Dave's Machine Wars Rant: Optimus Prime Got it this week at Kay Bee, as they finally move Machine Wars up to the front of the story and finish getting stock in. CAPSULE All the poseability of a brick, tolerable color scheme (more on that below), decent transformation, all plastic construction, missing some gimmicks. Mildly recommended...it's okay, but not great. $21.99 autoclearanced from $34.99 at Kay Bee. RANT AUTOBOT: Optimus Prime Function: Leader Original Toy: Thunderclash (European-only, 1992) Quote: "Freedom is the right of all sentient beings!" Optimus Prime is the braves, strongest, and wisest of all Autobots. His role is to protect all life in the fight to defeat the Decepticons. This all-powerful leader features a cab section that converts into his battle- ready robot mode, while his back trailer section becomes a high-tech command station complete with 2 launchers and an arsenal of [black mark over the number 14 or 16, not sure] mega-missiles. His combination of intelligence and strength makes him a respected commander, and a feared warrior. Stats: All 10 Apparently even fairly late in the game he was going to get his full complement of missiles, either that or someone didn't tell the techspec writer until it was too late. Normally, if I have fanfic tech specs for a character, I don't include them in the main review, but I think this is a compelling case. This Ain't Optimus, sorry. It looks a lot more like a fusion of Hot Rod and Ultra Magnus, so I present.... AUTOBOT: Ultra Rodimus Function: Commander Quote: "Until All Are One!" After Optimus Prime took back leadership of the Autobots, Hot Rod returned to his carefree ways...until tragedy struck. When on a mission with Ultra Magnus, the Decepticons launched a sneak attack that left both badly damaged. Hot Rod was near death, but Ultra Magnus knew that the young Autobot still had a destiny to fulfill, and sacrificed his own life by downloading Hot Rod's personality matrix into his own body at the expense of his own. The new Autobot, Ultra Rodimus, feels a heavy responsibility to live up to his friend's sacrifice...perhaps heavier than when he bore the Matrix. Because Hot Rod's personality matrix lacked the components necessary to control Ultra Magnus's exo-structure, it was rebuilt into a battle platform capable of acting under Ultra Rodimus's control. STR 10 INT 8 SPD 7 END 9 RNK 8 COUR 10 FRP 9 SKL 8 Avg 8.625 Anyway.... Colors: It's not as bad as you've heard, but it's not exactly lovely, either. Basically, what happened was that the Thunderclash molds were assigned new colors without being shifted around, and the light blue parts of Thunderclash became olive drab parts on Optimus. This is okay on the trailer, but the parts on the robot's forearms and legs look a bit off. Still, I think I prefer this scheme to Thunderclash's G2 stylings. Vehicle Mode: The entire vehicle is 11 inches (28cm) long, 4.5 inches (11cm) tall and about 4 inches (10cm) wide. The cab section alone is just under six inches (14cm) long, just under 3 inches (7cm) tall and a little over 2 inches (5cm) wide. The wheels are all ugly hard plastic without axels, and the hitch is rather loose considering it has no freedom to move back and forth anyway. In many ways, it looks like a slightly cheesy copy of the original Optimus Prime, with some stuff on top of the trailer. Transformation: The cab transforms in a manner similar to the original Prime's, but with several slight differences, mainly improvements. There's one tricky bit, that you have to pull the head out a little before you can move out the arms, but you have to finish putting the chest down before you can move the head all the way into position. The trailer's a little trickier, and the instructions aren't as helpful as I'd like, but you should be able to figure it out without too much trouble. Intermediate Mode: Not right to call it a gerwalk in this case, really. You can transform the cab's robot torso without swinging down the legs, and deploy the trailer's battle tower without changing anything else, leading to a rolling instrument of mass destruction. Robot Mode: Legs swing back and forth a bit, arms move a bit at the elbows, and that's it. Eyes glow, and there's no "bad side" to the robot, all the holes are closed (unlike original Prime, who you don't wanna look at from behind). At a little over 6 inches (16cm) tall, he's on the same basic scale as Sandstorm (Rotorstorm) and Soundwave (Stalker). While he has a Prime-like helmet, the face and chest are very reminiscent of Hot Rod's transformation. Battle Station Mode: A full foot tall (30cm) and nearly as large in the other two dimensions, it's pretty impressive. The only part which needs to be taken off and reattached is the rear door of the trailer which becomes the platform Prime stands on. Everything else just swings around, hinges and otherwise moves while staying attached. The upper platform can be detached, and with the big turbines at the base it makes for a natural flying platform for aerial support fire. The robot's pistol fits into a slot between the missile launchers. Unfortunately, there doesn't really seem to be any provision made for other TFs to hang out at this base, and Sandstorm's too tall to replace Prime at the controls. Gimmicks: Glowing eyes, some glowing parts on the battle station, launches two child-safe missiles (they aren't as dorky as you might think, they're actually pretty good) about four feet (1.3m) or so. The feeders are still in place to hold his Horkin' Big missile supply, and you can even open the doors that would let the missiles roll down into the launchers, but the missiles are gone and the launcher sealed on the side the missiles used to roll into. Overall: A fairly good toy, and probably worth the discounted $22 price if you're into size over poseability, but nothing to really get excited about. Which is too bad, considering how long we had to wait.