deluxe class toy or the smaller, simpler, yet somehow vastly better Cyberverse toy. The lack of weapon accessories is a shame but, to be fair, she seemed to be more of a hands-on fighter most of the time. Sure, her vehicle mode is a bit of a joke, but it's not as if Hasbro are going to do better anytime soon.

And, yes, that's a direct challenge to Hasbro's TransFormers Legacy team: make a Legacy version of Airachnid, but make her good. I suspect she'd have to be so far removed from her appearance in TF Prime as to be effectively a completely different character. But that would hardly be anything new, would it?