Home Special Features Evolution Revolution: A Beast Era Retrospective
Transmetal Optimus Primal
Height: 13.5cm tall in Beast Mode, 17cm tall in Robot Mode.
Articulation: 22 total points - swivel neck; 4 points each arm: universal-joint shoulder, pre-elbow swivel, hinge elbow; swivel waist; 6 points each leg: universal joint hip, pre-knee swivel, double-joint knee, hinged ankles.
Colors: Molded silver-gray and metallic maroon. Painted orange, silver, and red. Vacuum-metalized blue and red(shoulders).
Accessories: Gun with Mace/Missile x2.
Author: RAC
Destiny had greater things in store for Optimus Primal than simply being captain of a modest exploration vessel. Fate is particularly cruel to those who bear the name "Optimus" and seems to find them Megatrons with which to forever struggle against. Over the course of many years, Optimus Primal would prevail again and again over Megatron, saving time, space, and Cybertronian civilization more than a few times in the process. Though he was no stranger to risking the ultimate sacrifice to accomplish his mission, he would finally give up his life to restore the consumed population to a conquered Cybertron.
But, fate is indeed cruel. Primus himself could not let Optimus rest, and chose him among all the sparks that ever were or would be to lead the multidimensional fight against Unicron and his corrupted Transformer minions. After an abrupt end to the reality-spanning war, Optimus has moved on to parts unknown, but surely will rise to the task if needed again.
Also, he occasionally gets summoned to someplace where everyone speaks Japanese, numerous variations of the Generation 1 era, and at least once became the spiritual advisor to an Optimus Prime from a probably-unrelated timeline. Busy monkey!
"We lose when we quit, and I'm not ready to quit."
Beast Mode
Still a gorilla, but the similarities to his old self end there. Smaller than his previous Ultra incarnation, Optimus' new Mega-sized body is blue chrome and silver with some maroon accents. His name is printed on his right pectoral- I have this horrible urge to find a way to print "Hello! My name is:" directly above it. the two mace-missiles store on his back, and look vaguely as though they could be some kind of jetpack. His diminutive handgun stores on his right hip on a hinged peg. Where the first Optimus Primal toy had its neck designed so that it only looked right hunched over, this Optimus only looks right standing straight up. I'm not sure why they decided to change this now, especially since it'd provide another significant difference between Beast and Robot Modes and this figure kind of needs that.
Articulation is good, if mixed: besides not tilting, the ape head doesn't move at all, which seems odd. Particularly since it's a separate, chromed piece from its base- how hard would that have been? Though I guess you would run the risk of rubbing the chrome off the head, so maybe that's why it doesn't move. The shoulders are universal joints with 360 degrees worth of swivel, and they tilt 90 degrees out to the side, a full right angle to the torso. There's also an upper-arm swivel, and a decent elbow with just slightly less than 90 degrees. Optimus can't really beat his chest anymore though, because his elbows aren't quite as good, and his arms are quite a bit longer now. The waist is turnable in this mode, but the silver flanks restrict it quite a bit- they'll pop loose repeatedly as you turn. Lastly, he has universal-jointed hips, but his stubby little legs lack knees, so there's severe limits to his range. The blue chrome toes swivel a little, but I don't think you can quite count that as articulation, since they pop loose far too easily to bear any serious weight.
-Transport Mode
Fold down the rear section of each leg, connect the silver pipes, and flip the gun up against his leg as a thruster. The instructions describe this as a skateboard, and it does indeed have wheels, but the show uses it as a hoverboard, like in Back to the Future. Even without the depiction on the show to reinforce it, I think we'd all prefer a hoverboard. By percentage, it probably occupies no more of his body mass than Cheetor's wings take up, or even less. But it's much neater to look at, and doesn't leave gaping holes in his flanks, so Big Bot wins this one.
It does raise a couple problems though: he can really only travel sideways and his head does not turn, for one. The waist seemingly isn't meant to turn far in this mode, but you can do it, after popping and replacing the flankplates. And doing so helps the balance issues a bit. Not only does it not roll very well, but balancing it is really tough. Points for style, but like much style, it's not as functional as it could be, or probably should be.
Transformation
So simple! That surfboard now swings down to become robot feet, with the blue gorilla feet becoming knees. The backpack with the maces is mounted on a pair of articulated arms that swing around to cover the gorilla chrome, and the flankpanels that bulked up the Beast Mode become shoulderpads for Robot Mode- that's a particularly inventive touch, I think. The torso opens up to allow you to swap Beast and Robot heads, and the forearms open up so that you have fists pointing the proper direction once you turn his waist and forearms around. And that's about it. Pretty similar to the Ultra figure when you get down to it, but the stowing of the Beast head, while cleaner here, just isn't as neat.
Robot Mode
I like the proportions here: bulky but heroic. Most of the blue chrome gets covered for this mode and the maroon takes over, along with some orange that's entirely absent from Beast Mode. Like Cheetor, Optimus' organic bits now come into play in Robot Mode, and I like the reversal a bit better here than I did on Cheetor. The head looks like a gorilla wearing Optimus Primal's helmet, which looks better on the toy than it did in the series, where Optimus looks just a little bit smooth-faced and creepy. His arms are still a fair bit longer than standard human proportions. A detail I didn't notice at first: even his robot hands are furrier than the Beast equivalents. The lower legs are thinner and more skeletal and look slightly out of place with the rest of his heavily-armored limbs. (Well, the robot equivalent of skeletal- they look like bare machinery.)
Only a few serious changes to articulation here: first, the head now swivels, which it does without impediment. Likewise the waist, which is now free to go about its business. And of course, Optimus now has double jointed knees, and an above-the-knee swivel, and fair ankles. The range of the ankles isn't quite enough to keep up with the knees, but he can pose fairly well and fairly stably. The hollow ape feet/kneecaps sometimes catch on the silver pistons on the calves, however. I'm a bit wary of that since chromed plastic's always a little less durable than normal plastic.
Finally, Optimus has an unofficial fourth mode. Not a lot of the Transmetals have firearms: Cheetor has a whip/hatchet thing, Rattrap has a whip, Megatron has a "whiplash cutlass." (Boy, they really liked whips, huh?) Optimus actually has a ranged weapon, a rarity here- but it looks like Darkwing Duck's gas gun and fires maces. Mainframe added a lot of weapons and abilities to the Transmetals, since up to now the battles on the show had primarily been firefights. Optimus gets an ingenious repurposing of the silver plate that covers whichever side of the torso isn't in use at the moment: pull it back over his shoulders, swing his hands up under the shoulderpads, and you have a weapons platform, with the back of the mace-missiles serving as the guns. It's obviously not an intended use of the backplate, which you can tell by how front-heavy it makes him. If you bend his knees he stands with no problem, which only helps to reinforce the connection in my mind between this and the Astro-Harness worn by Jack Kirby's Orion. There's not a lot of physical similarities, but it just puts me in mind of that. Either way, it's actually easier to balance than Surf Mode.
Accessories
The gun really is kind of small, especially compared to the kind of heat the original Optimus Primal was packing. (But compared to the rest of the Transmetals, he's still ahead in the arms race.) It fits neatly in any of the figure's four hands, and stores on the hip when not in use, doubling as the Flight Mode thruster. The maces slide into the gun and lock into place with the tail end sticking out of the back- press that down and the missile launches a fair distance. The maces aren't as snug a fit in Optimus' hands as the gun is, but they will stay. They fit really nicely on the backpack though- once you plug them on there, they're not going to budge.
When Buying Loose
The only (intentionally) removable parts are the weapons, but the gorilla feet/robot kneecaps pop off pretty easily as well. If he's missing anything else, you have a problem. And of course, mind the chrome! Speaking of which, there's several variations on the color of Optimus' chrome parts: some are purple, and as you can see in the Gallery, some are downright pink! Far as I can tell blue, in addition to being show-accurate, is also the most common color.
Closing Remarks
Optimus' Transmetal upgrade came out really well! The surfboard third mode is neat if tippy, the Robot Mode articulation is good, and it's nice to look at besides. For a figure that transforms from a biped to a biped, it's surprisingly versatile; if you could re-angle and/or turn the gorilla head it'd be just about perfect. Either way, it's undeniably Excellent.
-RAC
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