Arachnid

The name or term "Airachnid" refers to more than one character or idea. For a list of other meanings, see Airachnid (disambiguation).

Arachnid is a Predacon mobile fortress from the Beast Wars portion of the Generation 1 continuity family.

The titanic Arachnid was designed by Tarantulas to function as a gigantic mobile fortress for the Predacon forces on Earth. Powerful, well-armed, and able to shoot webs to capture Maximals who attempt to flee before him. Tarantulas based its artificial intelligence on his own personality program. Not surprisingly then, Arachnid's rudimentary mind quite enjoys the cruelty of playing with his Maximal prey.

Toys

Beast Wars

And the Spiders from Mars.

• Arachnid (MicroVerse playset, 1997)

Arachnid was released as part of the MicroVerse line, Hasbro’s miniatures line meant to compete with Galoob’s "Micro Machines" (before Hasbro’s purchase of Galoob). It transforms from a spider into a treaded base unit with a gun emplacement on a posable arm and gripper claws. Its abdomen opens up to reveal a landing strip and volcano-like hangar for two insectoid mini-vehicles. It came with two micro-figures, Megatron in his gator body and Razorbeast.

There are two variants; some use yellow plastic for the mini-vehicles and other accessories, while later releases use bright green plastic.

• More information on Arachnid at TFU.info

Notes

• Due to containing a mini-figure of Megatron, this otherwise unmemorable micro-set is of interest to Optimus and Megatron completists.
• Oddly enough, the Megatron figure included with this set is unmistakably meant to represent the Predacon leader's gator body, while the Optimus Primal figure included in the Orcanoch playset, Arachnid's Maximal counterpart, represents the Maximal leader in his gorilla form. Guess Primal got around to upgrading his body before Megatron did in this micro-continuity...