Dave's Transformers Animated Rant: Supreme Wave 1

     Roll Out Command Optimus Prime (truck)

     Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/TFA/Supreme1

     I originally passed on this toy, since I've gone a bit sour on "big for
the sake of big" toys, especially since toy safety standards mean that most
of the biggest toys need to be LESS detailed than the smaller ones (a Supreme
with Deluxe levels of detail would fail drop tests pretty much every time).
I even passed on this the first time I saw it clearanced for $20 at K-Mart,
but finally grabbed one when Walmart was dumping its older stock in December
2009.  


CAPSULE

     Roll Out Command Optimus Prime: Looks nice in robot mode and okay in
vehicle mode, but both modes are hobbled by gimmicks.  Auto-punching stuff
removes most meaningful arm articulation, and the Auto-Spin transformation
leads to numerous problems in both modes.  Mildly recommended, and only if
you can get it cheap.  $50 price point, I got it for $20.


RANT

     Packaging: Like the Leader Class, this is packaged in a tall box in
robot mode rather than in a wide box in vehicle mode.  They never put out a
second Supreme, so it's impossible to draw generalizations about the
packaging style from this one.  Or trivial, depending on your views of set
theory.  
     The box has the same irregular shape as the Leader boxes, but it's 14.5"
(37cm) tall, 12.5" (32cm) wide and 6" (15cm) deep.  There's a TRY ME hole in
the middle of the clear front to let you push the sound and light button on
Prime's chest.  The whole box is a little fragile, since things are as thick
as on the Leader boxes rather than thicker to compensate for the increase in
size. 
     In addition to the usual stuff on the front, there's a swoosh in the
lower left showing the Auto-Spin Conversion in three "strobe" pictures as the
cab spins into being the upper half of the robot.  The cosells on the bottom
are Leader Megatron and Bulkhead, plus the Shift Tech LCD game.  The top
repeats the art from the front, the right side has the usual "at ease" pose
art.  The upper right facet says "OPTIMUS PRIME defends Earth with the
powerful Ultra-Axe!"
     The left panel repeats the Auto-Spin images with more text describing
what the gimmick does.  Below that the axe's pop-out blade gimmick and the
robot's punching gimmick are also shown.
     On the back are very large pictures of robot and vehicle mode, with an
inset that tries to show the moving faceplate but doesn't do so well.
Callouts include "Ultra-Axe with pop out blade!" "Battle phrases!"  "His
mouth moves as he talks!" (well, his faceplate moves) "Battle and conversion
sounds!" "My name is Optimus Prime!" (NOT in all caps for his name, oddly),
and "Revving engine noises, sirens and lights!"
     Here's the phrases/sounds that happen when you press the chest button
while it's in package, assuming some kid hasn't TRY-ME'ed the battery to
death.  The eyes and headlights flash amber in accompaniment, and whenever
Prime is actually speaking (David Kaye does seem to provide the voice clips)
his faceplate moves up and down in rough synch:
     "My name is Optimus Prime!"
     "Roll out!" (transformation sound, siren blares)
     "Bring it on!" (axe clashing sound) "Ha ha!"
     "Let's go!" (engine rev, release of airbrakes)
     It simply cycles through these four in order, and it turns out that he
cycles through these regardless of his mode...there's no internal or external
switch to change what sounds he makes.  The instructions suggest that he
should talk only in robot mode and make vehicle sounds only in vehicle mode,
this function may have been removed.

     The instructions are loose in between the box and the cardboard tray,
with a catalog stuck inside them.  Five appropriately strong twist-ties go
through all the way to the back of the tray.  Once these are removed, you
have to cut the tabs to let the blister tray free, and undo two more ties to
get Prime out, and one more to free the axe.  The one holding Prime's left
fist is a "get out the cutters" one, very hard to undo OR cut directly,
instead it's easiest to cut the blister away first.  That makes it easier to
get at the wire.  The axe's tie is also hard to undo, but easy to get at with
wirecutters.


AUTOBOT: ROLL OUT COMMAND OPTIMUS PRIME
Altmode: Earth Truck
Licensor: None
Previous Name Use: Yes
Previous Mold Use: None
Gimmick: Auto-Spin transformation, pop-out blade axe
Function: Autobot Team Leader
Motto: "My name is Optimus Prime!" (Okay, that's just what he says, but 
     unlike most TF:A toys there's no separate motto.  Just think of him
     saying this to Megatron in frustration during the period where Megs
     couldn't remember who Prime was.)
Galactic Powers & Abilites:
     > Master of hand-to-hand combat.
     > Almost unstoppable charge attack.
     > Ultra-Axe powers up with plasma flames.

     Yhough he is young, OPTIMUS PRIME is one of the mightiest warriors ever
to come from CYBERTRON.  Sworn to defend life and freedom no matter what its
form, he has taken the AllSpark, Earth and its people under his personal
protection.  MEGATRON and his crew of evil DECEPTICONS will stop at nothing
to capture the AllSpark and conquer the universe, but OPTIMUS PRIME and the
AUTOBOTS that follow him will never surrender.  They will never stop fighting
until Earth and CYBERTRON are safe.

     Robot Mode: Other than the vehicle bumper forming a big fanny pack and
the lightbar section not folding flat against his back, it's a pretty good
likeness of Optimus Prime, in red, gray and blue.  He stands a sturdy and
impressive 11.5" (29cm) tall.  Oddly, he's missing the ||> "Prime insignia"
pattern.
     The upper torso, upper arms and the lightbar flap that hangs off the
back are bright red plastic.  The forearms, pelvis front, boots, head (other
than the clear eyes), gimmick switch on the bumper and some internal struts
are a medium blue plastic.  The fists and toes are a blue plastic that's a
little lighter than the rest of the blue, enough that the difference is
definitely intentional and not just batch variation.  The butt, thighs and
several joints and struts are light gray plastic.  The eyes and headlights
are clear colorless plastic, the spring out axe blade edges are clear blue
(or painted clear colorless), the jet flame out the back of the axe is clear
orange (or painted).  The non-clear parts of the axe are black plastic (with
a lot of thick paint), and the wheels are black plastic.  The gimmick-drive
wheels under the buttplate are light gray plastic with black rubberized
strip-tires.  The light bar has clear (or clear-painted colorless) red and
aqua parts, the aqua is lighter than the axe blades.  Through vents in the
abdomen you can see the internal speaker cone, which is about an inch across.
     On the head, the face is painted powder blue, the neck and faceplate are
painted silver, and he has the two yellow stripes on his helmet.  The eyes
are painted over with some clear blue, but this does little to change the
yellow LED light to blue.  Yellow paint is also used on the roof lights on
his chest, the headlights on his butt, details on the pelvis and the tops of
the toes.  Powder blue is also seen on some of the details on the axe blade,
which is painted over mostly in silved and a decent plastic-match red (only
the haft is unpainted).  There's extensive silver on the chest and abdomen,
stripes on the upper arms and the wheel hubs.  Gloss black is used on the
chest windows, the borders around teh headlights, and some bits on the
flanks.  There's also some gloss black on the axe details over the red paint
over the black plastic.  :)
     The upper body articulation suffers a LOT from the gimmicks.  The head
can't turn, the waist is loose.  The shoulders only move forward a little and
have springs to make them go back to their original positions so they can't
get in the way during Auto-Spin.  The right elbow clicks between two
positions, the left elbow is tied into the punching gimmick and only
straightens when the arm is lifted.  At least the wrists bend inward on
transformation hinges.  The lower body is a lot better, though.  The hips are
ratcheting universal joints, with the flaps of his armor skirt on springs to
let them get out of the way when the legs lift but snap back down when they
don't have to be up.  The ratcheting knees will bend about 90 degrees, and
there's a ratcheting swivel below each knee.  The toes are hinged for
transformation, but offer little useful articulation.
     The axe is a fairly impressive weapon, although the slotted fist holes
mean that you can either hold the blade forward OR have the fists properly
transformed (with the armor panels snapped into place), not both.  With the
fists fully transformed, the axe will point outward quite a bit (and the
rocket flame will point at his face).  There's a trigger on the hilt that
fits into the slot in the fist peg.  On the right arm, pressing a trigger on
the back of the hand will press the hilt trigger and make clear blade piecs
swing out from the front and a clear flame to pop out the back.  In theory
you can press on the armor behind the hand to do this, but it works poorly
and you run into that "blade turned outward" issue.  Untransformed, the blade
is 4" (10cm) front to back and 3.25" (8cm) high at the business end, with a
haft 3.5" (9cm) long from where it connects to the axe.  Once triggered, the
blade part is 6" (15cm) long and 3.75" (9.5cm) tall.
     There's a tab on the back of each shoulder, meant to be pushed down with
your thumb to make the arm rise up.  The right arm just rises up about 80
degrees without doing anything to the forearm, although the axe is heavy
enough that if you start with the elbow bent it'll probably unbend on the
downstroke.  The left arm has scissoring rods inside it so that the arm
straightens when it lifts up, but only moves about 45 degrees and the "rock
'em sock 'em" action is pretty disappointing.
     [Later Note: Weird, this didn't work initially, but after transforming a
few times I guess something rattled back into place.  When you swing the
right arm, there's a sort of swing-and-clank axe sound.  When you swing the
left arm, there's a metallic punching sound and occasional "Ha ha!" voice
line.  It's a 12-step cycle, with the laugh on punches 4, 7 and 12.]
     The last gimmick is, of course, the sound and light one, which has been
discussed already.  The faceplate clicks audibly as it moves up and down,
giving the impression that Prime has TMJ.

     Transformation: The legs transform in a pretty obvious fashio as the
wheels unfold and flip around, the thighs compress into the boots (with the
kneepads automatically receding, they pop back out on their own when you
lengthen the legs), and everything clips together.  Once the bottom part is
in place, make sure the switch on the front of his bumper is clicked to the
left (as you face it, so Prime's right) and roll the toy backwards.  It takes
four revolutions for Prime to finish collapsing down, and you do need to
manually stow the fists first.  Then throw the switch the other way to lock
it in place.  Roll forward to go back to robot mode.  Sometimes the "avoid
total breakage" ratchet will slip and you'll need to do some manual spinning
of the torso.
     In robot mode, you can't put the switch in locked position, so you can
accidentally partially transform the upper body by spinning the waist around,
and this will block his arms from moving forward.
     There's a pair of tabs on the axe blade that go into slots on the legs
to lock the axe in storage mode on the truck, plus a tab on top of the axe
that goes into a slot in the small of the robot's back to further lock it in
place.  It looks kinda dumb in storage position, but at least they made an
effort.

     Vehicle Mode: This is the ONLY transforming TF:A Optimus Prime toy that
actually has the wheels in the right place, although it cheats by having
hidden Auto-Spin wheels under the center of the cab to keep the vehicle from
nosing down.  And even with the switch locked over into non-transforming
position, it doesn't really roll smoothly.  The Auto-Spin also leads to a lot
of loose seams on the cab, since everything's held together by gears rather
than solid locking tabs.  So, while the proportions are finally right, it's
otherwise not all that impressive, especially with the axe stuck in back. 
     8.5" (22cm) long, 4.75" (12cm) wide and 5.75" (14.5cm) tall if you
ignore the axe, which stick up and back a bit.  There's no bit of plastic or
painted part visible in this mode that isn't visible in robot mode, but a few
seams and small gaps aside the colors are pretty show-accurate.  It'd
probably look better if they had left out the Auto-Spin and spent the budget
on a few more paint masks to fill in those gaps (and made connections tighter
to make the seams smaller).
     It rolls poorly, it's not terribly stable, and it really only looks good
from a distance.  Almost everything wrong with it is either directly caused
by the Auto-Spin or could be made better if the Auto-Spin were ditched and
the money used on fundamentals.

     Overall: It looks nice, but it's pretty much a display piece in robot
mode, with the gimmicks and its own weight keeping it from doing a lot.  In
vehicle mode, it doesn't even make a very good display piece.  I don't feel
ripped off at the $20 price, but I definitely would have buyer's remorse if I
paid full price for it.

     Dave Van Domelen, needs to find space to display this.