Dave's Transformers Titans Return Rant Voyager Wave 3: Optimus Prime Optimus Prime with Diac (Truck/Jet) Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Gen/VROptimus Oddly, both new toys in wave 3 are clearly pretools. This mold will be tweaked for Octane (well, Octone, yay trademark fun), while Megatron's mold will be used for Blitzwing. Furthermore, we already know that a G2-deco version (with "Pyromaniac forest-burning Optimus" stickers) of this mold is coming for an upcoming boxset. So, a lot of pressure on this mold to be good enough to justify two or more additional uses. CAPSULE $25-30 price point. Optimus Prime with Diac: Good robot mode, marginal jet mode, good truck mode. Makes heavy use of bad stickers, unfortunately (or mediocre stickers applied without washing off mold release oil). Mildly recommended, but you might want to wait for the G2 redeco in the promised TRU box set. RANT Packaging: Same box style as previous waves, but with Decepticon symbols in the comet shapes, and a purple accent color. Apparently after several waves of everyone having Autobot symbols, now they get to all have Decepticon symbols for a while. The "With DECEPTICONS rising" bit from the bio suggests this is also meant to indicate which way the storyline is running...and with Trypticon scheduled for 2017, I can see the balance shifting a touch. AUTOBOT: OPTIMUS PRIME Assortment: C0276 Titan Master: Diac Altmode: Jet, Tanker Truck Transformation Difficulty: 29 steps Previous Name Use: Optimus Prime - Yes; Diac - None Previous Mold Use: None Titan Master Ability: Teleportation Weapons: Energon Sword, Dual Cannon Function: Autobot Leader Motto: "Let the knowledge of what is right fuel our struggles." With the DECEPTICONS rising, the AUTOBOTS power up with TITAN MASTERS to stop them! DIAC gives OPTIMUS PRIME the ability to teleport and unleash attacks from out of nowhere. B: STR 10 SPD 8 INT 10 FRB 8 T: STR +2 SPD +5 INT +5 FRB +3 Packaging: 7 sock ties on the robot, plus a plastic shield blister taped around the chest, and a rubber band holding the head on. One tie each on the sword and blaster. The thighs are mispositioned and need to be slid forward, they were probably pushed back to keep the toes away from the box front. Cosells are Sawback, Hot Rod, Megatron, and Six Shot. The package renders show Diac with a blue head and gray elsewhere, but the actual toy has a silver head and blue on the boots. The instructions are robot-to-jet on front, jet-to-truck on back. Robot Mode: Despite turning into more than just the tractor end this time, the robot does a pretty good job of looking like the robot mode of Laser Optimus Prime, although it suffers from some gaps and excessive panel-itis. The fake cab front torso is pulled off very well, including the use of the rearmost pair of tractor wheels to take the role of front wheels. He has the sword and blaster of Laser Optimus, but none of the other weapons. Oddly, the sword is yellow, rather than the clear colorless used on Laser Optimus Prime or a red to imply the G2 toy's LED gimmick. The blaster, which was a turret gun in G2 as well, is longer and lacks an LED, but otherwise clearly resembles its ancestor. The head has the now-standard Voyager trick of pop-up bits flanking the head to make it look bigger (the stomach grille is the trigger), but I think it looks fine without the flanking parts (plus the range of motion improves). Oh, and he does get a new faceplate, not just a redeco of the Sentinel Prime faceplate. On the down side, the forearms are very hollow and irregular in shape, the toes are more decoration than anything functional, and the wings just sort of hang out as a backpack. The backpack isn't very compact, and while it's possible to open them up as a flight pack, they're a little low and undramatic in appearance. 6.5" (16.5cm) tall at the head, 7.25" (18.5cm) tall at the shoulder towers. The colors are mostly "standard Optimus Prime," but with black pelvis front and metalflake blue collar area. There's a lot more paint than usual here, probably a side effect of trying to balance the sprues with something appropriate for Octone. For instance, the torso core is light gray plastic, bust mostly covered in metalflake blue or black paint. Light gray is also used for the turnable collar, the wings and tail on the backpack, the fronts of the shoulder towers, the upper arms, all of Diac except the faceplate, the thighs, the fake grille on the belly, and a lot of hinges. Bright red plastic isused for the folded-over chestplate, the shoulders other than the tower fronts, the forearms, and the jet nose halves tucked inside the boots (not hidden particularly well). The faceplate, the head-flanking bits, and most of the mass of the boots are made from medium blue plastic. The wheels (two on each boot, two on either side of the torso, one on each forearm) are black plastic, as is the rifle. The sword and the Titan Master compartment cover (mostly hidden on the back) are clear neon yellow plastic with a very strong UV response. Metalflake blue paint is all over the torso core, including most of the pelvis and all of the part on top of the torso. The fake windows on the chest are also painted metalflake blue. Diac has metalflake blue on the boots which helps make the head look a little more blue, especially with the side pieces covering Diac's arms. The pelvis front is painted gloss black with silver accents. Silver is also found on the mouthplate, helmet crest, bits on either side of the belly grille, and some front end pieces visible on the wrist area. The lower shins and the robot's eyes are light blue. The kneecaps and some tech details between the chest windows are painted pale gold. Oddly, no Autobot symbols really visible in this mode, nor many flat places that would work well for adding one. The circular details on the shoulder fronts (not the tower bits) are okay for a thinner-material Reprolabel faction sticker, but printing on those spots wouldn't work. This toy is notable for having a bunch of factory-applied stickers in the place of paint or user-applied stickers, although most of them are partly or fully hidden in robot mode. It's also notable for having really bad stickers that were already peeling off before I removed the toy from the package...Reprolabels could probably get away with just making a set of exactly-the-same stickers to replace the thin and badly-adhering ones the toy comes with. Good articulation. The head chunk turns slightly to either side in the standard-for-everyone-but-Galvatron Voyager manner. The waist not only does not turn, the pelvis extends backwards into a very narrow square butt. Universal joint shoulders, and the towers have swivels for transformation that let them get a little out of the way if necessary. Upper arm swivels, elbow hinges. The wrists don't really move meaningfully, the transformation hinges snap in place and too much stuff moves with the hands to look good for articulation. Universal joint hips, upper thigh swivels, and soft-ratcheting hinge knees that bend 90 degrees despite all the boot kibble. The toes just sort of flop up and down and do not meaningfully contribute to stability. The hands can hold 5mm pegs and that's basically it. The vehicle mode peg holes are concealed, and the shoulder towers have shallow barred holes that can't have stuff plugged into them. There's a few 2mm posts on the butt, none anywhere I'd want to stand a Titan Master in robot mode. There's 3mm holes on either side of the narrow butt, for use with Tamashii-style stands. The sword mostly resembles the original, but without the tabs for storage under the vehicle mode. Instead, it has a 5mm peg sticking out the side of the crosspiece, and just pegs to the side of the vehicle rather than being hidden. 5" (12cm) long, a single piece of clear yellow plastic. The hilt itself is a little narrower than 5mm and rests loosely in Prime's fist. Prime's rifle combines visual elements of the Laser Optimus LED pistol with the standard "turret gun" aesthetic of Titans Return, a single piece of black plastic 2.5" (6.5cm) long with a dual barrel. In addition to the 5mm peg handle, there's 5mm pegs sticking out to either side of the rear for attachment to the side of vehicle mode, plus 5mm peg holes on top at the back and near the front for attaching other weapons Power-Rangers-style. It has a heel spur slot at the front of the seat, but the fit in the seat is a little too snug to allow any of the oddball heads (like Blurr's Hyperfire, or a lot of Trent Troop's replacement faces) to fit. [Later discovery: Ohhhh, the vertical tail fin is able to split in two to lie flat on the back and get covered better by the folded wings. Would've been nice if it had been packaged like that, since making out small details in the instructions is...difficult.] Functionist Universe Robot Mode: Leave off the Titan Master, swing up the tail so that the thruster is a camera-face. [Later note: http://www.dvandom.com/kitbash/functionistprime.JPG] Transformation: The 29 steps are for "robot to jet to truck" and they're not overstating it. Some of the bits are tricky to get together, especially if you don't transform things in the right order, but I found it to be mostly "good complexity" rather than bad and frustrating. When transforming to either altmode, the hinges on the shoulderpad towers gave me some trouble, they're VERY stiff...which is good for keeping robot mode together, less so for transforming without feeling like you're about to break something. Getting all the panels in place in jet mode requires lifting the arms up a bit, but if going to truck mode the arms are gotten out of the way. Probably the trickest bit, though, is getting the wings between the legs for truck mode. For jet mode, the wings just sort of sit on top, near as I can tell none of the tab-like fiddly bits are actually meant to lock them down. Once all the panels are snapped together, jet mode is reasonably stable, although the wings and truck cab halves are only held in position by joint friction. Truck mode is harder to get secure, especially the cab, since the tail section needs to be in precisely the right spot or the halves won't quite fit together around it. Jet Mode: While the robot and truck modes are obvious homages to G2 Laser Optimus Prime, this one seems to have been thrown in so that a tweaked version would work as Octane. Not the right sort of aircraft for G1 Octane, but I guess it's close enough. The rough proportions are those of an F-104 Starfighter but with beefy intakes flanking the bomber-style cockpit. And, of course, truck cab halves just sort of stuck to the sides of the back end for no obvious purpose, ah well. This is one of the "it's not how well the bear rides the bicycle" situations, though, and the jet mode is surprisingly non-horrible given the requirement it also turn into a robot and a tanker truck. G1 cheated in truck mode, and the previous Generations toy cheated by making a big chunk of vehicle mode into a "weapon" so that the robot mode wouldn't be 100% stupid. This time they just decided to de-prioritize the jet mode. It looks like a jet, but like a jet with obvious truck kibble and some weird design choices. If you think the wings are too far back, they can be rotated to be more at the middle of the fuselage, but upside down and backwards. They're not any more or less stable this way, but the undersides aren't painted at all, so it's visually less interesting this way. Also, in this configuration the wings feel a little too far forward for their trapezoidal shape (swinging them back for a G1-Octane angle leaves big gaps), and there isn't really a middle ground. Too far back or too far forward, never jam today. 9" (23cm) long, wingspan of a shade over 6" (15.5cm). Gray and silver take over the general looks, especially if you politely ignore the cab halves under the wings. The nose section is red plastic, the fuselage front and middle thirds are blue plastic, and the blue robot shins are on the underside of the middle section. The rear third is light gray plastic, but as it's mostly hidden the contrast between it and the silver paint is minor. The wings and tail are light gray plastic, and the clear yellow plastic of the Titan Master compartment door is now fully visible. It has molded details meant for truck mode, to evoke the disc-shooters on Laser Optimus Prime. The majority of the blue plastic fuselage shell pieces are covered with silver paint, with foil stickers putting on the Autobot symbols and blue on silver stripes along the sides. Parts of the wing tops are painted red. The top of the nose is painted metalflake blue with silver along the sides. The windows are stickers. The sticker-peeling issues are much more obvious in vehicle mode, and even using superglue hasn't nailed down all the corners satisfactorally for me. Hopefully Octone will rely less heavily on stickers. I have to wonder if they bothered to wash off the mold release oil before applying these? The truck wheels mostly hidden by kibble make for a stable platform and they actually roll pretty well in this mode. There's 5mm peg holes on the sides of the front third of the fuselage, but strangely nothing on the wings. The wings have some slim tabs on them, but I can't find any use for them (they don't seem to help the wings stay together in truck mode, if anything they get in the way!). There's no 5mm peg hole on the top. There's four staggered-out 2mm pegs along the spine so Titan Masters can also stand on top, in addition to the one that can sit inside the compartment between the wings. The compartment has two heel spur holes, so the figure can face forwards or backwards in either vehicle mode. Undocumented Feature: There's two tabs on the bottom of the rifle that snap very insecurely around two tabs on top of the Titan Master compartment door to let you mount the gun on top of the rear fuselage. This is only one-direction, so if you use it in truck mode the barrels will point backwards. I can't find an equivalent symmetric way to store the sword...a few 2mm holes to put it on the Titan Master pegs on the top would have been nice. Truck Mode: A well-proportioned tanker truck, albeit without articulation between tractor and trailer. While the front third of the trailer is light gray while the rear two thirds are painted silver, it's not TOO bad a clash, and the stickers along the sides tie them together visually. There's ladder details on the sides of the cab, but unlike Leader Ultra Magnus, they don't make this feel like a comically oversized vehicle, it's plausible that it's meant to be the size of a regular tanker truck. The trailer is a bit weird, with the filling section being shifted towards the front rather than being in the usual middle, and as noted earlier it has molded details meant to evoke the disc-shooters from Laser Optimus Prime. 8.25" (21cm) long, and assuming a standard over the road tanker trailer length, it's about 1:100 scale. Colors are much the same as jet mode, but with the obvious red cab at the front and the black wheels exposed. The masking of the blue paint on mine is iffy, so there's some overspray on the front third of the trailer. The front windows are painted metalflake dark blue, but no paint on the side windows. The smokestacks are unpainted, being red on top and bottom but light gray in the middle. The front grille is painted silver, but no paint on the headlights nor is the pentagon at the top of the grille filled with an Autobot symbol. There's also tiny molded pentagons on the sides of the cab nose, but they're too small to expect printed Autobot symbols. Maybe touches of silver paint to pick them out, though. It rolls nicely on the ten wheels. The side 5mm peg holes are near the back now, the 2mm Titan Master pegs are still on the top spine. The smokestacks are a little wider than 5mm, so no using them for attachment points. The sword and rifle just stick to the sides, it's not possible to store the sword on the underside or hidden in the tank. Titan Master: Diac is based on the Diaclone drivers, taking specific design cues from one that was packaged with the Diaclone Convoy toy, if not coloration (googling suggests that one was largely yellow). As mentioned earlier, the head is painted all silver...I can't tell if the eyes are painted or not, they're pretty deeply sunken. The fronts and sides of the shins are painted metalflake blue. The head seems to be made from blue plastic, in closely examining the face to see if the eyes were painted, I spotted a few places where the silver paint has already been chipped. This suggests the original plan was to go with no paint, as seen in the package renders. Overall: This certainly has its flaws, but it works better than it has any right to. It even has flexibility so you can tweak the robot mode to suit your tastes. Dave Van Domelen, now to open Megatron with Doomshot.