Dave's Supreme Transformers Rant: Omega Supreme Updated 11/24/04 with official bio. The first entry at this size since recolored Unicron, and the first Autobot at the $50 price point. Like so many of the toys in the early summer release, it's not really hitting many stores yet, possibly being held for full release after the Official Transformers Fan Club Convention. So, like Mirage, I resorted to an online buy, from KBToys.com in this case. Good thing I didn't put it off, since it got delisted today. CAPSULE Omega Supreme: Big, yet poseable, with solid ratchets. Has some lame modes, but they're just icing on the good stuff. Good homage to G1, down to being a reassembler that becomes a land vehicle and a space vehicle. Strongly recommended. About $50, depending on where you get it. RANT As of mid-July 2004, Hasbro has no online entry for techspecs. AUTOBOT: OMEGA SUPREME Altmodes: Crane Truck, Battlecruiser, Cybertronian Armored Supertrain Quote: Unyielding resolve has no conqueror. Omega Supreme is a gigantic and powerful Autobot protector. His incredible size and strength have earned him the respect and admiration of all that know him. He, and others like him, are classified as the Guardians of Cybertron. In robot mode, Omega uses brute force and cunning skill to take down some of Megatron's main baddies, including Megatron himself. His two vehicle modes of an aircraft carrier and battle train possess an arsenal that is a threat to any foe. Omega's powerful concussion blasters can obliterate two hundred Terrorcons in one shot. STR 10 INT 8 SPD 6 END 6 RNK 4 COUR 10 FRB 9 SKL 9 Avg 7.75 What's up with that Rank of 4? Like, he's the biggest guy on the team, and anyone and everyone including Kicker can order him around. There is no separate name given for the detachable head, and the vehicles are simply "Construction" and "Cruiser" in the instructions. So, while we wait for official names (if any), here's my names: Omega Minor - Neither Omnicon nor Mini-Con, this little guy is unique, a race of one. A mechanical savant, he can fix almost any damage short of death if given time and access to raw materials. In head mode, he grants Omega Supreme both a refined sensor suite and a second processor...in effect, letting Omega Supreme look in two directions at once. Omega Claw - The yellow crane vehicle houses Omega Supreme's core consciousness when he is split up. There is a place for Omega Minor to ride, but Omega Supreme retains full control. Omega Dreadnaught - The left side of Omega Supreme's body becomes a heavily armed and armored drone, at home in the sea or in space. Omega Minor can integrate with the Dreadnaught and take full control of it so that Omega Supreme doesn't have to split his attention. Omega Convoy - The Cybertronian Armored Train mode. Not confined to rails, this is a "land train", or single-vehicle convoy. Packaging: Huge box. Not *quite* as big as Unicron's box, however. It's got the same front facing of 16" (40cm) tall and 14" (36cm) wide, but it's only 7.5" (19cm) deep, an inch and a half shallower than Unicron. It has the same half window thing as Unicron, to preserve structural integrity. Omega Supreme is packaged in robot mode, with a load of twist-ties (15 in total), a lot of cardboard structural work in back of the tray, and a bunch of rubber bands on the head, right shoulder and left foot (plus one holding the missiles to the tray). There's a plastic clamshell around the head, and a cardboard filler inside the empty torso. The front has Dreamwave-style character art, pictures of the separate vehicle modes, and a black cog Powerlinx symbol, indicating combination with Prime. The bottom co-sell is solid Decepticons: Mirage, Scorponok, Megatron and Shockblast. The left panel shows robot modes of Omega and Prime, with their combined mode. It also has the somewhat lame accessory modes of the two halves (crane and gun platform). The top panel just has the DW art again. The right panel shows the vehicle modes separately and combined, plus the robot mode of OS's head. The back has a large pic of the robot mode with right arm action feature engaged, and a small picture of the combined vehicle "Cybertronian Armored Supertrain". Mine came with the second volume comic/catalog and a very thick set of instructions that I looked at after playing with the toy a bit. The techspec card came creased, annoyingly. OMEGA MINOR Head Mode: 1.5" (4cm) high, deep and wide. The red face behind a clear yellow shield with "breathing apparatus" around the chin is a clear homage to the original Omega Supreme's head. However, the gray visor and blue antennae depart from that look. There's an odd 'bullseye' in the middle of the forehead as a result of the screw-hole in the clear piece. The head doesn't hold together all that well, as nothing is pegged together and the joints are fairly loose ball-and-sockets. Transformation: Pretty classic Headmaster. The back of the head is the robot legs, the antennae are the robot arms, and the visor flips down to cover Omega Supreme's face. Robot Mode: 2.25" (6cm) tall. The torso and head (which is a somewhat flattened classic Omega Supreme face without the cannon) are red, the arms and thighs are slightly dark blue and the boots are black. The big faceblock on its back has detailing behind the clear yellow plastic that make it a jetpack. Which I suppose he needs in order to get up on Omega Supreme's neck. The shoulders and hips are ball and socket joints, the knees are hinges. It stands pretty well with its heel spurs, and appears heavily armed thanks to the antenna-blaster details on the arms. Mini-Con-ness: None. There's no connectors or hardpoints, and the screw hole in his gut is just a little too large to fit snugly on a 5mm peg. Overall: Pretty good, but adding a few pegs or slots would have improved it SO much. Nothing snaps into place, everything is loose to move. OMEGA SUPREME Big. Fully assembled, it's 14.5" (37cm) tall, 10" (25cm) across the shoulders, and a pretty imposing presence. And, unlike Unicron, it's not really trying to create a specific single altmode, so the robot mode is a lot 'tighter', with less kibble and weirdness. The color scheme is on the border between garish/clashing and unified. The main colors are black, red, yellow, dark blue and light gray. The right side is more yellow, the left side is more dark blue, and the other colors are scattered about in a fairly balanced fashion. There's also clear yellow plastic on the right shoulder, the faceplate and the left hand, plus silver and gold paint accents on both sides. There's actually a pretty good fade of color from right to left...the right side has some dark blue, the left has some yellow, while the torso has a fairly even mix. There's a tampographed Autobot symbol on the right forearm and a larger one on the left shoulder. The spark crystal is on the left arm just behind the clear yellow fingerblock. The clear yellow piece on the right shoulder has a black cog Powerlinx symbol, marking this as one who combines with Prime. Both arms have universal ratcheting Gundam-type shoulders (swivel around the connection to torso, raise up and down into the shoulderpads). They lack bicep swivels, but do have swivels just below the ratchet elbows. The right hand is a red claw with two fingers fused together and one thumb, which opens and closes. The left hand is an immobile "ship prow" hand like Tidal Wave's without a thumb joint. There are dead hardpoints on the front and back of each shoulderpad (closer to the joint on the right, out to the edge on the left). The head turns, and if you remove Omega Minor, the neck stump can turn into a little secondary head. The neck telescopes up a couple of millimeters with a -\_/- sort of boundary, so that you get a rough v-shaped faceplate with metallic blue eyes. There is no waist joint. Legs are a little weird. The legs spread apart on ratchets at "normal" joint positions, but forward and back motion is left to a second joint at mid-thigh. The knees ratchet, and there's a ratchet swivel just above the knee. The feet kinda pose as part of transformation jointing, but not very usefully. The legs cannot quite stand together, because of the left leg's boot flares. The right arm has a claw extension gimmick. Push in on a black button on the forearm and then slide it towards the elbow, and the outer half of the forearm will lever out, extending that arm's reach by a good three inches (8cm). It's kinda tricky, though, if you hold the arm from the wrong direction it won't work well. The left arm is full of battleship guns and stuff, and contains the toy's electronics. The shoulder holds a dual missile launcher (separate triggers, not very forceful, yellow missiles) and a gun turret, which are geared to turn in unison. The forearm has another turret, which can be moved with a dial on the side of the arm. Both turrets are rigged to raise and lower as they turn, kinda like a kick-line. When the forearm gun is turned all the way to one side or the other, there's a a firing sound effect. Finally, pushing a button near the dial on the forearm will make the fingers light up red, accompanied by an energy blast sound. POWERLINX OMEGA SUPREME Pull the halves of Omega Supreme apart. Flip up the neck area to become a missile launcher, open panels in the back and leave them open. Insert Prime's cab with the Super Prime head deployed. Close up. And yes, Prime will fit in there with an Energon Star on his shoulder. There are fold out panels that the Prime Force vehicles can plug onto: one on the right shoulder, one on the right forearm, and one each on the boots. The plug-on panels are gray on the right side, red on the left leg (which contradicts the box pictures). Overall height is increased to 15" (38cm) by the new shoulder mounted missile launcher (five tubes stacked vertically). But despite being a big head on its own, Super Prime's head is too small for such a large bot. Oh, it's bigger than the neck-stump head, but much smaller than Omega Minor. Whichever Prime Force components you place on the leg-mounted panels need to be in "foot mode", and the one on the left leg won't really fit well, thanks to the flares on that boot. Might work better in "arm mode". Aha, just discovered that the panels on the legs can be swiveled around, so you can point the vehicles straight out. In any case, Powerlinx Omega Supreme looks like Prime crashed into Omega Supreme's back, there's the back end of the truck just sticking out like a sore thumb, not to mention those panels just hanging open. Kinda disappointing. I'd rather use the hollow chest trick to have a smaller Transformer standing inside and operating the body like Quickstrike did with the Optimal Optimus control rig. :) OMEGA CRANE Transformation to mobile mode is trivial. Pull Omega Supreme apart, straighten his arm, twist the leg around 90 degrees and point the toe. Oh, and fold the neck piece under and inside. The right robot leg becomes a seven-wheeled tractor, the right torso a six-wheeled trailer, and the right arm a crane. Total length is 16" (41cm), mostly yellow and black. Strictly speaking, the tractor is an 8-wheeler, but one of the four large rear wheels is fake and left yellow, because a real wheel would interfere with the Prime Force panel. The tractor's wheels are large (1.5cm on the front four, 3cm on the back four), while the trailer's wheels are small (9mm). All are free-rolling except for the fake one. The forward hip joint makes this into an articulated truck, it can bend at the "hitch". The two cannot be separated, however. The arm joints all work for moving the crane around. At the back of the tractor is a triple crane turret about 3cm square in gray plastic with three 4cm long blue cranelets that can independently swing up and down, with hooks that are also hinged. At the back of the crane, the clear yellow "epaulet" can be flipped open to accomodate Omega Minor as a crane controller in robot mode. Transformation to crane base mode is also pretty simple. A lot of bending and some twisting results in a more or less "new" mode. Two dark blue handles fold out so Prime can grab on. And yes, these handles can fold down in robot mode, with possibly embarrassing results. This mode stands 9.5" (24cm) and 12" (31cm) long with the crane retracted. Extended, the length is 14.5" (37cm). OMEGA DREADNAUGHT Transformation to vehicle mode is a little more involved than on Omega Crane, although once you figure it out once, it's pretty simple after that. There's a couple of tabs on the sides of the control tower that tend to pop off if you're not careful. Overall length is 17.5" (44cm), and despite a little asymmetry in the "robot torso" area, it's a pretty good "space battleship" design in blue and silver, with black and yellow and red. The three front turrets (the ones from the arm) are now all geared together, so the dial on the starboard side will turn them all at once (you can easily click them around to either move in unison or all different directions). It's really quite nifty to see all three turn at once, with the front two elevating and lowering at the same time. The rear turret is not linked to anything, and elevates manually. While the front of the boat looks like it's a sea craft, the rear is a partially empty box with huge thrusters inside, clearly indicating a spacecraft nature to this cruiser. Very Battle of the Planets/Yamato. The control tower has little radar dishes on top and on the sides, and can turn on a ratchet. Behind it is a missile launcher box (just molded, no actual launching). The control tower can also be refolded to be a chair for Omega Minor in robot mode, or to integrate him more fully into the contower. Only the arms sticking out ruin the illusion that he's a part of the tower. Annoyingly, mine has a misaligned ratchet on the contower, so it won't quite point forward. Conversion to gun platform mode is about as hard as Omega Crane's, which is to say not very. It does pay to look at the instructions, though, since the mode is kinda arbitrary. It has yellow handles for Prime or another of his size to hold onto. This mode is 10" (25cm) tall and 12" (30cm) long, and can point all of the weaponry of the battleship mode except the rear turret at a single target. OMEGA CONVOY Take Omega Crane and ram it into the back of Omega Dreadnaught. Boom. And now you have a huge land train, 32" (81cm) long. This is the longest vehicle mode in all of Transformerdom, beating out Fortress Maximus's spacecraft mode by a little bit. The articulation joint on the Omega Crane part helps in this mode. And there's an awful lot of wheels. OVERALL Big, poseable, lots of gimmicks that don't get in the way. The fact that it has some questionable modes isn't really a problem, since they're just gravy. A good, fun toy. Dave Van Domelen, turned 34 today, woot. P.S. Here's a bonus, the bio note for Omega Sentinel, the recolor I will NOT be buying. AUTOBOT: OMEGA SENTINEL Quote: When in battle, a superior tactician employs logic and reason to achieve victory. OMEGA SENTINEL, like OMEGA SUPREME, is one of the legendary Guardians of Cybertron. He is commander of the Guardians, who feels that his only purpose is to protect and defend. His primary programming has made him a stoic figure devoid of emotion. He will analyze a battle situation using logic and, when necessary, brute strength. Although OMEGA SENTINEL is highly respected by his fellow Guardians, he is often classified as boring and overly-technical. He believes that these qualities are a tactical key to victory when battling the DECEPTICON forces. STR 9 INT 7 SPD 6 END 6 RANK 4 COUR 10 FRB 8 SKL 8 Avg 7.25 Rank 4 for the commander of a legendary corps of Guardians? Please.