There's no point trying to say that I didn't expect to buy any Power of the Primes figures - as soon as they announced just the Prime Masters, simple variations on the Titan Masters, which would represent the 12 (or 13) Primes, I started debating whether or not to pick them up because I have a shelf in my collection that already has interpretations of several Primes. But when the 'Evolution' figures of Optimus and Rodimus Prime were revealed, I was instantly hooked.
Rodimus was going to be the less likely prospect as I already have a perfectly good Hot Rod from the Titans Return line, and the partsforming required by the new one - not to mention the floppiness of his joints, as experienced by several YouTubers - did not appeal, but a Leader class Optimus Prime figure that's also a Deluxe/Voyager-ish class, G1 cartoon-accurate Orion Pax? That has to be worth having... right?
Well... Once you answer the question "Do I really need another Optimus Prime in a trilogy that's only recently given us Titans Return Powermaster Optimus Prime/Legends Super Ginrai?" Come on, need I refer you to the Unicron Trilogy and its three unique versions of the Autobots' leader..? I'm not averse to skipping an Optimus Prime figure if it seems superfluous, and honestly feel that the character has been done to death (literally, in the case of Takara Tomy's Masterpiece 'Sleep Mode' repaint), but some versions are obvious must-haves.
Let's take a look, and see if Evolution Optimus Prime is one of those...
Vehicle Mode:
To start with, we have a very traditional-looking Optimus Prime truck cab with a metallic-grey trailer. So far, so G1 homage. The proportions are OK, though it looks a little rushed from some angles, particularly toward the rear. The very front of the cab is something of a mess of not-entirely-matched panels, but I'm impressed that they actually made the window sections out of translucent blue plastic, considering both Hasbro's Powermaster Prime and Takara Tomy's original, solo release of Super Ginrai used opaque red plastic and just painted in the windows. That said, the difference in materials contributes to the poor colour matching. The red paint isn't quite the same as the red plastic, and I'm pretty sure there are at least two shades of red plastic in use.
The many panels in play lead not only to mismatched colours and subtle misalignments, but also unusual breaks in or compression of details. The headlights, for example, are nicely painted and everything... but they're squashed in either side of the main chunk of grille, leaving strangely bare red areas on the outermost sections of the front. Traditionally, the headlights would be closer to the outsides, so I don't quite understand why they didn't just put half on the outermost section, half on the central section, and keep the gap between the headlights and the grille... Still, that's really just splitting hairs. I am reasonably impressed by the silver paint that makes up most of Prime's traditional vehicle mode stripe (several parts are bare red plastic due to all the joints and hinges), all sections of the grille, the frames of the headlights and the whole bumper, as well as the wing mirrors, side window frames and even the windscreen wipers. The side windows themselves are painted but, upon closer examination of the darkened wheel wells, it transpires that the area directly behind the front wheels is simply unpainted translucent blue plastic, for reasons which become clear in the larger robot mode.
Sadly, the rest of the model bares all the hallmarks of Hasbro's habit of leaving as much as possible unpainted, the hubcaps on all six wheels being the most egregious - yet all too common - omission. I mean, I don't expect chromed hubcaps, but surely a little silver paint isn't too much to ask? The rear end of the truck only has paint where the robot mode requires it, and the smokestacks are barely visible - in part because they're unpainted, but also because they're used to disguise transformation hinges on either side of the truck, and don't extend up as much as smokestacks tend to. Another Hasbro hallmark is the anaemic red paint used. The red plastic isn't the brightest, punchiest red I've ever seen, but the red paint is lifeless and bordering on orange. Whoever chose the colours for this thing should probably get their eyes checked...
The back of the cab is an utter mess, with the robot mode's head and chest unfurled to become the trailer hitch and, while the robot's arms just kind of bunch up looking like robot arms stuck on the back of a truck cab. I was also a little dubious, from the moment I saw them, of the obvious robot heel spurs sticking out just behind the rear wheels... Seems a little dangerous for a vehicle on the road...
One thing that impressed me - and I'm still not sure why, exactly - was that the petrol tanks on either side of the cab are actually sculpted details on the backs of the robot's legs. It's a surprisingly clever bit of detailing, given the way Prime's legs invariably end up being stuck out behind the cab, but other versions of Prime have either omitted the petrol tanks or had them connected to the lower legs.
The trailer is, for the most part, a decent callback to the G1 toy's trailer - I don't have access to my G1 Optimus Prime right now, but I think it's also a very similar size. Naturally, it doesn't open up into a battle base/repair bay... in fact, I'm not convinced it can open its doors or drop a ramp, because the end of the trailer is the Leader class figure's feet, and is unpainted blue plastic. The top of the trailer is very gappy, with open sections in the rearmost panels, 5mm ports in the central section... and then the larger robot's arms, perfectly visible and entirely undisguised, at the front. There's even a deliberate gap between the arms to 'store' his combined robot mode weapon. The very front of the trailer shows off the top of Prime's chest and opens into the area between his arms... So it's really just as well that the exterior molded detail of the trailer is actually quite good, despite the many seams and panels making up the trailer's sides. I'm particularly impressed by the way the large, flat pin heads for the shoulder joints are used as the centrepiece of an interpretation of the circular detail on the G1 toy's trailer - it's not quite the same, but it's clear that's what they were aiming for.
As with a lot of the most recent figures, the stickers used on the sides of the truck are a bit on the crap side. Out of the box, several were already peeling, none had been squarely placed and some even overlapped seams. There was only one that I felt the need to peel off and reapply and, having done so, the poor-quality material used curled up and became difficult to stick back in place. I'd imagine Reprolabels will come up with better quality alternatives sooner or later... Not to mention an upgrade set to deal with the shortcomings in the paint job.
Orion Pax Robot Mode:
Here's where things go a bit weird... because Optimus Prime's traditional G1 vehicle mode transforms not into Optimus Prime, but to his prior existence as Orion Pax - the erstwhile Cybertronian dock worker/archivist, depending on your preferred continuity... So we have a terrestrial vehicle mode coupled with an older, Cybertronian robot mode that actually doesn't make any sense in the context of the toyline... in fact, this is a truly anachronistic TransFormers toy. Who knows what the inevitable Machinima web series will make of it considering they've already got an Optimus Prime... I sense a whole lot of clumsy retconning in the future...
I get the impression quite a few people were seriously excited by this aspect of the toy but, personally - as one of those TransFormers fans who prefers the look of the G1 toys to the G1 cartoon and will always bemoan the sloppy look of the TV show - an animation accurate Orion Pax was never high on my want list for future toys. I actively dislike the oversimplified, puffy look of the character models 'refined' by Floro Dery, and pretty much loathe the virtually organic look of Orion Pax as he appeared in the story 'War Dawn'. With bizarrely prominent, pouty lips, a ridiculous helmet and thigh-high boots that put the likes of Beyoncé and Lady Gaga to shame, he looked like something out of a fetish fashion show rather than a robot. The idea that Orion Pax was rebuilt into Optimus Prime and, along the way, gained the emotional maturity to see that admiring the Decepticons just because they could fly was A Bad Thing because they were also Evil, may have been good enough for a Saturday morning cartoon (which were, let's face it, pretty heavy-handed in their Life Lessons), but it didn't make much sense in the context of the toyline... and contradicted the idea that the Matrix of Leadership was what bestowed upon a 'bot the whole 'Prime' schtick.
So, let us put that aside and take a look at the first ever G1-accurate Orion Pax toy (the e-Hobby one being a TargetMaster Kup repaint, the Thrilling 30 version being a bit too different, and the Takara Tomy 'Tribute' version being a repaint of Titans Return Kup). Despite my misgivings about the animation model, the plastic reality is actually not that bad... Sure, there are no identifiable vehicle parts - at least, nothing that looks like it might transform into a terrestrial flat-nosed truck - but at least some of the weird Dery-style curviness has been turned into almost functional-looking robotic detail. The chest, in particular, is both fairly accurate to the animation model and covered with well-sculpted detail, including tech detailing on the inside of his chest window. The arms are slender and smooth, with heavier armour on the shoulders; the legs are far squarer than those of the animation model, though they do share the 'muscle' detail on the thigh. The lower legs are more in-proportion, and the tall, cloven kneecaps are reminiscent of those on the CGI Optimus Prime from the live action movies. They're designed to look exactly like the animation model from the TV show, but without giving him the 'thigh-length kinky boot' look. The ankle area has also been thickened and the shin flattened out for a more robotic look, albeit a sleek, retrofuturistic robotic look rather than any I'd traditionally associate with TransFormers. It's interesting to note that the lower legs feature some semicircular details on the outsides which almost resemble parts of a trailer hitch... but, of course, these details are round the wrong way for that to have been the intention. Going by the animation model, it's possible they're meant to represent wheels from his Cybertronian vehicle mode.
One odd thing about his legs is their construction, in terms of the plastic parts used. The hip skirts are red plastic, the thighs are metallic grey... but the hip joints themselves, for no apparent reason, are blue plastic. His arms seem similarly inconsistent at first glance, but the metallic grey plastic of the elbow does actually reference an aspect of Orion Pax's animation model, even if it doesn't do so with perfect accuracy.
As well as a little paintwork - much of the budget having surely been spent on the red paint covering his translucent blue torso plate, limiting the detail work to three blobs of sunshine yellow below his boob-window, a dab of silver on his belly and silver trim around his ankles - there are a stickers on his shins loosely reminiscent of G1 Optimus Prime's stickers to liven up robot mode a little more. According to the animation model, there should have been some white/silver paint on his groin as well, but the omission doesn't look too bad.
Where this figure disappoints, it's all rather predictable. First and foremost, the inner surfaces of the legs are gaping chasms, as has become the norm with TransFormers toys in recent years. Combiner Wars and Titans Return figures often got around the issue by having the lower legs as two halves of a clamshell arrangement which would lever up over, and close around the thighs for vehicle mode, but no such option is available to this figure, as the legs just stick out the back of the truck cab without any compression being needed. Backpacks are also a fairly common thing in TransFormers toys, both old and new, but few are as strange as Orion Pax's oversized cab windows and vehicle mode butt-plate. It's a somewhat confusing mish-mash of parts of the Leader class robot and its vehicle mode, and always makes me think of those online galleries where a section of an image gets enlarged when the mouse pointer is hovered over it.
He comes with two handguns, both of which seem far too large for him. The one that forms the front of Optimus Prime's blaster doesn't look too bad, but it's little more than a tube with a 5mm grip toward the back. The other part is definitely too big to look right in Orion Pax's hands, and isn't really passable as a weapon in and of itself. Both sections, molded in black plastic, look quite good at first glance, but are gappy, and much of their bulk is cheated by reasonably clever structuring - on the whole, they look better than most Titans Return weapons.
The head sculpt is fairly accurate to the G1 animation model's twin-crested bowl of a helmet, which is especially impressive given that the G1 animation model wasn't accurate to itself from scene to scene, varying in shape, size and proportions. Thankfully, the designers didn't even attempt to replicate the pouty lips of the source material, leaving him with an essentially expressionless silver face with a literally square jaw.
Considering the rather sloppy back end of the vehicle mode, it comes as no surprise that Orion Pax's transformation is almost ridiculously simplistic. The head and chestplate unpeg from the torso and flatten out to the rear, the legs rotate 90° inward, then swing up to meet it, softly pegging in to slots to the side of the outermost yellow blobs... then the arms just sort of bunch up and swing round to the back. The fact that the arms don't peg together, or to any other part of the vehicle (contrary to some suggestions seen on the interwebs) is rather poor design in my opinion... but then, so is having the fists flip back into the wrists in such a way that they remain perfectly visible in vehicle mode. On the upside, the way the panels of the backpack unfurl in stages and peg into the sides of the truck is suitably impressive... it's just really weird to watch this cartoony, Cybertronian Orion Pax transform into a terrestrial vehicle that has been associated with Optimus Prime for over thirty years.
Like most contemporary figures, Orion Pax is pretty well articulated, with ball-jointed shoulders, double-jointed elbows, separate hip joints for forward/back and inward/outward movement, upper thigh rotation, and a decent knee bend. Due to the way the shoulder joints are framed - both by the bulky shoulder armour and the protruding torso parts around them - their range is a little more limited than I'd have expected, but they're easily good enough for some decent poses. The ankles are fixed, with toe flaps at the front, but the heel spur turns out to be reasonably effective for keeping him stable. The head is on a ball joint, but its range isn't as great as one might expect due to the size and flat base of the helmet, not to mention the trailer hitch sticking out the back of the head.
Optimus Prime Robot Mode:
The moment I set eyes on this, it seemed strangely familiar... and for very good reason. This version of Optimus Prime is very heavily based upon Masterpiece Optimus Prime v2. While there are clearly no common parts, lots of details seem to be lifted directly from that figure, and the size and proportions are very similar. The biggest difference is in the colouring - the anaemic red of the plastic and paintwork compares poorly even to Hasbro's MPOP v2, while the grey is more metallic, and the blue is far closer to the darker, G1 blue than the lighter, brighter blue of the Masterpiece.
Naturally, with the bulk of the larger robot being made up of the trailer, much of him is molded in the metallic grey plastic, so it's disappointing to see how little red paint has been applied on top, even though I'm not exactly keen on the shade that's been used. The forearms, shoulders and the panel across the top of the torso, along with the sides of the waist are painted red, while the bare grey plastic shows through in strategic locations to represent, for example, the silver stripes on his biceps and across his chest, either side of the fake truck grille in his abdomen. Unfortunately, bare grey plastic is also evident in several places it shouldn't be - particularly the tops/sides/backs of his shoulders and his fists. The internal faces of the truck panels on his arms and legs are also unpainted, but it could be argued that they're armour panels on top of his limbs rather than integral parts of the limbs. The groin area is almost identical in its design to the Masterpiece, just the proportions are slightly different - the blue chunk on the lowest part of the groin is noticeably wider than on the Masterpiece - and the yellow parts are painted on rather than being separate pieces of translucent plastic.
He does feature some silver paint on the traditional shin vents, so it's disappointing to see that nothing else has been painted to match, and things like the small, conical lights on across the top of Prime's chest are just painted over in the same red as the rest of that area, rather than being picked out in yellow or silver. What he does have is more of the thin, plastic stickers dotted about to add further G1 referential detail. Autobot insignias are emblazoned on his shoulders, and his forearms feature toy-accurate tech detail stickers, while the animation model's 'arrow' molded detail just in front lacks its traditional yellow paintwork. The knees and toes feature tiny G1 homaging stickers, though the latter are easily missed as they're so small.
Overall, he ends up looking far greyer than he should, and one can only hope that, at some point, Takara Tomy manage to release a Legends version with a bolder red and a more complete paint job, if not additional parts to fill in the gappiness of some of the leg panels.
A couple of features I really like about this version of Prime are the positioning of the smokestacks and the petrol tank details on his lower legs. Obviously, Prime couldn't be without his iconic shoulder adornments but, equally, he couldn't be without shoulder articulation, so the smokestacks were placed on the backs of his shoulders, and the tips of the pipes flip up from the back to make them the proper length. Similarly, he'd look very odd without petrol tanks on his legs, so they're sort-of molded as details of the inner faces of the trailer panels... though it's no surprise that they're not filled in, and end up being raised empty boxes with structural support bands inside. From the front, they look OK... but from the sides, I almost wonder why they bothered. One advantage this has over the Masterpiece is that it doesn't have a contrived way of disguising the rearmost wheels - the trailer shell essentially turns inside out to cover them over, as they're directly behind the lower legs rather than being mounted on their sides.
It's also worth noting that the trailer panels on his forearms feature 5mm ports. Other than his handgun parts, this figure doesn't include any accessories that can be attached to them, but there's no shortage of 5mm pegged weapons from other toys in this line, as well as in Combiner Wars and Titans Return, so they present a good opportunity to mix and match. They could certainly accommodate any pieces of Prime Armour that aren't being used by any of the Deluxe class figures or the upcoming gestalts.
Another similarity with the Masterpiece is in the fact that the chest can open to reveal the Matrix of Leadership... which, in the case of this toy, is very basic and squared-off central 'jewel' part - molded as a hollow box in translucent blue plastic and painted over with orange - and a metallic grey frame piece which can accommodate a Prime Master (or a Titan Master, should you feel so inclined - I really should take photos of PotP Prime with other characters' heads mounted in his chest... that would be really creepy... Just imagine Ultra Magnus peeping out from inside Optimus Prime!). Actually opening and closing the chest proves tricky on mine, as the doors tend to catch on the frame of his body, and then it's complicated even more by the fact that you then have to open the Orion Pax vehicle mode cab window to access the Matrix chamber deep within his chest. Actually removing and mounting the Matrix and/or a Prime Master figure in the Matrix's frame is very fiddly - it has to be wedged into the cavity in a particular way to stay put, and requires quite a bit of trial and error.
Aside from the large trailer panels hanging off his forearms, the most obvious sign that Power of the Primes Evolution Optimus Prime ain't a Masterpiece is that Orion Pax's legs are sticking up on his back. They're actually pegged in quite securely, attaching to Pax's chest plate via sockets uniquely sculpted for that purpose, but they're transformed such that the gaping holes from the insides of Pax's lower legs are on show on the outside of the backpack... hopefully that's something a Third Party - or an upgraded Legends release - will eventually fix. If I was being generous, I might say it looks like a jet pack - after all, Pax's cloven kneepads do sort of resemble afterburners when upside-down (if you squint really hard). The only other thing that can be said in its favour is that it doesn't protrude too far up behind the robot's head. It's certainly a step down from the likes of Combiner Wars/Legends Ultra Magnus or Titans Return Optimus Prime/Legends Super Ginrai, but it's certainly not the worst backpack I've ever seen on a TransFormers toy.
Orion Pax's two oversized handguns peg together to form Optimus Prime's iconic laser blaster, though its very much based on the animation model rather than the toy. Its proportions are perfect for the full-sized robot and the gappiness of its construction is easily overlooked. It pegs together very securely and fits snugly into Prime's fists.
The head sculpt is virtually identical to the Masterpiece v2 model, albeit without the mobility of the antennae. Given the mixture of G1 references, both toy and animation model, on this figure, I really hope that one of the third parties will make a replacement head for this based on the G1 toy, just because the animation model always seems to be the go-to reference for Optimus Prime figures these days, and the toy is sorely under-represented... That, or something more like the Classics version. I don't dislike this head sculpt, I just think it's a bit of a cliché at this point.
The Orion Pax component of this figure needs to be transformed part way between vehicle mode and robot mode, with the truck's side panels turned into the larger robot's chest windows, the arms in their robot mode position, but still folded up, and the legs rotated 180° at the thigh, then pegged into Pax's chest. The trailer then has to basically turn inside out, releasing the legs and arms, before the Pax component is slid in through the back, clipping into place firmly, and released for transformation back by way of a small blue button on his backside. Some of the trailer panels are more inclined to pop off than transform as, despite very few of the joints being pinned, they're all remarkably stiff and some appear to be slightly warped... though at least mine was assembled with the correct parts - I've seen at least one YouTuber whose Prime came with two identical trailer pieces so one side has a small panel that won't peg in. In terms of engineering, this feels like quite a substantial achievement, at lease on a par with the previous Ultra Magnus and Powermaster Prime toys... and it's amazing that his truck mode wheels are almost entirely disguised behind the larger robot mode's chest windows and their tech detailing. Given that those wheels are pinned in place, I do fear for the longevity of the chest windows, but I don't see any signs of them breaking anytime soon, and not even a hint of plastic stress around either pin.
One often finds that an upgraded 'bot ends up with somewhat restricted articulation due to the complications of creating a believable alternate mode for the framework, so it's pleasing to see that the tricks learned when designing CW/Legends Ultra Magnus and TR Powermaster Prime/Legends Super Ginrai have been cleverly applied to this new interpretation of Optimus Prime. The joints are all pinned hinges aside from the mushroom peg hip swivel, and the range of motion is every bit as good as the Masterpiece version - possibly even better in the case of the feet, as the range of ankle and toe tilt seems slightly larger. My only real gripes are the lack of wrist rotation and that, given that the fists are clearly designed to look like the Masterpiece's hands, the fingers are fixed around a 5mm socket for his gun.
While I'm disappointed by the gappy panels, the cheap, poorly applied stickers and the drab, unfinished-looking paint job on this figure, I'm far more impressed with it than I'd expected to be. In hand, it's nice and solid, the engineering is excellent and the care and attention that's gone into it the design goes a lot of way toward restoring some of my lost faith in Hasbro... if only some of the gappiness could have been addressed, and if only they'd used a bolder red paint. The Matrix is a cheaply-made placeholder for Prime Masters. Evolution Optimus Prime is a really fun toy, with the dubious bonus of including an animation accurate Orion Pax figure.
So, really, it all comes down to whether or not one should try to find a place in their collection for this figure considering it was only a year or so ago that we got another Leader class Optimus Prime - and a very good one, at that. Those of us who sought this figure out early will have paid a premium (anything between the £54 I paid at the Nottingham Robot Company to £60-£70, or more, at various other online outlets) and, in my humble opinion, he's really not worth that much. I gather his regular retail price in the UK will be in the region of about £45, which I'd say is much more acceptable given his size and complexity. I would unreservedly recommend picking up Evolution Optimus Prime at the regular retail price, even if you have TR Powermaster Prime or Legends Super Ginrai because, in spite of its aesthetic shortcomings, it is one of the best Hasbro-produced TransFormers toys I've had the pleasure of fiddling about with in the last couple of years, and an excellent introduction to the Power of the Primes toyline, even though I'm not entirely sold on the interchangeable Prime Master gimmick this toy is designed to support.
If only it made narrative sense to have a terrestrial truck that turned into Orion Pax, with a trailer that upgraded him to Optimus Prime... That almost sounds like an idea from an entirely different G1-offshoot continuity, rewriting much of the history of the brand...
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