As 'play patterns' go, it was just as daft as that of the loose Titan Masters, but further aggravated certain elements within the fandom who had been hoping for a bigger, more impressive revival of the Pretender concept. For me, though, Hasbro's most heinous crime was releasing only eight of the thirteen Primes at mass retail, and holding back the remaining five for special boxed sets - Onyx Prime being made available only with the Predaking boxed set (which I had zero interest in) while Amalgamous, Nexus, Prima and the Thirteenth Primes coming only with the San Diego Comic Con 'Throne of the Primes' set (also made available at mass retain in Hasbro's Asian markets). Exacerbating this, Prima Prime also ended up packaged with the Amazon exclusive Punch-Counterpunch, so the completist would end up with two copies and a total of fourteen Primes.
Aside from all of this, the Prime Masters served no real purpose other than the decorative. Sure, each one was supposed to grant special powers to whoever wielded it - via slots on the larger figures and on the updated (and now separate) hand and foot parts of the gestalts - but there were no new features activated - Unicron Trilogy-style - on the toys. Furthermore, they were rendered mostly redundant by prexisting chunks of plastic - molded as either weird, flat handguns, Enigmas of Combination or Matrices of Leadership - which already occupied the Prime Master slot on every single Power of the Primes toy of Deluxe class and above.
So, to close off the Power of the Primes and, indeed, the Prime Wars Trilogy posts on this blog, here's a roundup of all the mass retail Prime Masters...
Bludgeon & Quintus Prime
Decoy Armour:
Bludgeon has developed something of a cult following over the years, despite being one of the stranger Decepticon Pretenders. Based on a sort of ghostly samurai, yet armed with a rifle and with an inner robot who turned into a tank, he's always been characterised as a swordsman. Indeed, almost every other version of the character released, from the Revenge of the Fallen version to the misassembled Collectors' Club reworking of Combiner Wars Onslaught, has had sword accessories. This one, meanwhile, comes with a gun modelled after a Japanese war club, the kanabō. At least, it's assumed to be a gun because that's how the Decoy Armour figure holds it. Either way, to be honest, it's not a very convicing weapon, looking more like an ornament to my eyes.
The armour itself is molded in purple and orange plastics, with a decent bit of paintwork on the upper two thirds of the body, including grey and copper armour, purple on the forearms, and a stark white skull inside the samurai helmet. It's interesting to note that all the Decepticon shells have fully-masked faces, while all the Autobots' shells have holes revealing the face of the Prime Master within. It's all nicely detailed here, and the only problems with its overall appearance are the honking great kanabō-like thing hanging off his back and the way there's no paintwork on his lower legs to cover up the change in plastic colour around the mid-shin hinge.
Where the original G1 Pretender shells clipped together in two halves, frequently with a rubber 'belt' or similar to secure the connection, all of these are hinged, and the Prime Master figure is a much more snug fit. Quintus Prime appears to have tank tread-like details - maybe armour panels - sculpted into his arms, but his colour scheme matches that of Bludgeon's shell rather than the G1 Pretender robot, and there's no paintwork on him at all.
Weapon Mode:
While this is - supposedly - a gun designed to resemble a kanabō, the 5mm peg in between the feet can be extended straight down, so Bludgeon's weapon mode could be wielded as a club even of the Decoy Armour can't hold its weapon that way. Sadly, there's no transformation of the shell's arms - they just hang down the sides on all of the figures and, making matters worse, the backs of the arms feature hollow sections. This, coupled with the bright, warm colourscheme and the absence of any weapon-specific paintwork, doesn't make for a very convincing or effective weapon. The folded-up Prime Master plugs loosely into the top of the the back end, adding more bulk to an already bulky area, and you'd think the cut-out area on the backs of the feet would have been a more logical attachment point. Quintus Prime's colourscheme doesn't help, since his insignia is just a slightly darker shade of orange. The end result, sadly, is that this looks like the sort of weapon that's packaged with knockoff toys.
Bomb-Burst & Megatronus
Decoy Armour:
Bomb-Burst was one of the only two G1 Pretender toys I ever bought, so I had pretty much decided I was getting this figure before I'd decided to buy all the Prime Masters I could. He's a fairly faithful recreation of the original, except for the massive claw weapon hanging off his back - the original had an axe - and an overall more robotic look to the shell, where the original was designed to look largely organic - like some sort of bat-like humanoid monster.
Again, the paintwork is pretty good, but limited to the upper two thirds of the shell, and with none on the arms this time. However, the original's cyan inner ears and yellow eyes are represented, so he still looks the part. The only thing I wish they'd done differently is the shoulder armour, which is lacking the cute little batwings of the original. The lack of paintwork doesn't bother me, but little details like the batwing shoulder armour is what made the G1 toy so compelling... To me, at least. As you'll see, aside from the hinged section, this is the same shell as Skullgrin and, maybe it's just me but, if I had to choose a back plate to reuse to Bomb-Burst, I would have gone with Submarauder, since the feet look more like those of the G1 Bomb-Burst shell, being three-toed even if they're not organic-looking...
On the upside, the claw looks reasonably convincing as a weapon, even if it seems a little large in Bomb-Burst's hands. It's unpainted, too - molded in the same grey plastic as his arms, as if it was intended to blend in and look like a giant version of his own clawed hands.
Predictably, the Megatronus Prime Master figure is molded in the same two shades of grey with no paintwork other than that of the icon on his back.
Weapon Mode:
If the claw looked at all convincing in the hands of the Decoy Armour, it loses all credibility in this form, because it's just flipped round over Bomb-Burst's head, and with his arms dangling by his sides. Granted, the 5mm peg can be oriented so that another figure can hold him gun-style or axe-style, but the former doesn't look right and the latter just reveals the front of the Decoy Armour... And attaching the Prime Master for a power-up doesn't improve matters as it's just another awkward lump of plastic stuck on the top of an awkward plastic lump that's supposed to be a weapon.
Cloudburst & Micronus
Decoy Armour:
I have to admit, straight away, that the opening to the face of the inner robot is a feature I quite like on the Autobot Decoy Armours, even though the slot only really lines up properly on Metalhawk. On this one and Landmine, it slot shows more of the robot's forehead than his face, and their eyes are at the very bottom of the slot.
Molded in red and grey plastic, he features paintwork on the front in a pale grey and purplish blue, while the bulk of the weapon hanging off his back has been painted pale grey - even the underside, which is largely made up of holes. As with most of these Decoy Armour suits, there's no paintwork disguising the hinged section mid-shin, so his lower legs look really odd... and there's also a large slot inexplicably cut into the top of each foot. His front panel, weapon and arms are all unique within the Decoy Armour sets, while the back plate is much the same as that of all three Autobots and of Bludgeon, though the feet appear to be unique to Cloudburst.
As one might expect, such a large, twin-barrelled weapon looks utterly ridiculous in the Decoy Armour's hands, and may have worked better if it had split into two that could mount under his arms.
Just like the others, the Micronus Prime Master figure is molded in the same red and grey plastics, though this one was actually given a blob of blue paint over his face.
Weapon Mode:
Since this weapon is a dual-barrelled Gatling-style weapon, it doesn't looks quite so unwieldy as any of the single-barrelled guns or mêlée-style weapons... but it would have looked better if the handle had been on the top of the weapon rather than at the back of the underside, because this clearly couldn't function as a pistol-style gun. Additionally, the arms hanging down the sides cause a bit of a problem for suspension of disbelief, and adding the Prime Master on top of the weapon doesn't make it look any better, despite the shimmery, metallic green paint used on his icon.
Landmine & Alpha Trion
Decoy Armour:
Landmine was the only other G1 Pretender I bought, so naturally I was compelled to pick him up... and, sadly, aside from the front plate, he's made up of all the same parts as Metalhawk, and so doesn't look as much like his G1 self as he might. They would have done better to reuse Cloudburst's arms, to be honest. The body is rather more angular than the portly G1 Pretender shell and the front plate is molded in a darker grey plastic - the helmet and belt are the only unpainted parts, even the interior is painted yellow, which seems utterly bizarre considering the darker grey plastic isn't used anywhere else on the toy.
All of this may go some way to explain why the arms and weapon aren't painted, though that doesn't matter so much in this mode... just that the off-white cannon is less convincing that it might otherwise be purely because of its colour. Then again, bright, sunshine yellow is hardly the colour of choice for the average handgun, outside of the Nerf line, so there wasn't much of a choice. On the upside, it fits the arm very well, almost looking like a movie-style weapon-transformed-out-of-the-forearm.
Given that Alpha Trion, when he appears as a character in TransFormers fiction, is invariably pink, purple and white, I was a little surprised that the Prime Master figure uses the same plastic colours as his decoy armour, even though that's the established pattern of Prime Masters. Even his paintwork is just another splash of yellow over his face, and the closest he gets to the traditional Alpha Trion is the pink paint on his icon.
Weapon Mode:
This ginormous handcannon would probably be one of the best Prime Master/Decoy Armour TargetMasters in the entire line if it weren't for the colourscheme, the lack of weapon mode-specific paintwork, and the Decoy Armour's arms hanging down the sides. The gunbarrel is pretty much in the right proportions for the body of the gun so, even with just single 5mm peg for grip right at the back of the weapon, it so very nearly looks convincing as a handgun for the larger figures... Though it's not improved at all by the addition of Alpha Trion on his Prime Master block form.
Metalhawk & Vector Prime
Decoy Armour:
Metalhawk is one of those Pretenders that never made it out of Japan, and yet alternate versions of him have appeared in western toylines in two boxed sets - the 2012 BotCon set, Invasion, and the 2017 Titans Return set 'Siege on Cybertron' (a somewhat confusing choice of title, in retrospect). Like Landmine, the front face of the body is rather more angular than the chubby, Anime-styled G1 Pretender shell, but it's a decent enough interpretation.
Molded in blue and grey plastics, Metalhawk seems to be one of the most extensively painted Decoy Armours, with red, yellow and silver on the torso, then additional silver on the knees, thighs and shoulder vents. The gun barrel mounted on his back is, as previously mentioned, identical to the one on Landmine, but molded in blue plastic and painted entirely silver. Weirdly, the blue strips on the back end, around the rim of the barrel and on the sight are painted over the top of the silver, rather than being absences of silver paint.
Sadly, this impressive paintwork doesn't carry over to the Prime Master figure within, and Vector Prime (again, arguably the wrong colours considering the previous bearers of that name) is largely bare blue and grey plastic, with a splash of silver over his face. Interestingly, Vector Prime's Prime Master block mode has sculpting very similar to a Matrix of Leadership, just with his icon instead of the central crystal... The end result is that he looks almost nothing like his fellow Primes.
Weapon Mode:
This is probably the best-looking weapon mode out of all the mass-released Prime Masters, entirely due to the subdued plastic colours and the painted gun barrel... It really shows up how crappy all of the others look, and if only the designers had worked in a way of actually transforming the arms of the Decoy Armour, this might have been the toy that proved the worth of the entire concept. As it stands, it's just the least mediocre, and looks just as silly with the Prime Master plugged in.
Octopunch & Solus Prime
Decoy Armour:
Coming in with an almost Generation 2 colourscheme of mainly purplish and minty green plastic, Octopunch is another one with quite a bit of corrective paintwork on the front plate. The majority of its purple plastic is covered with white or grey paint, with patches of minty green (greener, in fact, that the plastic, which looks more turquoise by comparison) on the thighs, cyan on the 'breathing apparatus' on his chest, and a large yellow circle on his mask's 'window'. There a bit of a sense of a Scooby Doo 'ghost' to this thing - there probably was to the G1 version as well, to be honest (especially since his helmet was removeable, and revealed a weird, mutated face), but I believe the later Pretenders didn't arrive on these shores, and I wouldn't have bought any if they had because the concept seemed to have gone completely off the rails.
And, really, the same is true here... I was never entirely on board with the idea of Pretenders, TargetMasters and Prime Masters mixed up like this, and Octopunch pretty much epitomises the worst of it. He looks ridiculous and his 'weapon' is a sort of harpoon gun that's sprouted hollow tentacles, all to make up for the lack of tentacles on the Decoy Armour's arms. Consequently, when held as a weapon, the tentacled harpoon gun looks bizarre. It almost works as an extension to his arm, since the plastic colours are the same, but it's so wide in and of itself, and those tentacles add nothing to its appearance. On the upside, it's one of the few weapons to have been granted any paintwork of its own, though yellow was perhaps a poor choice in this case.
Solus Prime is molded in the same minty green and purple plastics as the Decoy Armour, and is possibly one of the most boring Prime Masters, owing to his tiny face having a battlemask. That said, just like his weapon, he's one of the few with paintwork - a splash of yellow over his face, to reflect the yellow glow of his Decoy Armour's porthole.
Weapon Mode:
Here's where Octopunch becomes the worst of the Decoy Armour TargetMasters... because, fundamentally, he's a harpoon gun - just a larger version of the weapon wielded by his Decoy Armour... and that's all well and good, fully in keeping with the rest of the line... but, due to Hasbro's choice of how to give the Decoy Armour his trademark tentacles, he's a an oversized harpoon gun with four tentacles hanging off the sides of the harpoon channel. Plus, he's a purple and minty green chunk of plastic with a single application of yellow paint on his upper surface that just doesn't fit with anything... Solus Prime in its cube form is one of the more visually interesting Prime Masters, but, as a component of the TargetMaster, he ends up being just another chunk of purple with a cyan logo embossed in the top.
Skullgrin & Liege Maximo
Decoy Armour:
Skullgrin was always one of the more visually engaging G1 Pretenders, and his representation as a Prime Master's Decoy Armour lives up to that to a degree... but, like Bomb-Burst, he's a more mechanical interpretation, or at least more genuinely armoured-looking, where the original looked like one of the Banana Splits had joined a death metal band and started dressing in baggy clothing. Despite the vast, animal skull mask of the original, there was something weirdly cuddly and charming about his appearance, not least the sense that he was trying a little too hard to be scary... Certainly the toy was nothing like as fearsome as his Marvel Comics character model, so this thing is a vast improvment in many ways. It looks leaner, meaner and more powerful.
I'm particularly keen on the improved animal skull mask, as it actually looks pretty terrifying compared to his somewhat apologetic-looking G1 ancestor. It's not as robotic as the Generations version, but it suits the aesthetic of the rest of the armour. To be honest, this thing puts me in mind mostly of Beast Machines, or something from the Cybertron/Galaxy Force beast planet Animatros, as it looks like a blending of mechanical and biological parts, albeit with more of an emphasis on the mechanical. While his thighs look like they're made of steel cables wound together, his abs are like armour plates, and his upper-body armour wouldn't look out of place on a Masters of the Universe figure, not least because of its strange lapel-like collar. He at least has his G1 predecessor's shoulder spikes, but much of the other detail is very much altered - his hip armour is far plainer and the skull belt buckle is more mechanical and stylised to the point of looking cartoonish. I don't undersand what the hollowed-out, white-painted details on either side of his waist are - they certainly don't refer to anything on the original toy - and everything below the knee is unpainted, just like every other Decoy Armour.
Interestingly, the fact that Liege Maximo is coloured the same as his Decoy Armour means he's about the only one of the Prime Masters which vaguely resembles his Pretender host's original robot. The head features some paintwork, but it's making the helmet grey rather than picking out the face, since the whole head is molded in the purple plastic.
Weapon Mode:
I think it's particularly sad that a section of the Power of the Primes toyline with so few mainline figures is made up of so many repeating parts... but Skullgrin's weapon form is essentially the same as Bomb-Burst's, just with purple arms, rather than grey, hanging down his sides, and the claw part is painted silver (as it would otherwise be purple!). The metallic paint makes the claw look better, certainly, but the overall look is somewhat spoilt by the product code stamped onto one of the blades, and it's basically just a really silly weapon for any of the larger figures. Adding the purple block of Prime Master onto the top doesn't help, not least because Liege Maximo's insignia looks disconcertingly like a cartoonish face wearing a creepy grin...
Submarauder & Alchemist Prime
Decoy Armour:
Coming off as something akin to one of HP Lovecraft's Deep Ones - or, if you're feeling less charitable, a Doctor Who monster circa 1986 - Submarauder probably had the coolest name of all the G1 Pretenders, and certainly one of the most distinctive shells thanks to the fin growing out of his head. It's nice to see most of that detail represented here, even if they've gone for more of a mechanical look than the original's organic aesthetic.
Like Landmine and Octopunch, the front panel of the Decoy Armour is extensively painted so that it matches well with the blue plastic, despite having been molded in the off-white. More like the latter than the former, though, as the inner surface remains unpainted to provide a bit of contrast. He doesn't feature the full range of paintwork of his G1 ancestory - the purple paint on the sides of his waist has become blue extending down from his chest, while the green 'sucker' details and kneepads receive no specific paintwork. The latter, in fact, are simply unpainted areas of the front panel, revealing the white plastic. On the upside, the head seems to feature all the necessary paint applications, with the original toy's red eyes and orange 'gills' represented, and even his belt/codpiece is the right colour, even if it's possibly not quite the right shade. Interestingly, the cyan plastic clips holding the arms in place sort of look like additional suckers when glimpsed from the front and back, but the actual sculpted details on the arms are unpainted, as with virtually all the other Decoy Armours.
Another similarity with Octopunch is the nautically-themed weapon that looks completely unwieldy in the Decoy Armour's hands... But while that figure's weapon is technically a gun... Submarauder is lumbered with the fork of a trident. Nevertheless, it doesn't look too bad if you assume it's one of the TransFormers brand's more elaborately designed guns rather than some sort of mêlée weapon.
Sadly, the use of off white and cyan plastic for the Decoy Armour leads to yet another Prime Master with a colourscheme nowhere near the G1 Pretender robot, who was purple and blue. He's also another one with no paintwork so, while he has a fairly well-defined face for his size, what detail is present is essentially lost in the pale plastic.
Weapon Mode:
If it came to a choice between Submarauder and Octopunch over which has the most convincing weapon mode, Submarauder would win easily... but only because the fork part of the trident looks better - both are ridiculously bulky, the Decoy armour's arms hang at the sides of both, and Submarauder doesn't work as a polearm, but... y'know... at least it doesn't have tentacles. The use of magenta paint on the fork strikes me as a bit odd but, in the context of TransFormers toys, let alone the Prime Masters, it's nothing out of the ordinary and, objectively actually looks quite good - certainly better than Octopunch's yellow paint on purple plastic.
I have so many questions about the Prime Master figures... First and foremost, how was each Prime assigned to an Autobot or a Decepticon Decoy Armour in the first place, when their existence preceded the split and all were effectively neutral? I mean, I can kind of understand, for example, Bomb-Burst and Megatronus... but what links Landmine and Alpha Trion, or Octopunch and Solus Prime? Then, why use this toyline to revisit Pretenders at all, let alone in so perfunctory a manner? Then, why combine the Pretender concept with the TargetMaster concept having previously conflated HeadMasters and TargetMasters within the Titans Return line? Then, what are the Decoy Armours actually supposed to be for when they're not housing the Prime Master or acting as bulky weapons?
Or, to boil it down to one question... What the hell were Hasbro thinking?
Power of the Primes was a small toyline compared the preceding two chapters of the Prime Wars trilogy and, despite some fairly strong individual entries, far too many toys were merely adaptations of toys from previous lines and it turned out to be a hugely underwhelming finale. Add to that, the Machinima animations didn't even touch on the core of any of the toylines, preferring instead to use nonsense about the Enigma of Combination (which first appeared with PotP toys) for Combiner Wars, and a misguided story of lost love, ultimate weapons and universal destruction for Power of the Primes, using only a small fraction of the toy characters while taking non-toy characters like the Mistress of Flame from the IDW comics. Its interpretations of Megatronus and Solus Prime in no way resembled to their toys, and its representation of the larger toy characters seldom matched what appeared on shelves.
Since the presentation of the Prime Master toys - not to mention their lack of actual function within the toyline - was so weak, it's really only the OCD collector side of me that wanted any of them, let alone all of them... and to be so cynically prevented from obtaining a full set of Prime Masters is pretty galling, even though they feel like a waste of both plastic and shelf space. Far more could have been done with them - they are representations of the thirteen original Primes, after all - but, equally, far more could have been made of what they actually are... Part of me wishes I'd not bought any of them... yet another part of me still wants the 'missing' five Prime Masters, even though none of them had Decoy Armour and four of 'em came with a single event exclusive figure that was a dull repaint of a shoddy reimagining of a Beast Wars toy.
If the Power of the Primes line goes down in history as a failure, the blame can be places squarely on the Prime Masters. OK, it can't have helped that, of the three Leader class molds, none was a new Megatron or a Galvatron (leaving only the lacklustre Combiner Wars and Titans Return versions), and the only Leader class Decepticons were repaints of Autobots... But the Prime Masters were never properly or effectively integrated into the toyline, when they appeared to be presented as if they were central to it. The lack of documentation about the supposed effects of these 'power boosting' artifacts, and the inconsistency with which it was presented (random cards packaged with the larger figures) really didn't help matters... and I'm forced to wonder... Did Hasbro put more information online, and expect kids to look it up?
Plus, compared to Mini-Cons - which admittedly outlasted their welcome in the Unicron Trilogy - they (and the Decoy Armour) aren't interesting enough in their own right to warrant their position in the toyline. Personally, I wouldn't say Pretenders are particularly worth revisiting, even with the toymaking technology we have today (the potential for poseable, rubber shells, for example)... but Hasbro are unlikely to win any new converts to the idea by wasting it like this. Power of the Primes turned out to be a bit of a dumping ground for half-baked concepts, and the Prime Masters, in my opinion, were its nadir.
Times like this, I really dislike my collecting OCD...
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