War for Cybertron: Kingdom Optimus Primal

It surely goes to show what a terrible toy blogger I am that this will actually be the first Optimus Primal toy from my collection to get a post on this blog, despite having owned the original, Kenner-branded Beast Wars/Biocombat toy since I discovered it while idly browsing a department store in the mid-90s, and the Beast Wars Reborn version since its release in 2006. Problem is, either I never got round to photographing them, or I somehow lost the images at some point in the distant past. Right now, the original figure is in a cabinet I can't easily access, while the re-release is boxed up and in storage. Whether that works in the Kingdom toy's favour or not remains to be seen...

The original toy is still quite close to my heart, even though I only really bought it for a laugh and, at the time, found the idea of TransFormers turning into animals quite ridiculous. Frankly, I'm finding the G1/Beast Wars crossover that appears to be implied by the first two chapters of the Netflix show just as ridiculous, but at least some of the new toys are looking quite good.

So, as has almost become the tradition with this blog, let's look at the most recent interpretation of the Beast Wars Maximal leader, Optimus Primal.

Beast Mode:

It's instantly apparent that Kingdom Optimus Primal cuts a far more convincing figure of a gorilla than just about any of his predecessors. The Masterpiece figure was an upgraded and more CGI-accurate version of the original toy, with an emphasis on giving him the upright-standing beast mode from the TV show. Because Takara Tomy also wanted to release a heavily-cartoonified 'Legendary Leader' version, the original had a subtle printed/painted fur pattern in place of any texture in the plastic itself. This new version is closer to the textured plastic of the original toy, but more natural-looking... if a little untidy. Furthermore, even within the fur textured areas, there appear to be variations, with some patches having a slightly grainy quality while others are smoother and glossier.

 

Primal's front end, particularly around the collar, looks rather piecemeal , with significant gaps around the neck and the hinges for his shoulder cannons sticking out behind his head. While the arms are nicely articulated, the slender joints at the shoulders and elbows make the arms look very artificial. In particular, the square, narrow elbows in the middle of otherwise bulky, furry arms instantly reminded me of Beast Wars Neo Heinlad. The very tops of his shoulders are squared-off to ensure proper fit in robot mode but, personally, I would have preferred a continuation of the fur texture for beast mode. It would have been easily achievable, too, going by the empty space inside the upper arms.

 

Aside from a strangely square belly, the body looks OK from most angles except the sides, where the silver of the robot's waist and a strip of the red and white parts of the robot's thighs and knees are quite plainly visible because his gorilla butt-panel doesn't extend round to the sides quite far enough. From behind, the robot's feet and the inner parts of the knee joint are also visible.

 

Similar to the Masterpiece, this toy is designed to be able to stand upright or on all fours, thanks to additional jointing in the robot's knees. Personally, I'd say it works far better on all fours, since the knee joints are exposed, and the head can't look perfectly straight forward when he stands upright. There's also the small matter of the sculpted curve of his beast mode's back, which is very much designed to best accommodate the hunched posture. When standing upright he has some... quite substantial junk in the trunk, but also a weirdly gappy posterior, when viewed from the side, as if a good chunk of the gorilla's legs is missing. About the only advantage to this posture is that the gappiness of his collar is somewhat concealed.

In theory, his two swords can be pegged into his back via the same slots they use in robot mode but, obviously, they're rather out of place on a gorilla. Similarly, his shoulder launchers can be deployed in beast mode just as easily as in robot mode, but it makes no sense to do so.

The main improvement here, over the BW original, is the far more convincing and mobile gorilla head sculpt. It's proportionally about the right size, and the face is a separate piece of grey plastic rather than just painted on... though that's not strictly accurate to real-world gorillas, whose skins tend to be, if anything, darker and glossier than their fur. The detail and depth of the sculpt are excellent, with a fairly aggressive expression. There's no paintwork on the face but the eyes - seemingly parts of the black plastic protruding through the grey plastic - have been painted a dark brown. One thing curiously absent from this version, which had been present on the original BW toy, are the gorilla's ears. They are small and can be difficult to spot on photos of the animals, but they're large and distict enough that they should have been apparent on this figure.

Robot Mode:

For a robot with such a realistically-styled beast mode, Optimus Primal's robot mode ends up surprisingly accurate to his appearance on the TV show. One big part of this is the design of his chest plate, which features more intricately sculpted detail and a more extensive paint job that even the Beast Wars Reborn version. Both appear to take their cues from the Masterpiece figure, with the introduction of silver and two shades of metallic blue - one loosely matching the blue plastic used for some robot parts, the other being more of a metallic cyan. This is all well and good, looking fantastic in and of itself, but there's a massive gap behind the chest panel, visible at the top and the bottom, due to the curve of the gorilla mode's chest and the location of the transformation joint - rather too close to the front of the torso. The sculpted channels running along the robot's collar part feel perfunctory, and are likely just a symptom of Hasbro trying to reduce plastic usage wherever they could, rather than being details intentionally designed into the figure.

Other robot-specific parts, such as the feet, thighs, groin area and the outer faces of his biceps, are nicely detailed, providing a clear delineation between the beast's fur and the newly-exposed robot parts. Much of the detail on this toy improves upon the original as well as the Masterpiece in terms of their complexity, but it's still quite sparing compared to most of the G1 characters in the line. Even the hip joints are nicely detailed, which makes it all the more disappointing that they're molded in blue plastic rather than red. The feet - and the tendons/pistons joining them to his shins - are also molded in blue plastic, and feature only a touch of red toward the top of the tendons/pistons, where they should really be either white (per the original toy) or dark gunmetal (per the CGI and Masterpiece figure). It doesn't look too bad as it is, and it could be considered a throwback to the traditional blue lower parts of an Optimus Prime figure, but it does seem weird considering that grey plastic is present on the toy, and would have been a decent compromise for his feet.

The arms come out slightly better, with both red and white paint bringing the toy more-or-less in line with the original, BWR and Masterpeice versions of the character, though a couple of smaller applications of red - on the raised, circular details below the red strip - have been omitted. The front of the groin area has a nice coating of silver paint as well as some of the darker metallic blue on the three raised circular details. There's a strange feature of the sculpt that makes his groin look like a very pissed-off cyborg version of Sid the sloth from the Ice Age movies: the outermost blue blobs resembling his beady eyes, while the central one looks like a nose and the fluted panel just below it ends up looking like his protruding front teeth. This is somewhat true of the Masterpiece as well, by the looks of things, but the additional detailing on the Kingdom figure makes it all the more apparent. I'm all for more intricate sculpting on robot parts - and it feels like Hasbro's designers struck a better balance here than on either Siege or Earthrise... but someone really needed an objective second pair of eyes on this before the design was finalised. A few additional paint applications - or omissions of paint, depending on the colour of the base plastic beneath - might have helped disguise this unfortunate likeness, but it's one of those sad instances of a feature which, once seen, cannot be unseen.

 

Weapons-wise, Primal comes with his traditional pair of curved swords, both rather more elaborately-sculpted than those of the original. Not only that, but the blades are painted silver, which makes all the difference in their presentation, given Hasbro's recent tendency to avoid painting weapons. While the hands are articulated at the knuckle, the fingers have no bearing on his grip, as there's a 5mm socket effectively sculpted in between the thumb and index finger on both hands. The only downside to this contemporary arrangement is that, unlike the original BW toy, he can't wield both swords in one had, as the ring- and little fingers offer no grip of their own. When he's not using them, the swords can be tabbed into the sides of his back via a slot on each side and the tabs on either side of the hilt, just below the painted blades. This is much the same as the original toy, only the slots on that one were effectively internal, and so the blades were fully concealed in beast mode. While this version also retains the original's shoulder launchers, the spring-loaded release and missile launchers are gone, in favour of simply-sculpted rods that swing out from inside his back. Alongside these, he has a more CGI-accurate version of the original toy's concealed forearm guns, accessed by pushing in a button on the inner face of each forearm. The guns are attached to a patch of fur, but hinged at the base so they can angle slightly outward. Both these and the shoulder guns are designed to be used with the blast effect parts packaged with some of the larger War for Cybertron series toys, or the Siege TargetMasters... none of which I own.

Optimus Primal's head sculpt is another excellent rendition of the CGI from the TV show, with the twin silver antennae on either side, silver fluting in the central crest, and the slotted battlemask that reveals his mouth. His eyes are painted with the same red as the details on his limbs, while the two parts of the battlemask are painted white, leaving the exposed sliver of his face unpainted. The only thing that lets it down os the colour of the plastic. It works well enough for his weapons and, arguably, even his feet... but the colour just looks too washed-out for an Optimus Prime/Primal helmet. The original used a bright, vibrant blue and others have tended toward a darker, richer, metallic colour... This, by comparison, looks anaemic.

Transformation is surprisingly similar to the old toy, albeit with slightly more going on with the legs (allowing a natural-ish gorilla stance as well as the TV show CGI-accurate upright stance depending on their configuration) and quite a bit more going on with the head swap. Where the original toy's beast head simply swings down over the chest, with the gorilla face flipping round to reveal the robot's chest, the Kingdom version stores whichever alternate mode head inside the torso. Switching between them is accomplished by opening the torso (I find it best to grip across the shoulders from the front with one hand, then pull back/down on the head with the other), pulling out the collar plate, rotating it 180°, then pushing it all back together. During this process, the chest itself flips round to swap between the beast/robot chest as required. The upside to this is that both heads are articulated, but the downside is the huge gap between the robot's chest and the rest of the torso, as well as a fairly significant void around the gorilla's head as well. The arms are functionally identical, in that they barely transform (the outer shell of the gorilla's upper arm folds up and out to become furry pauldrons) but have traded the geared chest-beating action, concealed mace and spring-loaded missile launchers for a couple of push-out blasters, compatible with the WfC blast effects, and modelled more closely on the weapons Primal used in the TV show. Most of the transformation works really well, but opening the torso to switch the heads around seems to have some clearance issues - it's very difficult to prise the torso apart, which leads me to worry about breakage in future.

However, regardless of all the sacrifices and alterations, Kingdom Optimus Primal is a fairly well-articulated figure in both modes. The feet are a little disappointing in either mode, having negligible ankle tilt, but the gorilla toes can fold down, while the robot toes fold up for transformation. He has a small amount of rotation below the knee, more than 90° bend at the knee (particularly if the transformation joint is unpegged), upper thigh rotation, and almost unhindered forward/backward and outward swing at the hips. The sculpted detail on the inside of the thigh sections clashs with his groin, which leads to the white paint rubbing off almost instantly, and adds limitations to his mobility in both modes. The gorilla's legs are basically just the robot's lower legs, with the arrangement of joints at the knee improving their range to a small degree. It is, nevertheless, quite tricky to put his gorilla mode into a walking pose or any dramatic stances thanks to the limits of the hips and ankles. The arms in both modes feature unhindered rotation around the shoulder, 90° swing out to the sides (which becomes very stiff at about the 60° mark for no discernible reason) as well as a slight butterfly joint on the torso side. The elbows are pinned right at the inner part of the joint, so he can bring his hands pretty much right up to his shoulders. The wrists have unrestricted rotation, and the fingers are pinned in a group, allowing him to open his hands, even though it's not necessary for attaching his swords. Probably the most impressive feature of the arms is that they can actually be made to reach round to his back, grasp his swords and then untab them from their storage point. The robot's head is on a simple ball joint but, given how little tilt it can manage (a few degrees up, due to the helmet curving upward at the back, and nothing side-to-side) it might as well have been a mushroom peg for rotation only. The gorilla head, surprisingly, fares better, with two rotation joints (one at the base of the neck, mainly for transformation, the other built into the top of the head and limited by the jowls) in addition to a hinge that allows him to tilt his head up through almost 90°. The only downside to this huge range is that it shows off how hollow the head and neck area are.

I had my reservations about this new Optimus Primal figure simply because I'm so fond of the original toy (which you wouldn't know, because I haven't yet written about either iteration of it currently in my posession). The main surprise for me, when he was first revealed, was that they'd gone for a far more 'real-world' approach to the design of the beast mode, to differentiate it from the very CGI-oriented Masterpiece figure. The sculpted fur and skin textures and a more realistic-looking gorilla face make this a unique take on Optimus Primal, since the original toy was somewhat cartoonish in its sculpt and proportions in both modes. Now that I have this new figure in hand, I'm mostly pleased with it... Except that it's so small. For a figure sold at the Voyager pricepoint (approx £25 in the UK), he feels an awful lot like a Deluxe. It could be argued that he fits the original Beast Wars Deluxe class, though he's substantially bulkier than the likes of the original Cheetor. He's possibly more comparable than the likes of Silverbolt or Mach Kick but, equally, not much bigger than Robot Masters Lio Convoy. He definitely feels smaller than a Mega class figure like Longrack, so that probably just demonstrates what a wide range of sizes 'Deluxe class' covered back in the 1990s. Comparing him to Deluxes and Voyagers from, say the Prime Wars Trilogy, really doesn't do him any favours and, while he's discernibly bigger than the likes of Generations Rattrap or Waspinator, he's equally discernibly smaller than Generations Rhinox. On a more positive front, I was pleasantly surprised by the painted swords, since that's precisely the sort of presentation Hasbro tend to skimp on.

In spite of his diminutive stature, I feel that, just like Blackarachnia, Kingdom Optimus Primal could be displayed on the same shelf as original, late 1990s Beast Wars figures just as easily as he could with other War for Cybertron toys... In terms of scale, he's probably a better fit with the old Ultra class Megatron than the original Optimus Primal toy was. It's also a huge improvement on both the Robot Masters version of the original toy and the bizarre techno-organic hybrid that was Hasbro's Beast Wars 10th Anniversary toy.

 

Given that the prices of Deluxe and Voyager class figures seem to have settled back to roughly what they were in the mid-to-late 2000s, I tend toward recommending this toy, even though it feels way too small for its stated size class. It's just about worth the £25 because it's detailed, well-articulated, has some neat concealed weapons and two painted sword accessories and because Deluxes commonly cost more than £20 just a couple of years ago. Kingdom Optimus Primal feels like a much better deal than the allegedly Leader class Earthrise Optimus Prime, and I'm now slightly more inclined to consider picking up beast Megatron, in spite of the rubbery outer shell and £50 price point... But I still have my doubts that it's really worth the increased cost of Leader class figures compared to the line's Deluxes and Voyagers. It's a fun toy... but mainly because the original was fun, and this is a development of that toy. In and of itself, it offers little of interest, innovation or originality. To me, that is - or should be - pretty much antithetical to the brand... and therein lies my biggest reservation about this toy: in-hand, it's just not as exciting as I'd hoped it would be.

Kingdom Optimus Primal suggests that, had a full Beast Wars reboot emerged, the designs may have striven for a level of beast mode realism similar to that pitifully small selection of Beast Wars characters released as part of the Generations/Thrilling 30 line back in 2013/14.This misguided crossover in the final chapter of the War for Cybertron trilogy feels like the final nail in the coffin for such a reboot in the foreseeable future so, now, one can only wonder what that might have been. As a TransFormers fan who came to appreciate Beast Wars long after it ended, I find this disappointing on many levels - all too often, it has felt like Hasbro arbitrarily chuck a handful of beasts into the current toyline because it's "cool", or because they suddenly remember Beast Wars was a thing that happened 10, 20, and now 25 years ago. The techno-organic beasts of TF Prime: Beast Hunters are probably the most egregious example in recent times, but Kingdom feels like Hasbro reluctantly paying lipservice to a loyal and patient portion of the fandom who have been largely neglected, with the exception of a few Anniversary repaints and some costly, extravagant Masterpiece figures.