A little bit of Detective Work won’t harm anyone. Well yes, the curiosity killed the cat (No, not the Keyboard playing one), but it so happens that we are now unraveling the mystery of “Airachnid”.
For those who are unfamiliar with this, I believe a brief introduction is in order…. Few months back we foundout about a new Hasbro Trademark called “Airachnid”. Then S250 of our boards brought us a news of a toy arachnid.
Now, while retrieving the Trademark Document from the United States Patent and Trademark Office, a symbol (See the Image) was also attached to the document. For those who are familiar with the “Beast Era” will immediately recognize the symbol as the Predacon Insignia. However, there are some differences here and there (Note the antennas are bit different, so are the “cheeks“).
Still, no clue whatsoever regarding the whole matter. See what you all can make out of this. We value your opinion… have a go by hitting the Discuss Button.
Kaymac
I'm guessing Bionicle. Greg Farshtey gets a list of names that he's free to use in story that got passed through legal, and I think Straxus might be one of them. It sounds Bionicle-esque.
Edit: I asked Greg and apparently it's not them. The name wasn't trademarked by Lego.
chazburgr
I couldn't find anything in the Trademark search for anything close to Straxus or even Darkmount. Go figure.
Thundershot
They can't really do that… there's a lot more to it than that.
But I'm curious who is actively using the Straxus name…
Kaymac
I'm always wondering why Hasbro doesn't just attach a prefix to every name they lose, like "Autobot Jazz." Why didn't they just call Darkmount "Lord Straxus" or "Decepticon Straxus", and Tankor "Decepticon Octane"?
Thundershot
Apparently they did before, because the last release of him was "Predacon Tarantulas" in the 10th anniversary line.
chazburgr
High-five! We're a couple of Nightbeat's on the scene
Kaymac
Perhaps Hasbro lost the rights to "Tarantulas"?
deliciouspeter
Such a weird symbol. Beast Wars were so weird. And awesome.
Mighty.Maximal
I was under the impression that this was a character or base-bot or something like that associated with Transformers rime.
Lodril
I'm a trademark lawyer in the fandom!
I second your call of BS. There's nothing in the AIRACHNID filing records that indicates any connection of that mark to the Predacon symbol. The Predacon symbol registration is attached as part of an office action where the examiner is explaining that even though the G&S are different, they overlap, and he cites many examples, including the Pred symbol.
The combination of Pred symbol and the AIRACHNID mark seems only to occur on the fan sites, and I don't see it anywhere in the application. I think someone was just pasting them together and going all Glen Beck with it. There's no connection between the two that I can find.
Baltan
I'm a tiny bit surprised after all this time that nobody brought up the incredibly boring possibility that this is just the name for a Movie Insecticon redeco.
Of course I'd prefer something in Generations (but what?) and the potential Insecticon PCC theory is very plausible.
vincheng2k5
I'm all for mixing vehicle and beast alternate modes. Cybertron had this with its intergalactic theme, but the actual character development in that series was terrible. I really liked how BW characters were used in Animated and would like Prime to take a similar route.
TfAnimatedfan
I'm hoping this will be part of Prime. Bringing Beast Wars back sounds like a bad idea. It was done great the first time around.
I can't see Hasbro going completely "Beast" now that the movies have established that Transformers are (for the most part) VEHICLES.
I'm thinking this will be more like Blackarachnia in animated, or Dinobot in Universe. An animal who is put among the other normal Transformers. Hey, we got guys like Straxus and Skullgrin in Generations. It wouldn't be crazy to think they could drop "Airachnid" in.
Grimlock#1
It could be from the animated series. The one episode with waspinator and blackaracknia going back in time. So it could be transformers beast wars animated. Probobably after tf prime
Dustinticon
Well in Beast Wars Arachnid was the Predacon base, so maybe in Transformers rime It will be their floating spider base?
metcalf18
yeah
Obliterator999
Wait… Is this this Arachnid?
UltraMarcus28
looks like beast wars is hasbro's "Prime" objective with the new show but how is a singular name going to carry a factions insignia..unless the character arachnid just symbolizes the entire predacons, thatd be pretty hard core
chazburgr
I'm gonna go ahead and call BS on this. I did a search at the US Patent and Trademark Office for the Documents on the original Airachnid trademark as posted on Transformers @ the Moon (Serial # 77892423).
There IS a document with the Predacon insignia attached to it, but it is in no way related to the Airachnid trademark. It seems the Predacon insignia documents are just there. There's some other logos attached for non-TF related products and don't necessarily mean it ties in with TF.
Actually, what the document is saying is that Mattel actually has an active trademark on "Arachnoid" as of 2005 and that "Airachnid" hasn't been cleared for use and Hasbro is still trying to apply for it.
That's my own detective work, feel free to correct me where wrong. Wish we had a copyright/trademark lawyer in the fandom to help us out
GabrielPrime
My guess it’s related to the TF3 toys line, maybe those robotic creatures are the result of an experiment conducted by our favorite one-eyed purple decepticon scientist, that we see infesting earth by the end of the movie? As you remember, we’ve seen the NEST guys shoot up, but also down towards the ground.
We’ve all seen the magnitude of the destruction on the set, a swarm of metal eating giant cybertronian insects could be a reasonable explanation.