Perfect Effect PE-DX10 Jetforce Revive Commander

You have to hand it to Perfect Effect: when they know they have a winning figure, they really make the most of it. Last year, I picked up their upgrade set for Super Ginrai and their Powermaster Optimus Prime/Ginrai figure to spruce up an already excellent Takara Tomy Legends Super Ginrai figure which only suffered by relying too much on the engineering of the older Combiner Wars/Legends Ultra Magnus figure. PE's Jinrai Prime figure was quickly repainted into PC-17 Core Magnus - designed to replace CW/Legends Ultra Magnus' integrated truck - and PC-20 - designed for the Primitive Skateboarding exclusive black repaint, which could then comfortably function as both a Nucleon Quest Super Convoy and a Powermaster Nemesis Prime, considering the exclusive toy's colourscheme didn't match either.

But what happened next was perhaps the most interesting development of the mold: a strange hybrid which paid equal homage to God Ginrai/Apex Armour Powermaster Optimus Prime and the deus ex machina/MacGuffin-powered combination of Optimus Prime with parts pillaged from the corpse of Jetfire at the end of Revenge of the Fallen.

Needless to say, that is very much my jam.

However, given my prior history with Perfect Effect, I'd been a little reluctant to buy the PC upgrades, let alone another complete figure... And, with my finances being less than ideal over the last year or so, I'd put off buying this set even though there were no reports of horrific QC problems like those of Leonidas. It eventually got to the point where he was no longer available via my usual channels. However, just as my birthday rolled around this year, and around the time my folks made polite enquiries as to whether there were items not on my Amazon wish list that I might like to be treated to, I found JapanWorld House of Robots - another website based on the Continent (in Rome, Italy, specifically), who had a limited stock of him remaining, and ordered him forthwith. Fortunate for me, considering they now no longer have him in stock!

So, let's take a look at Jetforce Revive Commander and see if he was worth seeking out...

Packaging:

It's actually interesting to note that Perfect Effect have different styles for their boxes depending on the product line. Perfect Combiner sets all have a matte finish on the boxes and fairly simple designs with limited colour. Even PC-16, upon which this figure is largely based, came in a matte finish box, albeit with full colour print. The PE-DX line has been rather more variable, with the early figures like Motobot RC and Aranea coming in glossy window boxes, with full-colour print somewhat styled after G1 toys, while Beast Muscle Leonidas had a more stylised, hand-painted look to the artwork on the front of its windowless, matte finish box, embellished with strategic applications of Spot UV varnish. Jetforce Revive Commander has a similarly windowless box, but it's glossy, full colour, and has a glorious photographic image on the front. Strangely, the product images on the back are all CGI.

I always feel that the use of photographs on the front of the box speaks to the level of confidence a company has in their product... and that's certainly been quite accurately reflected in my personal experience of Perfect Effect's products, Leonidas having been a disaster. The photo used here is pretty good, though cropped weirdly close... and I'd have to say that positioning the product's name right in the middle was a mistake. If it were me, I'd have put it in the top right corner, switching the age recommendation box either to the top or bottom left. One weird thing to note - which only becomes apparent once the figure is removed from the box - is that this image is flipped horizontally: the axe accessory will only fit usefully in the left hand, as the peg goes in from below and the flat face is on the left of the peg, not the right, as depicted on the front of the box. The back of the box shows more product shots and demonstrates that the trailer actually has a third, somewhat independent form - the High Mobility Mode 'vehicle' form. 

Inside the box, the figure is contained within the fairly standard 2-part clamshell tray, with the instructions on a fold-out poster. This seems woefully incomplete to me, far beyond the typical ambiguity of the images used. High Mobility Mode gets minimal coverage and there were a couple of points that I had to guess. There also appears to be no official way to store the axe in vehicle mode...

Vehicle Mode:

There's certainly something comfortably familiar about the figure in this form, not only because it so closely follows Jinrai Prime's template on a technical level, but because it sticks very closely to the traditional G1 Optimus Prime style, colourscheme and colour distribution. The cab seems strangely squat, but it looks to be much the same as Jinrai Prime in that respect. The smoke stacks on this one are appreciably longer, and it's nice to see transparent windows but it's otherwise very similar except in the finer details.

Because, where Jinrai Prime was made to match up with a TransFormers Legends toy, and thus had a very similar feel to its plastic and a very similar level of detail, Jetforce Revive Commander is made to a very different standard. It feels generally sturdier - or, at least, less hollow - in this form, and features a higher level of detail. The lamps/horns on the roof feature applications of gold pain on the front, there's more defined rivet detail, more extensive panel lining and a generally less toy-line styling to the cab, since it no longer has to match the Prime Wars aesthetic. The ball joints for Jinrai Prime's shoulders have been replaced by ratchet joints, sitting in a square cutout in the silver stripe on each side of the cab. A lighter, less brown shade of grey plastic might have looked better here (and on either end of the bumper), but I think it still stands out less than the round sockets on the original figure. One surprising feature of the cab is that it has wing mirrors, albeit unpainted. These are a functional part of the toy that come into play in the combined form, so I'm not surprised they weren't painted - there would have been a very strong likelihood of paint scratching and/or transfer through repeated transformations. There are a couple of small things that mar the appearance of the cab: the large tab on the roof (which is super-important for robot mode) and the seams in the two front windows (which are a result of alterations to his transformation) but, to be honest, I don't tend to notice them too much. Plus, I'm pretty sure I've seen worse on official Hasbro/Takara Tomy figures.

Naturally, the back end is a disaster, comparatively, since it's clearly just the robot's lower legs collapsed back over its thighs, and the only concession to looking like a real truck is a perfunctory trailer hitch socket and painted details on the toes that could be considered similar to indicator lights if one was feeling particularly generous. Additionally, the back of the cab remains the robot's chest, completely uncovered except for the smoke stacks. It looks less like a duplicate of the front of the cab than on Jinrai Prime, due to its pseudo-Bayverse styling, but it still kind of lowers the tone of the figure. I rather wish they'd had either the kneecaps or a section of shin fold up to cover it, but concede that would likely have added even more bulk to the lower legs.

It was initially quite strange to see such a traditional-looking Optimus Prime-analogue cab towing a black trailer, until I remembered even that is not without precedent: G2 Optimus Prime had a black trailer. Additionally, that trailer was decorated with red striping, albeit rather more prominent than the striping on this version, so this figure could be considered a homage to three versions of Optimus Prime. With this revelation, this figure becomes a bit of dichotomy, since a full G2 Optimus Prime homage would surely require some kind of reference to the additional spring-loaded missile launchers and voicebox packaged with the toy. Sculpted detail down the length of the trailer broadly matches the G1 toy, but with the size and position of some elements (such as the circular detail near the top toward the front or the small ventilation panels near the bottom) adjusted to fit within the transforming panels. The doors at the back of the trailer feature all the relevant detail and, while they're hinged to open for transformation, they're not really intended to open in this form as protrusions on the inner faces butt up against each other. One thing that's always nice to see, though, is the painted indicator lights, and even a space for a two-part license plate at the back of the trailer.

There are clear signs that this mold is intended to support additional accessories, since there are two 5mm ports at the back of the roof and one on either side at the front... but all of the weapons and upgrade parts stow inside the trailer.

Well, almost all... There's no clear spot to install the axe - nothing covered by the instructions and no evident vacant socket that would suit either the rectangular tab on one side or the 5mm grip. I've found that the tab will fit into a slot on the underside of the trailer - in one of combined form's shin plates - but it's a very loose fit, so I'm not convinced it's an intentional storage point. Other than this strange omission, the trailers comes together surprisingly tidily considering how many folding panels have to intersect just so, and there are only a few exposed hinges. Probably the most unsightly part of the trailer is the pair of comparatively wide slots just in front of the frontmost exposed hinge, which are required for transformation of a small section of the combined form's backpack. The problem for trailer mode is that these sections are on mushroom pegs and don't really click or tab into place, so there's a tendency for them to wobble and come out of alignment.

Robot Mode:

Being a huge fan of the Autobots' aesthetic in the first three live action movies and the sort of 'movie-lite' aesthetic of TransFormers Prime, this clever blending of movie styling with G1 structure is right up my street. Frankly, this is the sort of thing I feel Hasbro should be doing with the toyline now, taking the iconic look of the original toys and giving them a subtle, stylistic tweak to freshen them up, in much the same way IDW's artists have over the years.

Generally speaking, what we have here is a chest with the faux windscreen further broken up, a more angular torso overall, a more movie-styled pelvis, somewhat rounded thighs with the slightly metallic-looking blue plastic of his hips partially exposed on fronts and backs, and a slightly more elaborately-designed lower leg that's probably closer to IDW than the movies, particularly in the style of the kneecap and the hinged armour panel over the top of the foot. The smokestacks have migrated from the chest back to their traditional place on his arms, but are folded back on themselves and, to be honest, I don't think they ever really look like part of his arms. The arms themselves function much the same way as those on PC-16, albeit with exceptionally sturdy ratchet joints at the shoulders and soft ratchets at the wrists. The backpack is somewhat compressed versus the older figure, with the sides of the cab hinging back over the central part, and it protrudes far less noticeably over the shoulder line behind the head.

The neck has been re-sculpted to add piston-like details, while the raised details of his collar have been made to somewhat resemble the protrusions of movie Prime's shoulders. The style of the arms is essentially the same, but just about everything has been re-sculpted for additional detail, and there's now a flap that conceals the actual shoulder joint. Strangely, though, while there's a groove cut into the shoulder just above it, there's no corresponding tab on the back of the flap. The chest is a bit of a mixed bag because, while I love the extra detail and the appearance of overlapping panels set at subtly different angles, some of these angles mean that the chest panel doesn't align with the main block of torso behind it, which is much more squared-off. This has the side-effect of revealing just how much translucent plastic has been used on this figure: the entire chest panel and much of the shell of the cab/torso are translucent, all of which has been painted over. This might worry me on a Hasbro toy, but it's also apparent how much thicker the plastic is on this product, hopefully making it substantially sturdier. Another issue I have with the chest is that, while both this and PC-16 have a faux grille on the belly, this one has a larger, far more obvious gap between the main part of it and the surrounding torso plate. Given the already more elaborate design of both components, I feel they could have adjusted the design of the latter such that the large gap was less of an issue. One really fun aspect of the chest design is that they seemingly took a leaf out of MP-44's book and, while the roof lights and rivet details from vehicle mode are replicated, the windscreen wipers have been removed.

The upper legs follow the movie-style, multi-layered armour look, albeit rather more squared-off in their cross-section, and the disc details on the sides of the knees are highlighted with gold paint (the blue disc inside the gold rings, depicted on the box, is absent), while the lower legs are probably the most traditional-looking, non-movie-styled part of of the figure, being largely quite squared-off and with blocky feet rather than the cloven, multi-digit things Prime was given in the movie, and the gunmetal paint on the knees and shin vents is all very much par for the course.

Keeping with the quasi-movie styling, this figure comes with two handguns, somewhat styled after the newly de-integrated guns Prime was wielding in Revenge of the Fallen, with laser sight-like protrusions from the side of the body of the gun and the cannister sticking out at an angle toward the back. Due to the way they attach to the combined form, the two guns are mirror images of each other, and so best suited to being wielded by a particular hand. The front sections are fully coated with gunmetal paint and look pretty solid, but the back sections are unpainted grey plastic, and feature some quite unsightly gaps. The grips are designed to fit into the 5mm socket of his closed hands, but the raised thumb and second knuckle on the index finger on each hand makes the connection a little less snug than it could have been, since it means the guns cannot be fully inserted. They're not loose as long as the hand is fully closed, but the articulated knuckle can sometimes be levered open slightly when inserting the guns. His other weapon is a rather oversized axe whose sculpted details pay equal homage to the swords Prime had in the first movie and the hooks he used in the second. While the bulk of the axe is unpainted plastic, the blade itself features a Cybertronian glyph (apparently the letter 'i', for whatever reason) on one side and a gloriously glossy coating of - by the looks of it - translucent orange over silver paint, which looks fantastic when the light catches it. The only drawback to the axe is that it's designed to attach to the left hand only since the grip comes out of the righthand side with only enough space to accommodate the back of his hand. Thus, while it can be placed in the right hand, it has to be attached upside down, and no longer lines up as closely with his wrist.

The head sculpt is more 'super-detailed G1' than movie-style - it has the multi-layered look for the helmet, as well as the silver paintwork on the 'ears', antennae and the armour panels protruding over the sides of his jawline, but the battlemask is much-simplified. The central part of the brow seems to protrude a lot more than either the traditional G1 style or the movie style, but it is angled backward like the latter. While the majority of the head is unpainted, somewhat metallic-looking blue plastic with only the few applications of silver previously mentioned, the eyes are picked out in a very pale blue - almost duck-egg blue rather than the more traditional cyan or 'AllSpark Blue' - which, I think, helps them stand out more within the surrounding silver paint. I have to admit, I like this head sculpt far more than that of PC-16, or the restyled version used on the later, more extensively G1-ified solo-releases of this figure.

Transformation is fundamentally the same as PC-16, just that the shoulders feature additional flaps, as mentioned, to cover the transformation/articulation joints and the smokestacks have to perform some rather more complicated moves on top of the shoulders. The legs also feature an additional hinge to stow the petrol tanks behind the rear wheels, inside the legs, and there's that additional flap over the feet at the ankle. The two outer sections of the windscreen also compress in, over the central part, making for a smaller backpack with a more G1-like profile. Furthermore, the backpack uses the wide tab from the vehicle mode's roof to provide an additional point of connection between the upper and lower body by pegging into the exposed slot of the waist joint's mushroom peg.

Naturally, in terms of articulation, it's much the same as the older figure, though the ratchets on the shoulders are a lot sturdier than the ball joints, far in excess of what they really needed to carry the accessories, even the big gun from combined mode, in my opinion. The first time I tried to pose and transform this figure, I was worried they might break, as has been reportedly happening in a lot of recent toys, from both Hasbro and several Third Parties. Plus, the strength of the ratchets is undermined considerably by the fact that the elbow is still just a friction joint, just like on PC-16, even though, with the cannon attached, they would technically carry more of the weight than the shoulders. Nevertheless, their range is pretty good, and the smokestacks can be kept away from the head quite easily even when the arms are extended fully out to the sides. The ratcheting ab crunch has been carried over from the previous figure, but feels a little tighter, and is supplemented by a friction hinge that works in the opposite direction, seemingly for the combined mode. Curiously, there isn't a single ratcheting joint in the legs, though most of them are surprisingly stiff, for friction joints. The only tangible improvement made to the legs, in fact, is that the knee is double-jointed... though I can't understand why they felt that was necessary other than simply to improve articulation. Even without the extra joint, the cut-out on the back of the thigh means he's able to bend his knees well beyond 90°, and they don't travel much further on the other joint. The sticking point with this figure, as with PC-16, is that the feet have no heel support and while, again, the figure isn't back-heavy as such, and doesn't generally have any difficulty remaining upright in a pose, that lack of support beyond about the mid-point on the thickness of the leg as the potential to be problematic, and the range of movement at the ankle feels as though it might be slightly restricted versus the previous figure.

High Mobility Mode:

This is, undoubtedly, the oddest aspect of this set, though it does make a kind of sense - assuming it's intended as a homage to that episode of the TV show in which the Autobots did some surfing - it also pays homage to yet another Autobot leader... or should that be Maximal leader? The whole 'flying sled' thing was pretty much pioneered by TransMetals Optimus Primal but, while his was a fairly simple thing, this has been consciously designed to resemble RotF Jetfire's SR-71 Blackbird vehicle mode, as far as that would ever be possible with something comprised of all but the rearmost section of the trailer. 

Building this vehicle is basically a case of flattening out the backpack component, compressing the wings back as if for transformation and stowing the combined mode's new chestplate on the underside, then attaching the large gun via its pair of L-shaped tabs. All things considered, it looks remarkably good - albeit more like a Technobot Scattershot reference in terms of its overall silhouette - and there's even a pseudo-cockpit canopy sculpted and painted on the the nose of the vehicle.

The two handguns can be pegged into the boosters, and then the robot figure can mount the vehicle by using the weapon's 5mm grip to peg into the socket on the underside of either foot. This is the only point of attachment, and the peg is far longer than the socket in the robot's foot, so the front foot is raised and at an angle, while his back foot is just resting on the back of the fuselage. It's also worth noting that, while there is a shorter peg just behind the gun's grip, it's slightly larger than 5mm and is designed solely for use in vehicle mode, to hitch the trailer to the truck.

My main gripe with this vehicle is that there's no obvious means of attaching it to any kind of flight stand, so display options are somewhat limited. It'd likely just be a case of plugging the robot into the stand and having this hanging off his foot. There are no landing gear either, so it ends up resting on the clips that attach it to the robot's sides and the downwardly-protruding panels on the side of the nose/gun barrel, which isn't ideal.

Still, I think it makes for a far better accessory than the cut down, wobbly plastic mess that is Earthrise Optimus Prime's pitiful trailer, and is arguably a bit more useful than Hasbro/Takara Tomy's effort at much the same thing with their 2010 Voyager class Jetpower Optimus Prime or even the Supreme class Jetwing Optimus Prime variants from 2011, 2012 and 2015.

Combined Robot Mode:

While this version of robot mode looks substantially more movie-like at first glance, one can't help but notice elements of Godbomber/Apex Armour Optimus Prime in the sculpt and the way it all comes together. The new vambraces feature stylistic elements from the movie (being predominately red with blue flashes sweeping inward just in front of the elbows), the leg extensions feature wing-like detailing on the outer panels, while the sculpting of the shin covers suggests the digitigrade appearance of the upgrades on the CGI, while the wings and backpack obviously look very much like engines and wing parts from a Blackbird. That said, it really only needs alternate wings and a new paint job to pass for the G1 character. Even the backs of the lower legs seem designed for adaptability, with the faux (painted) blue leg details on the inner face of the trailer's doors being partially covered over by Blackbird panels just below the knee.

One thing I find a little strange in the paint job on this figure is that the extra parts on his shoulders and the new chest plate are the first uses of the movie character's flame patterns on the entire thing and, while it works very well in my opinion, I would have preferred some elements of this to have been present on the basic robot and/or vehicle so that, at the very least, it looks more like the chest has been bulked out from within, rather than suddenly developing new vehicle components with an entirely incongruous paint job. The red-on-blue flame pattern is clearly on a door panel designed to look like it's folded out from the sides and in front of the windscreen, which has been separated slightly further than on the basic robot mode. The headlights appear out of nowhere, since the basic robot just has a couple of silver pipe details on each side of his waist, and these headlights aren't even the same style as those on vehicle mode, being rounded at each end rather than squared off. Similarly, the new pauldrons, which store inside the trailer, could instead have been made to attach to the back of the truck cab, both to conceal the faux parts chest and the add some more of the flame pattern to vehicle mode.

Still, the whole thing looks fantastic, and very imposing, even though the head now looks miniscule. I particularly like the sculpting of the back panel, which includes a trailer hitch detail which actually ends up on the inside of the trailer's roof. While a couple of small trailer panels do become actual wings at the bottom of the backpack, there are additional wing details sculpted into the backpack just below the trailer hitch, and it's a little disappointing that these don't angle outward in this mode - despite all the sculpted detail, the main backpack panel looks rather flat. The boosters are able to rotate for transformation, so the wings can be angled backward or forward, and each one is connected to the backpack via a double hinge that allows them to tilt inward and rotate backward. Another fun feature, which I only found by accident, is that the silver tips of his boosters are removeable.

Most of the paint applications are metallic red, in keeping with the Jetfire homage, though the colour is a little off - almost orange - in a few places on mine. As well as silver paint on the boosters, there are a few applications of gold on the lower legs, and the matte, non-metallic red paint used on the vambraces is also used for a couple of flashes on the backpack, either side of the trailer hitch, and on the shins.

The basic robot's handguns can still be wielded in the upgraded robot's hands - because the grip is right at the back of the gun, and so nothing clashes with the newly bulked-up forearms - but they're intended to tab into the sides of the vambraces, just in front of their little wings and over the top of their dinky sculpted gun details. This leaves the hands free to wield the giant cannon and the axe but, while the former can be carried in either hand - since much of its support comes from it also tabbing into the underside of the vambraces, and both have the required slot - the axe can still, obviously, only be wielded in the left hand. The cannon is really the main event, though, and looks excellent - integrating far better into this mode than it does the 'High Mobility Mode'. I think it's substantially larger than it needed to be, but might actually be proportionally smaller than the Studio Series Jetfire equivalent of the weapon versus SS Optimus Prime. It's lacking the CGI model's ammo belt, which fed round from somewhere on Prime's back, but the same could be said for literally every interpretation of this figure from both Hasbro and Takara Tomy, so it's not a huge loss.

Building the combined form is surprisingly easy, but a little fussy in places. From the bottom up, the rear of the trailer opens out and folds back on itself - the truck's doors flipping 180° and tabbing into the base of the leg - to create the leg extensions. Before attaching them, the robot's waist has to be rotated 180°, then each thigh has to be rotated 180° such that the feet are facing forwards again and the truck's rear wheels are on the inner face of each leg. The upgrades then connect first to the shins, where a hook on the new shin plates have to be passed under the hinged panels over the basic robot's feet, then pushed back against the shin, such that the hinged panel flattens down and holds the new shin plate in place. Once that's done, the 5mm peg on the inside of the upgrade's ankle should slot neatly into the socket on the underside of the basic robot's feet as it's moved into place, and the back of the lower leg hits up against a small protrusion just in front of the rear panel of the upgrade. The vambraces require the robot's hands to be unplugged from the wrists, at which point the upgrades plug into the newly-vacated socket, and the hands plug back into the socket on the front of the vambraces. The new groin armour simply plugs in via three pegs and three sockets on what was the basic robot's backside. The pauldrons attach via chunky tabs and matching slots just behind the smokestack hinges on top of the shoulder, then the backpack clips around the vehicle mode's wing mirrors, with the new chest plate swings down over the shoulders to tab into the chest on each side. I'm honestly a little surprised there's no tabbing or clipping in on the back itself, but it all feels very secure nevertheless.

Taking these parts back into trailer mode is another matter, however. Most of it is pretty smooth, and the two sections making up the bulk of the trailer fit together very well, with only a small tolerance issue in a couple of the hinges on the roof causing it to appear to bend upward toward the front of the trailer. This is all solved once the final piece, the cannon section, clips in to the underside, since it has small tabs to shore up its connection to the rest of the trailer at multiple points. The main difficulty is getting the last couple of trailer side panels into place, since some of its tabs are on opposing edges, and there's not much room left inside the trailer to push the panels back out when they misalign. I think it's quite ingenious how the cannon's barrel opens out to become part of the trailer's base and the side bumpers, though the gymnastics involved in doing so and keeping the angled trailer panels out of their way, can be frustrating. The engineering overall is a phenomenal achievement, particularly when looking at the inside of one half of the trailer, and seeing how all the parts fit around each other.

It should come as no surprise that the upgrade parts have some impact on the robot's articulation. The main negative hit is to the shoulders, which lose some of their outward swing due to the bulky pauldrons clashing with the strips of plastic connecting the backpack and the chest plate. It's still possible to get the arms about two clicks outward, but even this requires the shoulder to be rotated back slightly, so the elbow then has to be bent further forward to compensate. Naturally, the backpack also gets in the way of the arms, but it's certainly no worse than it tends to be on any number of official TransFormers figures. It is also worth mentioning that the cannon has a habit of butting up against the backpack, since the trailer side panels folded up against its sides stick out behind it, below the elbow. The head's range of movement is completely unaffected, and the waist rotation isn't affected excessively - the tassets will clash with the backpack, but the waist can easily twist through at least 90° still. Furthermore, while the ratcheted ab crunch of the basic robot now bends him backwards, the additional friction hinge allows for a small amount of ab crunch for the upgraded form, it's just not as stable. The range of the hips is somewhat limited by the pelvic armour, but the tassets are hinged to move out of the way to the sides and, to be honest, I think the backpack limits the backward swing a lot more than the armour plate hinders the forward swing. Having a double-jointed knee means he can still manage at least a 90° bend, and the feet are much better articulated than many Hasbro releases (and specifically CW/Legends Ultra Magnus and either TR Optimus Prime or Legends Super Ginrai), having both forward/backward and inward ankle tilt, allowing for a rock-solid footprint in a good range of stances - far more stable, in fact, than the base robot alone. 

I was absolutely thrilled to have found this figure - and JapanWorld.it - after learning that all my usual suppliers of plastic crack were out of stock. Delaying purchase of (frequently quite expensive) Third Party figures is always a bit of a gamble, but I'd been keeping an eye on this - on various sites - for several months. Considering how scarce this figure - and its variants - have become, I'm very happy - and feel very fortunate - to have this figure in my collection. I love the concept of the figure, and it's gone a long way toward restoring my faith in Perfect Effect as a maker of transforming robot figures after the fragile disaster that was Leonidas. It feels sturdy, quite weighty, poses very well, and has a fantastic paint job. At their best, Perfect Effect are, I think, one of the many Third Party companies both Hasbro and Takara Tomy need to look to for inspiration. Their transformations are not overengineered, their designs are imaginative without becoming overly abstract and, with this figure, they've presented a fresh take on both the traditional G1 Optimus Prime and the Bayverse version.

For those that aren't into the G1/Movie hybrid look, Perfect Effect clearly felt that a change of colourscheme and a handful of extra parts would be sufficient to turn this figure into a full-on God Ginrai homage, as they released a version with remodelled wings, extra weapons and a simplified, more G1-style paint job - including a silver/grey trailer with the cyan/white striping - and a new head sculpt, as PE-DX10G Godforce Warrior. Frankly, if I hadn't been able to get this version, I may well have pursued the other. The alternate paint job works surprisingly well considering this version makes it appear as though the mold was 100% designed with the Jetfire homage in mind and, while it's obviously most effective in vehicle mode, the High Mobility Mode and upgraded robot mode both look decent, especially the latter with its fully silver-painted chest panel. Weirdly, the base figure has also had a couple of solo releases, as PE-DX11 Honor Warrior and 11B Dark Warrior, coming with a traditionally-styled blaster, the axe and a giant translucent plastic switch-axe as a gift celebrating (presumably) Perfect Effect's 10th Anniversary... And I'm honestly quite tempted to get the Nemesis Prime version...

It is still in stock at the China-based branch of TFs Express, and both this version and the G1-style variant are currently available on eBay, but both options are likely to incur import duty. Even so, I'd say this figure is well worth a look.

As a final note, I ended up slapping a few spare Autobot insignias from Reprolabels onto the figure, so here's a handful of photos of the results, including my old favourite, the high kick, which I somehow neglected to photograph beforehand...