Naturally, I eagerly anticipated a Studio Series toy of this new interpretation of Optimus, particularly in the light of the amazing work that went into creating Evasion Mode Optimus Prime back in 2014, let alone the upscaped and improved Japan-only version released under the Bumblebee movie banner as 'Legendary Optimus Prime' in 2018.
Based on initial photos, it looked as though the Studio Series version would not disappoint, potentially being something to rival the Age of Extinction Voyager... but let's take a closer look, just to be sure.
Vehicle Mode:
I have to say straight off that I'm not a huge fan of this vehicle mode, but I'm having trouble ascertaining precisely why. There's the obvious (but mostly par-for-the-course) stuff, like the dull, desaturated red plastic used for the cab (so frustrating compared to the likes of Stinger and Shatter, but this now seems to be Optimus Prime's lot in life) and the fact that the silver stripe is too large, while the windows seem too small. There's also the odd sense that the cab itself is somehow too square. The front of the cab does actually slope forward from the roof to the bumper, but it's quite subtle and seems to be counterbalanced by a seemingly unintentional angle on the back of the cab, making it look as though the entire cab is tilted forward on the chassis. This impression of blockiness starts with the surprisingly tall and almost perfectly rectangular bumper, and is exacerbated by the almost perfectly square grille, which finishes just a touch higher than the wraparound silver stripe. The windows then seem to start too high up and a little too far in from the sides so, with unpainted sunshades sculpted in above them, they end up looking restrictively small. Something is off about all the proprtions here, and it ends up making vehicle mode look a little cartoonish, despite all its attempts at real-world detailing. On the upside, this has to be one of the few times that a Hasbro version has bothered painting in the windscreen wipers. The roof is a mess of small panels and their hingesInterestingly, there's some piston details sculpted onto the underside of the slotted flap on the roof so, while it looks as though the flap is only intended as part of transformation, it could function as a sort of sunroof for the cab.
From the side, the truck looks a bit jumbled, thanks to the unpainted red hinges encroaching on the silver stripe above the front wheel wells, part-painted hinges toward the back of the cab on the top edge of the stripe, and the black plastic panel making up the rear end of the wheel well. I figure that, on a real truck, that part would either be bare metal, painted to match the cab, a mixture of the two (since the sculpted detail thereon features the steps for boarding the truck and a small panel at the top which is clearly meant to be part of the side of the cab), or that area would be partly occupied by the petrol tanks. The truck's 'headache rack' is represented, but doesn't tab together very well, and sits quite a way from the actual rear wall of the cab due to being mounted on the robot's unfurled leg parts, which then tab in to the smokestacks. It's molded in a surprisingly dark, metallic grey plastic, given that these racks are apparently usually made of aluminium (and occasionally chromed for good measure). There's also a weird discrepancy in the depth of sculpted detail between the outer and inner sections of this panel, with the grille detail being quite shallow on the larger sections, and noticeably deeper on the smaller, central parts.
The tail end follows the pattern of Evasion Mode Prime and several others of the more recent movie Prime toys, in that it minimises the amount of plastic that actually makes up the tail end since, in reality, it'd be largely bare chassis with a trailer hitch stuck on top. This version is probably as close to that reality as any toy this size can ever get, with large gaps between the side panels on which the wheels and petrol tanks are mounted. Unfortunately, these gaps lead to the first signs of trouble with this toy: the back end of the truck is very... flexible. Downright bendy, to be honest, and with the back end only really held together by a single peg right at the back (the trailer hitch tabs from one side to the other, but it's not exactly a 'fastening') it's surprisingly easy to flex the back section enough to pop it apart.
Additionally, and possibly related, surface detail throughout is actually a bit iffy. The sides and front of the truck are covered with rivet details, but those same details on the side panels are discernibly 'softer', with and without the coating of silver paint. Coupled with a strange variance in plastic texture around the toy, it almost feels as though there was a problem with the molds or the materials. I'm guessing the latter, that a softer, more flexible plastic has been used where it really shouldn't have been, thus fudging the finer details of the mold.
Paintwork is fairly basic - the cab features all the expected silver paint on the bumper, grille and headlights, with additional applications on the windscreen wipers (as mentioned above) and the wing mirrors (which are cleverly detailed to look more impressive than they actually are), with a strangely dirty-looking metallic blue for the side windows actually making a reasonable match to the translucent blue of the front windows. The trailer hitch itself is molded in the metallic grey plastic, while the blue plastic parts it's mounted on have been painted to match. There's no paintwork on the back - to be fair, there's barely any detail worth painting on the very back of the truck, just a couple of circular details that are possibly representing tail lights - but, somewhat surprisingly, all six of the hubcaps are fully painted in silver, which has a huge and positive effect on the toy's overall look. Just goes to show, you don't need a bold flame pattern to make a toy look good. One thing that strikes me as odd is that there isn't a single Autobot insignia visible in vehicle mode. Obviously it can be argued that the 'disguise' concept was always harmed by the prominent faction insignia on vehicle modes, and such decoration does seem to have been the exception rather than the rule within the Studio Series line, but it's nevertheless quite strange to see an Optimus Prime not proudly displaying his allegiance.
The best vehicle mode offers in terms of weapon storage is the trailer hitch and, by default, you're supposed to just peg the grip into the hitch and leave it sticking up and over the back of the truck. It is technically possible to peg the gun into the underside, between the robot's feet, but it can't go all the way in as the barrel of the gun then prevents the legs pegging together at the back. Pull the gun out slightly, and there's just enough of a gap between the ankle joints to accommodate the barrel, but it still sticks out more than an inch behind the truck, and hangs down a touch lower than the rear wheels anyway, preventing the truck from rolling smoothly. What it really needed was a Cogman-style crotch flap that could open to allow the barrel of the gun to point forward, thus keeping the back end tider and potentially making it a bit more stable.
Of course, the big question is, given the presence of a trailer hitch, is the transforming trailer that's being packaged with SS #44 Dark of the Moon Optimus Prime going to be compatible with this toy? The trailer looks great, but the jetwing pack looks like cheap rubbish and I'm ambivalent about the main toy except perhaps as something to combine with SS Jetfire.
Robot Mode:
Evasion Mode Optimus Prime was an unexpectedly awesome Voyager class figure, and this instantly gives the same impression. It features the movie lines' level of sculpted detail, but the aesthetic is unashamedly neo-G1. Optimus Prime here has a mostly red upper body that basically looks like the front of the truck cab with the grille replaced by intricate and deelply-sculpted robo-abs, his arms are mostly red and feature his trademark smokestacks and silver stripes, his groin area and thighs looks sort-of metallic, while the lower legs are blue with his trademark shin vents. Even the G1 toy's knee stickers are referenced, to a degree, with some scuplted detail which looks like it might be the truck's tail lights, even though they end up hidden beneath the headache rack in vehicle mode. He has the pair of wheels at his waist (though slightly concealed on his back) and on each leg, with a fairly compact backpack - tidier even than the Leader class figure from Revenge of the Fallen - with plenty of sculpted mechanical detail of its own... Though this plate is unfortunately wider at the waist than at the shoulder, and so is visible below the front of the robot's chest, making him look blockier than he actually is. Even the panel-tastic forearms are sensibly dealt with, thanks to a mid-arm joint that allows the panels to be switched round the the undersides of the forearms, almost entirely out of sight.
Sculpted detail isn't limited to the intricacies of the torso. The arms are particularly impressive for their proportional amount of mechanical detail, the majority being on his unarmoured biceps, and the G1 references on the armour panels, not least the little triangles on his forearms, pointing toward his hands. Just about every surface - front and back, inside and out - features some sort of sculpted detail far beyond what one would expect from mere structural support. I'm frankly surprised by the attention lavished on the insides of the panels that end up folded up behind his forearms, for example, some of which has been designed around the necessities of the slots and tabs used in transformation. Similarly, the backs of the thighs get filled in by his petrol tanks, but there's internal mechanical detail beneath that the calf plates plug into for vehicle mode. It's a far cry from the bizarrely intricate and excessive sculpted surface detail on most of the War for Cybertron line so far and, when you consider that this toy is based on ridiculously complex movie CGI, that reflects very poorly on the aesthetic choices of WfC.
It all appears fairly accurate to the CGI, just perhaps not the final version of the CGI as it appeared in the movie. Notably, the feet are completely wrong - far too flat, and with the 'toe' section much shorter and wider than it should have been. I'm not entirely sure it's down to the necessities of transformation, as there's enough space at the back of the truck to have acommodated slightly taller feet and longer toes. Still, it's not as if the foot is so small he can't stand up unaided, so I can't complain.
Where it's all let down is the typically miserly Hasbro paint job. It's not one of the worst I've seen, but this is a figure that's already been let down by a poor choice of base plastic colours. Limiting its paint to the bands of silver around his red upper arms, the silver on his belly and knees, gunmetal on the shin vents, and spot applications in a couple of other colours is hugely disappointing. Of course it's nothing new, but when there's matching mechanical detail sculpted on the red and grey parts of the upper arm, but without any matching paintwork on the red part, the toy looks unfinished. Similarly, the drive belt details on the forearm are pretty intricately done, but are left unpainted. Worse than that, though, is that large plate of detail on his back. Bearing in mind this is supposed to be a mixture of armour panels (such as the 'shoulder blades') and more bare metal, 'internal' mechanical detail... but it's all bare red plastic other than the sliver of grille visible on the bottom of one of the hinged parts. What's truly bizarre, though, is that there isn't a single Autobot insignia anywhere on this toy... How was even the first production run allowed to leave the factory without, particularly when it's present on the movie CGI?
Omissions aren't the extent of it, though, there are outright errors as well. Applications of black paint on the belly and some of the mechanical details covered with silver paint should have been red. The groin area has a large patch of black paint over the top of the central portion which is entirely unnecessarly, yet the panel that runs under the underside, which should have been painted blue (per the animation model from the TV show and both Masterpiece figures) is bare grey plastic. The legs fare better, but only because this upper and lower legs are already more-or-less the right shade of plastic colour and don't feature massive amounts of paintable detail - it would be unnecessary on the thighs, and the kneecaps and shins feature a sufficient level of paintwork, with gunmetal, silver and red on the former and gunmetal on the latter's vents. It could be argued that the insides and backs of the lower legs could have used some paint, if only to fill in the parts that should have been blue, but they look OK as-is.
It's interesting, with the Bumblebee movie figures, to see a partial return to the idea of robots wielding guns, rather than having them transform out of their forearms. On the one hand, I really liked the innovation, and felt it made sense... but there's something to be said for an Optimus Prime figure in this style, carrying such an impressive rendition of his traditional blaster. The overall shape owes more to the G1 animation than the toy, but this is one has a more angular barrel and seems proportionally longer than ususal. The biggest surprise to me was that, unlike a lot of recent TransFormers toy weapons - particularly those from the last few Generations lines - it's not riddled with holes. It's actually molded in two parts and glued together down its length. It's not the most detailed weapon from the movie lines, but this appears to be because it's intended to look more fully cased than those, rather than featuring the mass of exposed components that typified the few firearms to appear in the Bay-directed movies. Obviously there's no paintwork... but, while that may be disappointing, it's very much to be expected.
The head sculpt is an excellent interpretation of the movie CGI and, much as I like the reinvented look of Optimus Prime from the first three live action movies, I can't help but like this more traditional representation of the Autobot leader. While the CGI in the Bay movies was somewhat expressive in terms of mouth movements and overall expressions, full-on emoting was always hindered by the overcomplicated eyes and the strips of metal over them representing eyelids - it should have worked, but never really did. The CGI in the Bumblebee movie was more like a hypercomplex interpretation of the cartoon, and Prime's eyes could be seen to visibly widen in shock in one sequence. The toy settles for flat, eye-shaped indentations, painted Autobot blue, but otherwise replicates the less intricate battlemask and helmet very accurately, retaining its clear indications that both are comprised of multiple individual armour plated slotted together into the iconic shape. Again, it's more G1 cartoon than G1 toy, but the extra detail raises it well above the soft, fudged look of the animation model, even when direct references to it are included, such as the rectangular plate on the back of his head.
Like the Masterpiece figures, transformation overall is essentially much the same as on the G1 toy, just vastly more intricate - the arms still bend to 90° and fold in to his torso to start forming the truck cab, and the feet still fold flush with the lower legs, but here they fold into them rather than just straightening out. There are elements of Classics Optimus Prime, particularly in the truck cab panels hanging off the forearms and the way they apply to the vehicle mode, but they're far less intrusive on the robot. Many have reported that the calf and inner-lower leg plates don't like to stay in place, as they don't peg together very securely, and that's certainly true of mine. Additionally, with vehicle mode, I find the headache rack doesn't like to stay together, and the calf plate on one leg wouldn't peg into the back of his thigh without a bit of modification with a scalpel. There's also a tolerance issue somewhere that means the two parts of the grille never sit flush, and the robot's back panel can be a real pain to work around the wheel/cab side panels in such a way that it pegs into place securely. The most frustrating aspect is the fussiness of lining everything up to plug in the truck mode's side panels, but that ends up being a case of aligning the hands correctly to begin with.
As with all the larger Studio Series toys, the articulation takes the best of everything Hasbro and Takara Tomy have learned from producing movie toys for well over a decade. Robot mode is a very accomplished action figure, quite apart from being something that transforms into a box on wheels. I'm quite impressed by the elbow joint, and the way its look matches that of the CGI, with the forearm raising to cover over the circular detail at the end of the bicep part, while the way the upper shoulder panels lift up to allow the arms to raise fully out to the sides is a neat and much-appreciated touch. While the arm can't rotate a full 360° at the shoulder, inner parts of the body are arranged for transformation in such a way that the shoulder bulk doesn't hit any restrictions until his arms are raised 90° forward, and they can be arranged in an upstretched position by rotating them backward almost 180°. The waist can rotate a full 360° for transformation, but this is restricted by the panels on his back clashing with the black hip panels in robot mode. The legs are somewhat less impressive, though, as the knee ends up with a huge void between the end of the thigh and the beginning of the lower leg behind the kneecap when fully bent, to just over 90°, likely because the blue part of the lower leg is such a thin piece of plastic, it couldn't accommodate a 'filler' piece on the end of the thigh. On the upside, the hips can rotate forward and out almost a full 90°, though their backward swing is surprisingly close to nil.The feet are also a little fussy due to their weird jointing - sideways ankle tilt comes courtesy of the mushroom peg required by transformation, while the joint for forward tilt is often less likely to move than a far looser transformation joint on the back of the leg, which then dislodges the calf plate.
Here's the bottom line: forget the existance of the Bay-directed live action movies entirely, this is pure G1 Optimus Prime in vehicle mode, but G1 seen through the filter of movie CGI in robot mode... In my mind this would be the perfect neo-G1 interpretation of Optimus Prime - the centrepiece of a Generations reboot, taking the real-world look of the Diaclone-derived G1 vehicles, but creating a realistic-looking robot out of it while leaving bits of the vehicle visible, yet without resorting to just leaving half of the vehicle's shell folded up and sticking out of his back. Looking at this toy, I'm ever more baffled by the aesthetics of the War for Cybertron line, which not only eschews real-world vehicle modes, but uses its nonsense 'Cybertronian' vehicle modes to create outdated, boxy-looking robots that - in my opinion - would have looked bad 20, even 10 years ago, and won't stand the test of time half as well as earlier Generations lines, or even Classics. This is what a modern TransFormers toyline should look like, whether it's a reboot of Generation 1 or something new. I'd love to see Prowl, Jazz, Wheeljack, Arcee, etc. in this style, not necessarily in Studio Series or tied to a particular movie, not least because the movies coming after Bumblebee probably aren't going to be anywhere near as good unless they find a similar team of a writer who can write characters, and a director who actually gives a damn about TransFormers.
Much as I like this figure, though, my overall enjoyment of it is significantly marred by the crummy, soft plastic used for far too many parts. That the rivet detail on certain vehicle mode panels is fudged isn't that important, but the amount of flex on structural parts is problematic. On the one hand, it's likely a measure designed to prevent breakage... but it says something about the design and construction of the toy that that would even be necessary - good as it looks, it must feature certain structural weaknesses that would have been exacerbated by more rigid plastics. It also makes the toy feel like a knockoff, since soft plastics have been present on many of the KOs I've bought over the years.
I've seen that Takara Tomy are releasing a 35th Anniversary set of G1 Optimus Prime/Convoy (minus trailer, but with his original long smokestacks and all the chrome) and this figure with a mostly-fixed paint job and a more vibrant red plastic (albeit coupled with a rather dull grey). Depending on my finances, I may end up buying that... though the stated price tag of 10,800Y/$100 (approx £80) does give me pause.
Alternatively, I full expect one Third Party company or another will upscape and improve this toy, hopefully using better plastic along the way. That will likely be the cheaper option compared to the likes of ToyWorld's TW-F09 Freedom, which looks phenomenal, albeit with an overly long and bulky back end.
hey mate, good review, i would like ti buy this mold but as you said i gonna wait for some 3rd party or another better version.
ReplyDeleteThanks for you review
Much appreciated, Diego. It's always sad when Hasbro manage to produce something that's this good, but which could so easily have been better had a couple of difference choices been made. I'm really looking forward to seeing what the Third Parties can do with this mold...
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