It's also pretty colossal, coming in a box not a lot smaller than that of Megalo Convoy, and perhaps represents one of the last 'playset' Optimus Prime figures Hasbro and Takara produced before the gradual decline in size occurred across the movie toylines, and a whole ten years before Combiner Wars led to Titans Return (which is both a toyline and a mission statement) and its enormous cityformers.
So, in 'honour' of the recently-revealed War for Cybertron (2019) so-called Leader class Optimus Prime, let's take a look at the toy that inspired it...
Vehicle Mode:
So this vehicle is supposed to be a fire engine... and yet it looks more like some kind of heavy-duty battle wagon. I have to say that, while I loved the overall design of most of Galaxy Force, and the plethora of G1 references it contained, many individual molds were just nuts, and this is one of them. Granted, you can find fire engines that are not equipped with ladders, and the right-side weapon is designed to somewhat resemble the end of a fire hose... but there aren't many hoses that are also equipped with missile launchers, and the left-side weapon is clearly a honking great cannon with no conceivable application in an emergency setting. There are also the two further cannons which, while not exactly concealed behind the cab, are not in a position from which they could be safely fired.
This truck also pretty frickin' huge - my light tent is a 50cm box, and Galaxy Convoy is a pretty snug fit inside in vehicle mode. Galaxy Force/Cybertron toys were among the largest and bulkiest toys seen in the TransFormers line, easily rivaling the cities from Generation 1, and later toylines tended to keep things smaller rather more manageable. The front end is built like a battering ram (the robot's hands and knuckledusters forming the 'bumper'), while the roof features a couple of sculpted/painted lights and a large lightbar, right above the cab, in support of the idea that this is an emergency vehicle, not a battle wagon. The back end is a bit of a jumble, with silver-painted tech detail - possibly representing parts of a pump system - on the side panels. The vehicle features a couple of sculpted, silver-painted pneumatic stabilisers on the midsection, though these would normally only be required on a vehicle with a crane or ladder, so they present hints of a dual purpose to certain parts of the vehicle. The cannons on the mid-deck can fold over into the area between the mid-deck and the main grey cannons, but this leaves a pecular looking space through the midsection, and leaves the guns in a position where they can only fire in an arc swinging out to the sides.
The funny thing about this toy is that, comparatively speaking, it doesn't feature a massive amount of paintwork... it's just that what's there has been strategically applied (not least a 'tarnished brass' paint on all the hubcaps - six on the core truck, a further four on the trailer attachments), and it's well enough designed that the limited paintwork doesn't affect how striking the vehicle is. The bold, angled windscreen contrasts dramatically with the surrounding white stripe, the headlights are molded in translucent blue plastic and painted over with metallic orange, the grille fits the proportions of the cab... it's clearly Optimus Prime, despite the outlandish, Sci-Fi redesign. In a darker, desaturated colourscheme, this would look every bit as Mad Max-ish as Dark of the Moon Megatron. As is often the case, the back end gets a raw deal, with implications of signal lights and a bumper left unpainted. However, all the plastic features a fine metallic/pearlescent flake effect - even the grey - so the base model looks fairly impressive just because of the sculpted detail in the gorgeous plastic. The red is Takara Tomy's usual deep, saturated colour, and the blue is nice and dark - not quite G1 dark, but better than many more recent interpretations of Optimus Prime's blue - so the sparkliness of the plastic is very effective when it catches the light.
The two main cannons can be tilted upward and swung outward via two separate ratchet joints at the rear of the vehicle and, while the key only deploys a pair of spring-loaded missile launchers on the right-side weapon, it serves a couple of purposes on the left. As standard, a small blue button on the main bulk of the gun unleashes a rapid-fire sound effect (which continues as long as the button is depressed, with a wind-down/echo effect once the button is released) and causes an LED in the barrel of the gun to blink steadily. Plugging in the key opens up the guard panels around the barrel (accompanied by a 'power up' sound effect and a brief lighting of the LED) and alters the sound effect. Now, pressing the button brings a 'charge and fire' effect (which, again, repeats while the button is held down) with a long 'cooldown' sound upon the button's release. The LED still just blinks, though - no unique light effect with the key in place, which is a bit of a shame as the light effect really doesn't fit the powered-up sounds. Another oddity is that the rows of four blue dots on either side of the cannon appear to be intended to represent additional lights, but they're just paint over the grey plastic of the weapon. While most of the sculpted detail on the cannons seems to be purely tech detailing, there's a white-painted 'framework' effect on the underside of each one, as if they're mounted on sections of ladder.
There's a certain amount of Visible Head Syndrome, in that Galaxy Convoy's head is lowered into his body, but his central crest still pokes up out of a large, square hole in the roof of the cab. It's less visible from the front as the lightbar conceals it, but it's still there... and, despite robot heads having been concealed better before and since, Galaxy Force/Cybertron really didn't try very hard. Meanwhile, the back of the cab reveals the inside of the robot's chest, including the panel which folds down to reveal his Matrix of Leadership, with the robot's chest windows hinged out and round to form dubious side windows at the back of the cab. It's a very different vehicle to the Robots in Disguise/Car Robots fire engine... but neither really function if you take away all the components that aren't part of the core robot.
Alleged 'Flight Mode':
This thing is supposedly official but, never have seen more than an episode or two of the TV show, I don't know if it was ever actually used, or if it's effectively just a fanmode. It almost looks deliberate, but nothing about it isn't necessary for its use in the robot's Supermode, and it honestly just looks like a firetruck with wings bolted on or, at a stretch, a heavy-duty space fighter.
Not that I'd expect - or even prefer - some sort of transformation for the front end... it looks like an afterthought, but that may well be because that's precisely what it was.
On the upside, in this form, the button on the left-side cannon is more easily accessible... though the key-activated gimmicks are not, as the key slot is stuck between the top of each weapon and the side of the vehicle. That said, the left-side cannon's key-activated form can't be deployed in this mode anyway, since the guard panels (or the top one, at least) don't have clearance to open out.
Basic Robot Mode:
Personally, I find the basic form of Galaxy Convoy more than a little disappointing. He's big and chunky, appearing to be constructed largely out of semi-detailed boxes, his chest windows are utterly fake, and the whole thing - from the ginormous truck cab shoulder pads down to the brick-like feet - seems rather half-baked. In fact, compared to quite a few other figures even in the same line, let alone by today's standards, Galaxy Convoy looks positively clumsy. The central mass of the torso is a heavily distorted interpretation of the G1 character's truck cab with the most enormously protruding boob windows I've ever seen, and a tiny fake grille on the waist. The groin is covered over by a massive hinged crotch plate which, while it doesn't actively limit the poseability of his legs, does get in the way and looks incredibly awkward... like a combination half-apron and armoured codpiece.
Due to the massive truck cab shoulder pads, he's very nearly as wide as he is tall, and the proportions are all out of whack - the upper body is really short, and the hip joints are actually behind the crotch plate, so he starts to look really odd in some poses. Bulky as the upper body is, though, it's the lower legs that are most deceptive - they look normal enough from the front, but his 'heel spur' extends all the way up to the back of his knee due to its dual purpose as the Supermode's foot. The legs account for approximately two thirds of his total height, with the upper body making up the final third. From the side, the lower third sticks out backward while the upper third sticks out forwards, while the middle is just a straight block. It's one of those figures that gets steadily more strange the more you look at him.
A lot of the sculpted detail is very deeply-set - the central part of the crotch plate sticks out almost as far as the chest windows, the silver and orange painted kneecaps protrude a good centimetre from the core mass of the lower leg, and the shin jumps outward a little below the kneecap, then bumps out a further millimetre or so as it approaches the foot. The level of detail on these protrusions is fairly minimal - mostly just armour panelling - but the chunk on the back of each leg features all kinds of variations in appearance, seemingly both overlaying armour panels and exposed inner workings. The thighs and arms are similarly chunky, but more subtle in the details. In particular, his arms seem really blocky and stubby - his elbow joint is just behind his wrist - and, while I like the way the vehicle's bumper becomes knuckledusters for the robot, the hands themselves are not very well detailed, looking blocky and ugly.
While Galaxy Convoy comes packaged with an entire trailer's worth of wings and cannons, the basic robot can only really make use of the pistol attachment for one of the cannons. It attaches to the palm of the hand via pegs on the handle, and is held very securely by either hand... in fact, getting it out of his hand is far more difficult that getting it into his hand. The weapon is designed such that it's spring-loaded missile feature is easily accessible and, while such features have fallen out of favour with Hasbro's TransFormers design teams in recent years, I quite like the added 'pew-pew!' factor they bring to larger toys like Galaxy Convoy.
The head sculpt is blocky, but functional. As with the rest of the body, the detailing is simplistic, but deeply-set. The overall look is actually closer to a more angular Beast Wars Optimus, with the default face featuring a split faceplate with his mouth revealed. A switch on the back of his head raises the full battlemask and, while it's neither spring-loaded nor rigged to clip into place, it generally holds its position very well in either form. The front faces of the helmet's brow crest is painted silver, giving the impression of silver armour added to the traditional blue helmet. The inner details of the central crest and the fronts of the cheek guards are painted yellow to break things up a bit and, in another nod to the G1 toy, his eyes are also painted yellow. On either side of the head, there are black plastic crests that splay out for Supermode, somewhat like Armada Optimus Prime.
Supermode:
The basic form may be blocky and unimpressive, but the upgraded form cannot fail to impress in size alone. The wingspan is only a little short of 50cm and, while the additional foot chunks only add about an inch to the robot's height, the sheer bulk of him is pretty formidable. While not a 'playset' toy in the same terms of G1 (or Generations) Metroplex or Trypticon, for example, he's as much of a handful, and physically dwarfs just about every other Cybertron/Galaxy Force toy except Megalo Convoy and is a fair bit bulkier than even Master Megatron/Galvatron.
Supermode gains access to all the armaments of vehicle mode - the two main cannons underslung below each arm and the smaller guns attached to the legs and jointed behind the knee. Naturally, there's an impact on articulation - the main cannons are more than a little in the way of the arms and, unlike the Hybrid Style version of Galaxy Convoy, there are no handles on the cannons for the robot to hold (the the pistol's grip is just out of his reach) so his hands just sort of hover vaguely over the weapons. The key slots on both are easly accessed from the back, and the button for the electronic features of the lefthad cannon is now on the outside. There are no differences to the effects in this form as the weapon is a self-contained unit with no concealed switches to be tripped by switching between robot and vehicle modes. That's not too disappointing, though, as it's not as if the weapons themselves go through any transformation of their own, they just shift position. The guns mounted at the knees are revealed to be somewhat hollow in this form (it's easy to forget that parts such as these being made hollow is not a recent phenomenon), but look pretty decent unless the figure is posed in such a way that shows off their inner face. They get in the way of the main cannons a little, but keeping the smaller guns flush with the legs and angling the main cannons out a little solves that problem. Alternatively, all the guns can be stowed away, with the main ones swung round 180° to the back then folded up behind the wings, and the leg cannons swung down toward the feet. I've also seen photos taken by people who have rotated the entire wing sections round 180° so the guns are positioned over the robot's shoulders, but that doesn't match the CGI animation model, looks rather silly and reveals the hollow inner faces of the truck's side panels.
The upper body is essentially the same as the basic robot, just with the wing/weapon pack attached to the back and secured via strap-like black plastic arms that close over his shouders and peg into waist-level protrusions from the backpack. With the smaller robot's calves becoming Supermode's feet, the calf-mounted weapon pods take on the additional duty of replacement heel spur to keep the robot upright and improve his overall proportions. The sculpted detail on these blends very well with the existing leg parts, adding a mixture of armour panelling and internal tech detailing, though they lack all of the animation model's silver, even on this Takara Tomy version.
The chest windows can open out to the sides on double-hinges, allowing the Matrix chamber to open, revealing a removeable Matrix unit. This is a fairly small, simple representation, similar to its appearance in the 1986 animated movie, but molded in grey plastic and with the 'crystal' centre painted orange. Given its size and lack of connecting pegs, it's actually quite difficult to get Galaxy Convoy to hold it in his large, blocky hands - more a case of balancing it within a partially open hand than actually getting him to grip it - and there's no easy way to get him to hold both handles convincingly as the arms don't have sufficient range.
As mentioned above, the same head is used in Supermode, just with the side crests opened out, giving him the look of a robot with a winged helmet, and with the battlemask raised over his mouth. It looks pretty cool, though I can't help but think the crests would have looked better in a different colour - silver, perhaps or gold like the Armada version - as they just don't stand out in black, and the sculpted detail isn't particularly clear.
Considering the size of Galaxy Convoy, it's something of a blessing that his transformation is so simple. I do find it very odd that, like G1 PowerMaster Optimus Prime, he has a chest that looks somewhat like his traditional G1 truck cab chest even though the back of the cab, while the actual front of the toy's vehicle mode, in this case, ends up on his shoulders. In fact, it feels as though Galaxy Convoy is as much a reference to PowerMaster Optimus Prime and the Godbomber upgrade as it is to either the original G1 Prime or the RID fire engine version - a Prime for the ages, as it were. With all the partsforming involved, it's good to see how securely everything pegs together in Supermode, from the 'straps' of his backpack to the larger feet and the calf-mounted weapon pods. The same sadly isn't true of vehicle mode, and I find the back section can very easily pop off its connecting pegs if not handled carefully.
Supermode really lives up to its name - it's an absolute monster despite only a small change in height. The backpack is a little unwieldy and takes up an awful lot of shelf space, but he does look fantastic. It's also interesting in retrospect to see how this figure influenced things like Optimus Prime's 'Wingblade' form in TransFormers Animated, and how Sonic Convoy - formed by combining Galaxy Convoy with Sonic Bomber - seems to link quite directly to the live action movies' Jetwing Optimus Prime, developed from the parts Optimus 'borrowed' from Jetfire toward the end of Revenge of the Fallen. The key-activated gimmicks are decent, particularly the lights and sounds of one and the partial integration of his handgun into the other.
Articulation is good in both modes, but Supermode's clumsy feet and large cannons do make posing a bit of a chore, and the way the hips were handled (particularly the huge crotch flap) doesn't help matters. The biggest problem is the size of his feet and the fact that they don't move independently of the lower leg, meaning he ends up balanced on their inner edges most of the time. The arms have excellent range, but look awkward and stubby in his standard form, let alone Supermode. His head can rotate a full 360° but, due to the battlemask gimmick, there's no tilt at all. Galaxy Convoy may not be the most poseable figure in the Cybertron/Galaxy Force line, but he looks suitably imposing, and is one of the best large-format Optimus Prime figures I own.
That said, it's quite obvious - not to say stunning - what a difference only ten years made in the design and engineering of TransFormers toys. This came out just two years before the first live action movie toys, and yet it looks utterly dated compared to those. It's not even as if Galaxy Force was behind the times and especially blocky - for its time, it was excellent and a massive improvement over Armada/Micron Legend and Energon/Superlink - just that the CGI designs used in the movies forced Hasbro and Takara Tomy to look at their engineering in a new way, which reached its peak with the Revenge of the Fallen toyline, only four years after Galaxy Force. To look at something like this now - with its partially visible head in vehicle mode, stubby, blocky arms and awkward articulation - really shows how far things have progressed in more recent toylines. What sets this apart, though, is that it's a wholly unique design made with reference to (and perhaps a certain reverance for) G1, rather than being slavishly G1 in every respect.
Which is just part of why it's so galling to see Hasbro attempting to re-do this figure, but simpler, and based on Ultra Magnus in the new War for Cybertron toyline. This figure, in and of itself, is a milestone, and there's nothing wrong with it per se. Certainly, it wasn't perfect even back in 2005... but it still packs a lot more punch - and has more interesting features - than the upcoming figure. It also fit its continuity perfectly, where the new one takes design cues from two different continuities and is being shoehorned into a G1 prequel.
The only good reason I can see for picking up the upcoming War for Cybertron version rather than the Galaxy Force original is that the latter can now be quite expensive on the secondary market. Right now, the Galaxy Force version seems to be upwards of £200, while the Cybertron version can still be found in the region only of £40-60. Alternatively, the smaller, part die-cast Hybrid Style version weighs in at about £80-£150, but I'd have to say it's not necessarily worth the extra - it's hardly a Masterpiece.
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