Dave's Transformers Rant: Supreme Wave 2/3 Cybertron Primus (that's the full name on the box) Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Cybertron/Supreme2 Strictly speaking, wave 2 is the one that comes with the bonus damaged Unicron head, and wave 3 without. The announced plan, IIRC, was to first release wave 2 and then, later, wave 3. But due to some shipping mess-ups, both waves arrived on the same ship, so some places get headless and some get with head, nearly at random. I found the headless version first, and picked it up rather than wait to see if maybe the wave 2 version would eventually show up. So, of course, the one with the head is gonna end up clogging shelves around here in September or something. BTW, the Unicron head is visible in the package...if you don't see it, you don't got it. No need to worry about secret P/N codes or whatnot. Update 11/4/06: Thanks to ShadowWing, I have the Unicron head. See the very bottom of the review for comments on it. Also, a version now exists that comes packaged with four of the new Classics-line Mini-Cons, making people who bought the "vanilla" version feel even more like chumps. However, these will come out on their own in time, so it's not like the Unicron head situation. CAPSULE Cybertron Primus: Very few real flaws, but also nothing that REALLY impresses. A solid toy, worth getting, but don't go nuts trying to find it. Recommended. $49.99 at Toys R Us. RANT Packaging: Essentially the same Supreme box as Starscream. Co-sells on the bottom panel are Metroplex, Soundwave, Menasor and the Optimus Prime recolor. The front and front-ish panels show a photo of the planet mode and drawn art of the robot mode. The art shows a version of Optimus Prime's Matrix- style Key, but the actual toy comes with an Autobot Cybertron Key with modification. In the upper right is a sticker saying you need to provide two AA batteries, but that two button batteries are already included. The left side shows the planet mode partially opened up with Stellar Converter Cannons deployed, as well as a picture of the Omega Lock with all Keys inserted (including the incorrect Matrix-style one). The Giant Key is not depicted, it may not have been ready in time for the photo session, or they just decided to leave it out in favor of the new one. On the back are a photo of the robot mode with call-outs for all the features, some activated by Key, some by Lock. There's also a small picture of the "they're reaching for it" Battle Station mode. The right side has a new Cybertron planet entry: ---- Until now, CYBERTRON has been known only as the ancient home of the TRANSFORMERS. With their home damaged almost beyond repair and unable to resist the pull of a gigantic black hole that threatens to destroy it, the AUTOBOTS have retrieved the legendary Omega Lock and the four Planet Keys. The power of these ancient artifacts re-links the spark of PRIMUS to his physical form - the planet CYBERTRON itself! Content throughout history merely to observe his creations as they explored the universe around them, PRIMUS has never before unleashed his full might. Though he has awakened from time to time during the long history of the TRANSFORMERS, never before has the danger to the universe been so great that he has felt the need to show his true form. Now is a time of greater need than he has ever seen before. Now, all of creation cries out its need for its greatest champion and protector. ---- The Planet Key is in a separate mini-blister taped to the inside of the box. The bag containing the instructions and map is wedged in the back of the figure behind the inner tray. Mine came with the Jungle map. Two 2.75" (7cm) black missiles are held to the tray by rubber bands. Two twist-ties hold the Omega Lock onto a blister post that keeps it up at the front of the box. An interesting bit of packaging on the inner tray has holes cut in the cardboard to let some Mini-Con hardpoints poke through, and then the holes are covered with plastic sheet to protect the hardpoints. Simply not cutting the holes would result in the hardpoints poking through eventually. A folded up piece of thick corrugated cardboard is twist-tied between the buttflap (see below) and the part of the tray supporting the legs. Plastic tie supports are used, rather than the cardboard ones that have been appearing more in recent Transformers. A mere 9 twist-ties hold Primus into the tray, with an additional cardboard spacer between his back and the tray. There's a tie on each forearm to keep the pop-out cannons from, well, popping out, and a total of 9 more rubber bands holding various bits together. It is packaged in robot mode, with the Stellar Converter Cannons and leg-mounted missile clusters already deployed. Update 7/14/06: The Unicron head is packaged in plain view in the upper right part of the box, twist-tied to its own blister pillar. The cardboard of the box front is different from the headless version, with an extra circular burst saying that there's a bonus head inside (as opposed to a sticker), so this is a significant package variation. LORD OF LIGHT: CYBERTRON PRIMUS Planet: Yes Altmodes: Cybertron, Battle Station Previous Name Use: None Previous Mold Use: None Key Gimmick: Forearm-mounted cannons. Omega Lock Gimmicks: Missile Clusters (legs), Stellar Converter Cannons (shoulders) Key Code: sp8u Mighty creator of the TRANSFORMERS race, both AUTOBOTS and DECEPTICONS owe him their loyalty as his children. He is as old as the Universe itself, and matched in power only by his twin brother, the evil UNICRON. PRIMUS is the Lord of Light - a pure, natural force of order, strength and peace, committed eternally to the struggle against chaos, destruction and the ever-advancing darkness of UNICRON. STR ? INT infinity SPD 5 END 10 RNK infinity COUR 10 FRB 10 SKL ? Avg infinity (The END on the webpage entry was 9.) Key Code Info: Primus has been part of the Transformers mythology for close to 20 years. He was first introduced as a concept in the original Marvel Transformers comic books. The legend and story grew until Primus became as important in the Transformers world as Optimus Prime, Megatron and Unicron. TRANSFORMERS CYBERTRON marks the first time the world has truly seen the creator of the Transformers in action! (Also shows some early design sketches.) Planet Key: Comes with an Autobot Cybertron Key, with the Autobot symbol painted in the same metallic bluish silver that the edges are. Omega Lock: The main body of this device is a cool gray plastic (CCCCCC with a slight bluish tinge), with a rough four-sided symmetry. The bottom 17mm is a truncated cone narrowing from 15mm in diameter at the top to 10mm at the bottom. On the very bottom is a small indentation 4.7mm in diameter that is the activation button for the LED at the top. There are four slots arranged around the tip that hook into tabs in various activation slots on Primus and make it a sort of non-standard Allen wrench. The middle section is vaguely like a rectangular prism that tapers slightly towards the bottom, with a circular protrusion on each face that contains a Key slot. The section is 27mm tall, 27mm on a side at the widest and about 17mm wide at the narrowest. The circular protrusions are 19mm in diameter and stick out about 6mm. Each circular face has a small triangular indentation above the slot. On the face with the battery cover and the one opposite it, there's swirly detail similar to some of the decorations on Vector Prime. On the other two sides are simple horizontal vent patterns. The vent sides also have soft black plastic handles sticking out about 28mm total, bending upwards and terminating in horizonal T-bars. The top part of the Lock is a foursome of clear blue (33CCFF) fins 33mm tall around a central core. The maximum span of the fins is 35mm. At the center is a red LED that lights up when the button on the bottom is pressed. Placing the Planet Keys in the Omega Lock, disappointly, doesn't do anything electronic or mechanical. It just looks pretty. On mine, at least, the Key slot on the battery cover side sticks, requiring more force to remove the Key placed there. Okay, it does one mechanical thing. With Keys in all four slots, you can spin the Omega Lock as a pretty good top. Without them, it falls over too easily. Robot Mode: 12.5" (32cm) tall at the head, 13.25" (34cm) at the very top of the toy. Primus is the shortest of the Supremes, and shorter even than Super/Leader class Omega Supreme or Metroplex (battle mode). Fully loaded with Omega Lock and all Keys, weighs 2 lbs 9 oz, or 1.16kg. Slightly lighter than Starscream. 1.12kg without the Lock. There are five plastic colors on this toy. Black, bright blue (00CCFF), medium blue (0033CC), slate blue-gray (close to 6699FF), and a cool light gray (same color as the Omega Lock's body). Most of the bright blue is on the torso, which also has some medium blue. The backpack/wings piece is a mix of slate and light cool gray, the shouldes and upper arms are slate, the forearms are light gray, the hands are black. The head and lower pelvis are medium blue, the thighs are slate, the boots a mix of medium blue and light gray, the chunks on the sides of the boots a mix of medium blue and slate, and the toes are medium blue. There's black spikes on the shoulders and wings. There's also a sort of buttflap of planet kibble made of light gray plastic hanging off the backpack. There are extensive paint applications of silver and yellow (FFCC00) all over the toy, plus a few dark bronze accents and a collar area painted dark gold. This may be the same actual paint as the bronze, just looking different because it covers a lighter plastic color. The eyes seem to be black, and the face is silver. There's some bright blue paint on the shin- mounted weapons. The center of the upper pelvis is painted medium blue, but a bit thinly, as UV on it lets the bright blue underneath shine through. UV notes: the bright blue plastic and paint both react strongly. The medium blue plastic and yellow plastic react moderately. The clear blue plastic of the Omega Lock reacts fairly strongly. The head turns without ratcheting, the waist turns with ratcheting. The shoulders are universal ratchets. There is no upper arm swivel, but there is a lower arm swivel below the hinge elbow, both ratchet. The wrists do not turn. The thumb is on a hinge, and each finger is independently hinged at the hand and at the midpoint (no third knuckle joint). The hands look good as fists, but are a bit too long when opened up. Also, all fingers are the same length, contributing to the generally wrong look of the hands. Still, nine joints per hand is nice, and the joints are stiff enough he can hold the Omega Lock reasonably well. The hips are universal ratchets, and a swivel above each knee is a very weakly ratcheter. The knees ratchet strongly. The toes have a limited sideways swing to let them stay flat on the table when Primus's legs are spread apart by a click each way. And yes, there's enough poseability in the arms for Primus to give Unicron the finger. It doesn't look as good as Unicron doing it, though, given the smaller hands and lack of wrist articulation. The Stellar Converter Cannons flank the head, but can be stowed without popping out automatically on their own. Each fires a black missile with low to moderate force. If you do stow them, by the way, there's no obvious trigger for popping them back out: you either have to use to Omega Lock to re-transform the backpack, or just sort of pry at the launchers until they come out (but you do risk damaging the toy that way). On each forearm is a double-barrelled cannon with a Mini-Con hardpoint on it. Sticking the Planet Key into the slot behind (closer to the elbow) the cannon causes it to pop out and the barrels to extend. The Key sticks out sideways, though, and doesn't really look good kept there. Unfortunately, there's no dedicated key storage slot anywhere else. At least it's possible to keep the Key inserted firmly without the cannon having to be deployed (you can snap it back in and it'll usually stay, although if you snap the cannons back in too forcefully it can launch the Key like a missile). There are four places where the Omega Lock (I keep typing Omega Log, expect me to miss one and have it get into the review that way) can be inserted in robot mode. The holes on the chest and back are for transformation, and don't really do anything if you want to stay in robot mode. The one on each boot lets you rotate the planet chunks there (which are much like Unicron's boots) and bring more weapons to bear. The pieces will move without the Lock a bit, but snap into place at 0 degrees, 90 degrees and 180 degrees. They rotate in the opposite direction from which way you turn the Lock, and ratchet ominously if you try to go the wrong way. Once you have the leg pieces rotated, you need to manually push some missile bits at the bottoms out. At the top of each rotating piece is a utility arm that can be pulled out. Each has three segments hinged together, ending in a piece with a non-opening claw. They're made of soft black plastic, but each has a hard blue plastic hardpoint mounted on the claw, so you can stick Mini-Cons on them. He has five other hardpoints, but they're all on his back or buttflap in this mode, so not as useful. Transformation: The first thing you probably want to do, contrary to the instructions, is rotate the hips 180 degrees. There's just too much kibble in the way later on to do it easily. Then use the Omega Lock's chest hole to pull down the head and shoulderpads (with some lesser retraction stuff in the meantime), the boot Lock holes to rotate the missile pods on the legs. Next, close the backpack with the Lock hole on the back, turning it into the northern hemisphere of the planet (you'll want to stow the guns manually first). Finally, fold the legs over to form the southern hemisphere. You need to do this pretty forcefully, or things will end up slightly misaligned and it's very hard to massage the plates together. There are sound effects when you use the Omega Lock to transform the chest and backpack (various energy and clashing sounds), but not on the legs. It's easier to transform if you take all the Keys off the Lock first, and leverage can be iffy at times even then. Planet Mode: Before I start, I need to define some stuff. I'm going to assume that when sitting on its little legs, the north pole is the top of the toy, and that the front (inasmuch as a planet has a front) is the direction side with the "pimple" (which is Kaon). The "tropics" are the zone about 25 degrees either way from the equator, the "temperate zone" from about 25-60 degrees away from the equator, and the "arctic" areas more than 60 degrees from the equator either way. Just gonna go with north and south arctic, rather than arctic vs. antarctic. These are all just for reference, as Cybertron doesn't really have climate zones. Cybertron is a mix of four plastic colors. Black for the leg struts, spiky towers and some other city details. A slate blue-gray (close to 6699FF) dominates the north arctic and the equatorial zone, but can be found in other places. A cool light gray (same color as the body of the Omega Lock) dominates the northern temperate zone, parts of the equator, and the south arctic. A medium blue (0033CC) is found extensively in the southern hemisphere, as well as on the Stellar Converter Cannons and equatorial cannons (the pop-out forearm guns). Silver and yellow (FFCC00) paints are used for surface details, while the molded cityscape chunks are either yellow or a very dark bronze metallic. The four north arctic cities are yellow, the three temperate cities on the rear side are bronze, and two small south arctic cities are unpainted black plastic. Kaon, the only identifiable landmark, is a silver mushroom shape in a yellow pit at the equatorial front of the planet (not at the south pole, as per MTMTE or the Ultimate Giude). There are five fringes of spiky black towers in the tropics: two small ones at the equator near the front, two longer ones on either side at the north edge of the tropics, and a medium one at the rear slightly south of the equator. Four thicker black "towers" are in the south arctic, and act as legs. The north arctic has four tapering rectangular towers that end in Mini-Con hardpoints: two at the front at the edge of the arctic circle, one on either side a bit farther north. The diameter of the non-spiky parts of the planet is about 6" (15cm), giving it a volume of about 1.77 liters (and that's keeping more significant digits than I really should). This makes it bigger than most War Planets, but smaller than either Unicron or the Beast Planet. Leaving off the Omega Lock, the mass is 1.122 kg, so the specific density is around 0.6. I do not recommend testing this by trying to float Primus, though...even ignoring the fact it'd kill the electronics, some of the air spaces are bound to fill, so it may not actually float. Depends on the actual plastic density. Maybe we can petition Letterman to use Primus in his "Will It Float?" segment? The whole thing holds together pretty well presuming you transform it correctly. Disappointingly, while the packaging claims that "famous cities of CYBERTRON" are modeled onto this mode, there is no guide to which chunk of towers is what city. Kaon, home of the Decepticons, is identifyable, but the rest are generic bunches of towers and roads. I expect a fan guide to arise at some point. In this mode, the Key slots on the robot arms are now equatorial, and the guns pop out to face the rear. There are three Lock holes accessible here, but only the north polar one can actually be activated, popping open the Stellar Converter Cannon sections and making a sort of secondary battle station mode, aided if you flip up the buttflap. There are seven accessible Mini-Con hardpoints in this mode: the north arctic towers, an equatorial point at the rear, and one on each of the equatorial cannons. The manipulator arms can kinda be pulled out due to their soft plastic, but don't really provide usable hardpoints. The north polar Lock hole is actually slightly offset from the top, but you can insert the Lock, pull back to deploy the cannons, and then manually bring the cannon sections back into stowed mode without moving the Lock. This makes the whole thing look like one of those medieval royal orbs with the cross on top (a "T-O orb", http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globus_cruciger). Battle Station Mode: Open up the legs part of the planet mode, pop open the Stellar Converter Cannons, and position all weapons to point more or less one way. Kinda ad hoc, but the multitude of hardpoints does make it a feasible play set. And even being a pretty clearly "made after the toy design was finished" mode, it looks decent. The southern cities recede into the ground to let some missile batteries near what is now the front of the battle station emerge (non-firing). The equatorial cannons also face forward, and the Stellar Converter Cannons point forward and up (straight forward makes Primus shoot himself, so these are indirect fire weapons now). The manipulator claws can now come out, boosting the useful hardpoints to 9. Deluxe or Voyager figures can sit in a saddle formed by the folded up buttflap, and agile enough ones can even peg their fist onto the hardpoint on the buttflap for stability. The whole thing is about 14" (35cm) long and 10.5" (27cm) wide. Some of the bright blue (00CCFF) plastic is visible now, and there's bright blue paint on many of the front end weapon details. Unicron Head: Optional accessory only available in early run Primuses. Primera? Primii? I didn't get the version with one, but on the off chance I come into possession of one (or can borrow one) I'll add comments about it here. Update 7/14: I've seen it in stores now, so I can add a few more comments. It's larger than the actual Unicron toy's head by maybe 50%, a solid piece of plastic (as far as I can tell). There's tentacles emerging from the neck, and the right side (his right) of the face is torn off to reveal a sort of robot skull deal. The Deluxe Unicron tank toy has pretty much this skull pattern over the whole face, for reference. The colors are darker overall, if in the same basic pattern as on Armada Unicron. I wouldn't pay more than five bucks for it if it were available separately, though, now that I've seen it. Update 7/31: The head is not a PVC as earlier thought, it's several pieces of hard plastic screwed and/or glued together. Update 11/4: Okay, I have it now, so here's more info. The partially snapped-off horns and the tentacles emerging from the neck are somewhat flexible dark gray (333333) plastic with silver paint airbrushed onto the fronts of the horns and the tops of the tentacles. For contrast, Armadacron's horns are yellow-orange. The helmet and inner skull are rigid plastic. The helmet is warm yellow (FFCC33, glows some under UV), the skull may be all-painted, so I can't say for sure what the underlying plastic is. Probably yellow. It's glued together, so I can't take it apart to be sure. The face is painted dark gray (333333), unlike the very light gray of Armadacron. The skull is painted silver with white teeth and a neon green eye that glows strongly under UV. The regular eye is black. The "M" shape around the helmet edge is painted dark purple (330033) as opposed to matching the horns on Armadacron, and is a bit more angular in shape. The partial forehead jewel is unpainted. Some of the gouge patterns in the helmet are painted dark gray, but not all. The helmet itself is 5cm tall, about 20% taller than the head of the Armada Unicron toy. It's also not shaped the same, having more of a Darth Vader style flare around the bottom, where the sides of Armadacron's head are relatively flat. This makes it look gaunter, even leaving aside the exposed skull. The "tentaclespan" is about 3.5" (9cm). It should come as no surprise that there is no articulation. Bend'em tentacles would have been nice, but too much to ask I guess. All told, I like the look of the Armada head better, and will continue to leave my spare one hanging from the ceiling rather than replacing it with this. Maybe I'll put this one in my office. Overall: Big, if not as big as some other toys. Can't really stand in many poses, but given that he's a planet already, what's he gonna stand on? (Answer: Unicron.) The Omega Lock gimmick doesn't work as well as it could, but otherwise this is a solid toy. Not spectacular, but doesn't really suck in any way either. And the planet mode looks a lot more planet-like than Unicron's. I'd call it worthwhile if you can afford a $50 toy. Dave Van Domelen, ended up displaying it in robot mode.