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The Legacy trilogy has concluded, and we’re onto the next installment of the modern Transformers mainline: Age of the Primes. The big premise of this toyline is that between continuing to make updates of characters from across the franchise’s history, we’re also going to get new figures of the Thirteen Primes, the first Transformers created by Primus to defend against Unicron. And, I’ll be honest, I’m kind of lukewarm on the concept.
The Thirteen’s first full television appearance, in a flashback on Transformers Prime. Honestly, this is the role they typically have.
See, the Thirteen are a 21st century addition to Transformers lore, and it’s always felt to me like Hasbro’s simultaneously tried too hard and not hard enough to make them into a thing. Their cameo as dead guys in Transformers One’s probably the most mainstream thing they’ve been in.
Over a decade later, and still occupying the same narrative role.
Okay, a few of them, like Alpha Trion (who was retroactively made into one of them) and Alchemist Prime have had noteable solo roles in recent stuff, but as a group, most of these guys are still very ill-defined, and aren’t characters so much as they’re bullet points of backstory. See, I’m a character collector through and through, and the other Primes in this first wave, Prima and Solus Prime, are among the ones that haven’t really *done* anything, just sort of existed. But there’s a couple of exceptions, and today’s subject, The Fallen is one of them.
His first appearance.
See, before we knew that his real name was Megatronus (which sounds dumb, if you ask me), and before he was the main bad guy of the 2009 Transformers movie sequel, The Fallen made his early appearances in the pages of Dreamwave’s comic book miniseries, War Within: The Dark Ages, by Simon Furman. Set on Cybertron in the distant past, at a time in the war when Optimus and Megatron had both gone missing, the miniseries saw The Fallen arrive on the planet, on a mission to perform a mysterious ritual deep beneath the surface. Honestly, like most of Dreamwave’s output, The Dark Ages wasn’t very good, but this early version of The Fallen really stuck with me, just because of the vibes the character had. We didn’t know his name, or anything about the Thirteen, because it hadn’t been written down yet. He was just this unknown thing from some other time, so impossibly ancient that everything about him had been lost from record, and it was impossible to understand what he was or what he wanted to do, and Transformers live for millions of years already, so that was really saying something.
These are the vibes. And it was better when this was all we knew.
The more we learned about him, the less interesting he (and the 13) got, so nothing else he’s appeared in ever had those exact vibes again. And the reason I’m reminiscing about this one specific story is because HasTak made the incredible decision to specifically base this new version of The Fallen off of his original Dreamwave comics design from those issues, like they were targeting me, specifically. So, fine, they got me. Let’s have a look at this elder abomination from before time began.
Robot Mode
Unclothed.
Right out of the box, The Fallen confronts you with an impressive illusion: You look at him, and you go, whoa, this ‘bot’s huge. And, to be fair, he’s about a head taller than Kingdom Leader-Class Galvatron, as well as a bit wider. But, to scale him out with some other modern Leader-class guys, Kingdom Ultra Magnus is a head taller than he is, as is Studio Series Rise of the Beasts Scourge.The Fallen’s wavemate, G2 Universe Grimlock, is more like a head and a half bigger, and a good deal wider.
Properly scaling it out.
There’s just something about The Fallen’s sculpt that communicates heft, size, and presence. On top of that, as mentioned above, it’s a nearly dead-on copy of how he looked in the Dreamwave comics, down to tiny little surface details, like his big, three-toed feet.
Compare this to the “Cybertron, well…” comic panel higher up.
The Fallen’s whole design motif is that he’s a walking furnace-man, covered in vents and grills that reveal the flames burning within him. Uptop, he’s got a face that kinda-sorta looks like the Decepticon logo, mainly due to his forehead crest, but is dominated by a wicked-looking mouthplate with a vent on it, almost like a skeletal scowl.
He invented the 90s action figure scowl.
He’s a pretty clean robot, too, with the only altmode bits on him being some neatly folded-up treads on his back, and a couple little weapons pods on his shoulders. In fact, the missile pod on his left shoulder is a seperate piece that you pop on out of the box, because it’s a comic detail.
For once, this angle is flattering.
Let’s skip ahead to a few of his accessories, because they’re important: The Fallen comes with four fire effect parts, cast in yellow and red soft plastic. They’re important, because in The Dark Ages, The Fallen was perpetually on fire. Like, he always had flames coming out of him. So, to replicate that effect, the larger flames go on 5-millimeter ports on his shoulders, while the smaller pair go in ports behind his head. It’s a wicked-looking set of effect, that really brings the character together, and I rarely have him out without them on.
“Hrrrrngghhh…”
*SHOOM*
For colors, he’s mostly different shades of black, dark gray, and dark purple. I thought they added the purple for color variety at first, until I checked the actual comics pages, and nope, he had dark purple there, too. Also, as you can see in my photos, it’s a darker purple than a lot of the stock photography out there, so it blends nicely.
Marshmallows beware!
The important bit of his color scheme, though, is that all the little vents and ports on his body have yellow paint, depicting those internal flames glowing. It’s, again, a wicked effect, that looks stunning against his dark exterior, and adding the orange-yellow flames only makes it better.
POV: You’re a Prime.
For build quality, this guy’s really solidly engineered. You can tell he’s got a really high partscount, contrasting with how simple Grimlock is, but he manages not to feel fiddly, or loose. Everything tabs in, and holds together, and all of his joints are nice and tight. And he’s got some real heft to him, too. All those other modern Leader-Classes I mentioned earlier, Grimlock, Ultra Magnus, Scourge, and Galvatron? He feels heavier than all of them, in my unscientific “pick him up and wave him around” testing. And despite his weight, he stays stable in his feet, since they’ve got a wide footprint.
The Karate Kid wishes.
I’d have been fine if his articulation was a bit limited, thanks to all the other stuff he’s got going on, but The Fallen’s shockingly bendy.
Meditating on his evil deeds.
He’s got universal ankles, knees and hips, a waist swivel, wrist swivels, hands that open and close on mitten joints, and universal elbows. His shoulders are on universal joints, and have this neat feature where you can detach them a bit from his torso, to cheat a bigger range of motion.
This looks better if you’re actively posing him.
Finally, his head’s on a ball joint with enough of a range of motion that he can look down upon lesser life-forms, a very important feature.
The condescention is important.
I honestly wasn’t expecting him to have the level of jointage he’s got, and it’s really easy to get him to do a lot of expressive things.
The only one he bows to.
Megatronus meets his biggest fan.
Spreading his Evil Energies.
For accessories and features, this is another area where I’d have been fine with nothing but the flame effects, especially since he didn’t really have any weapons or anything in the Dreamwave comics. But, again, they somehow found the budget to give him a giant pile of stuff, most of which is surprisingly complex. To go back to those flames of his, you can pretty much give the pair of shoulder-mounted ones to any other Transformer with 5-millimeter ports on the sides of their shoulders.
For once, Sideswipe cares about fasion.
The smaller flames are a little more versatile, with 5-millimeter pegs on the bottom, and 5-millimeter ports on the backs of them. Sadly, they don’t have the kind of smaller hole-within-the-peg that a lot of modern Transformers blast effects have, so there’s a lot of guns that these flames can’t interact with. But any weapon with a 5-millimeter barrel on the end can instantly become a flamethrower.
Shadow Striker doesn’t need Flamewar to start one.
Now, onto the rest of his stuff. Apparently, it’s all based on things that later versions of The Fallen used, not that I’m super-familiar with his later, less-good appearances.
Time to bring out the big gun.
Firstly, he’s got a big, blockly arm cannon, colored purple, silver, and yellow, called the “Requiem Blaster,” which sticks onto his arm perfectly on a 5-millimeter peg. There’s another pair of pegs on either side of it, too, if you want to make some ridiculous weapon combinations. It’s also got a little red logo on the top of it, which, according to the packaging, the The Fallen’s personal insignia.
A faction unto himself.
It’s got a 5-millimeter port on the end that can host blast effects, but has another, cooler, undocumented feature due to his transformation: You can open the cannon up, and transform it into an even bigger, extended version of itself, in a one-step transformation that both feels and looks cool.
START>
CHANGE>
FINISH
And he comes with a black gunbarrel that you can stick on the end of it to make it even more of a ludicrously huge cannon.
For when you’ve absolutely, positively got to kill every Prime in the room.
He’s bracing for the kickback.
Speaking of that gunbarrel, it’s sculpted to look like the one that G1 Megatron has on his back. In a cool little feature, the 5-millimeter peg on this barrel can click sideways, so you can stick this barrel onto one of the ports on the Fallen’s back, again, echoing G1 Megatron. Or, use one if the ports on his forearms, for an extra gun.
Some want to watch the world burn, he wants to burn it down himself.
Next up, he’s got a big knife.
It slices! It dices!
It’s probably supposed to be a sword, but in his hands, it feels more like a Jason Voorhees-type machete.
It can be menacing, too.
It’s got techie sculpting on it, and a silver-painted blade, and just looks strangely wicked on this guy. It fits into his open hands well enough, but a flared base on the handle means that Transformers with closed fists can’t hold it, only bots with opening hands. But it’s also got 5-millimeter pegs on either side, so The Fallen, and lots of other bots, can used it as a wristblade.
“Do it, Optimus. Take their faces.”
Next up, he’s got…a trident? Like Aquaman?
“You called?”
Or maybe it’s a pitchfork, since he’s kind of got a Lucifer thing going on. It came disassembled in the box, and I needed to fit the three-pronged head on the end of a purple baton.
“….”
*POP*
That end has some silver paint on it, and is made with plastic so soft, that it’s a little bit warped out of the box. There’s a tiny little peg on the middle prong that you can use to mount a blast effect…Just not any of the ones he comes with, since they lack the right kind of connection.
It bugs him that the flame is a different color from his own.
Like the knife, it’s also got 5-millimeter pegs near its base, for forearm-mounting. Unlike the knife, it’s got the kind of handle any Transformer can hold.
Transformers Two’s about to get real interesting.
For another undocumented feature, the ends of the knife and trident are compatible, so you can connect them into a big, lengthy staff, making me think of the weapon his Bayverse iteration wielded.
It’s really the only thing about him that acknowledges the Bayverse.
And he’s got swivelling wrists, so he can totally Darth Maul it up with the full weapon.
DA DA…… DA DA DA…..
When it comes to storage, the instructions have you hang the trident and knife on pegs on his back, pointing downwards, and dangle the Requiem Blaster off of a port on the back of his shoulder, like it’s ready for a sneak attack.
How the papers tell you to do it.
Me, I like combining the melee weapons into their staff mode, and hanging them diagonally on his back, for what it does to his silhouette.
“Of course you can trust my brother. Why do you ask?”
Later, after his Shrink the Primes Plan succeeds
And that’s the thing with The Fallen: There’s enough going on with his accessories that he’s one of those figures with an aura of customizability.
He’s cross with Scourge for cribbing his style.
I count 14 5-millimeter ports on him, all on his upper torso, including, interestingly, two on each forearm. He’s got enough going on with his own accessories that you can weaponize him up in a bunch of different ways, and that’s without even adding in more accessories. Basically, he’s got a lot going on.
But he also looks good with his factory settings.
Transformation
Speaking of having a lot going on, there’s his transformation. For a figure this complicated already, I’d have been fine with him having a relatively basic transformation, like on Grimlock, but that’s not the case here. Basically, you’re unfolding one set of treads from his back, flipping and folding his lower torso around to make the other set of treads, exploding his torso out into a bunch of layers, and re-forming it so his arms form the tank turret, around the Requiem Blaster. But that ain’t the half of it. There’s just…a lot of steps. Everything requires a bunch of flips, rotations, and little adjustments.
In the thick of it.
Here’s the thing, though: It’s really fun to do, and it’s surprisingly intuitive, despite all the steps involved. You grab a chunk of plastic, and you can instantly tell what you need to do. Compare this to the Galvatron (and Straxus) tooling, which has a similarly complicated transformation, but one where I’m always forgetting bits of, whereas I have no such problems on this guy.
Snug as a bug in a flaming rug.
I think the worst I can say is when going back to robot mode, I have trouble remembering how to get his torso back together in a way that doesn’t bump different parts against each other, but that really feels like a Me Problem.
Tank Mode
A slab of destruction.
The Fallen didn’t transform in The Dark Ages, but a tank mode for him did appear in a Dreamwave profile book. However, the new figure’s tank mode doesn’t seem to be based on that one, beyond also being an H-Tank.
Maybe they didn’t copy this because they can barely tell what they’re looking at.
This doesn’t bug me, since it wasn’t used in the story at all, and his robot mode was nice and accurate.
Lineage of Tanks.
So, in Transformers fandom parlance, an H-Tank refers to a common kind of made-up tank design you see a lot of bots change into, where the tank doesn’t really have a body, just a set of two treads with a turret in the middle, so it looks like an “H” when viewed from above.
When I transformed him, I put him in “H.”
The Fallen does have a fair amount of stuff between those treads of his, but they still dominate the shape of him. And it’s an impressively beefy shape, definitely feeling like a proper Leader-class vehicle. It does a kinda-sorta-okay job of pretending it’s not a re-arranged robot, with the biggest offender being the turret itself, which is really clearly two folded-up arms with a cannon jammed in between them. Still, it’s big, it’s mean, and it comes with spikes on either side of its front treads.
With important additions.
For colors, a lot of his fiery vents are hidden in this mode, so he’s a lot more like a slab of black and purple darkness, with only a few dabs of yellow on the front and sides. It’s intimidating in a way the robot mode isn’t. You can also add flames to this form, again, with the two larger orange pieces fitting at the front of the turret, albeit in a way that doesn’t match how fire works at all.
Grimlock made a big mistake with that stomp.
Honestly, the sharp orange against the black makes it look like the tank’s got eyes, with the tank turret looking like an insectoid proboscis, which is a whole other level of freaky.
Tank to Tank Communication.
For build quality, this is the first place where the figure really stumbles. The tank body itself stays together nice and well, but the tank turret does not. The problem is that the folded-up arms only plug into the Requiem Blaster via a couple of pegs at the back of the turret, and it’s very easy for these pegs to become undone when you move the turret around.
Freely rotating the turret can make this happen.
I’ve learned to start grabbing the turret from the back to stop it from coming undone, but honestly, this could have been fixed if there were also some pegs and holes at the front of the turret. It’s a rare miss for this guy.
Ride of the Primes….
….and of their enemy.
For features, firstly, he actually does roll, albeit on four little squeaky wheels, instead of his (completely fake) treads. The wheels get the job done, though. Next, he’s got a fully rotating turret, and a barrel that you can raise and lower, though doing both of these things risks making the tank turret come apart.
He can shoot upwards, though!
Time for an underwhelming beam clash.
When it comes to accessory integration, I mentioned the two large flame effects that you can place near the front of the turret. As for the rest of them, the instructions give you the bizarre option to clip both his weapons, and his two tiny flame effect parts together on a long spear, and peg that spear to the side of the tank. Flames don’t work that way!
That’s not how any of this works!
But there’s plenty of better places you can stash them. You can make him belch flames out of the back of the turret, or at the front of his treads, or out of his sides.
He makes sure no one gets too close to him on the highway.
You can also split his sword and trident up, and mount them on his sides, or at the front of him, or on the turret. You’ve got options! He’s got eight visible weapons ports that you can arm up, and if you flip the front of his arms sideways, you can up that number to ten, by accessing the ones on his forearms.
Because he wasn’t menacing enough already.
Like the robot mode, it feels like he’s got a ton of flexibility to him.
Prime’s about to discover how flexible he is.
Overall
“Feh. I’ve been killing Primes since the universe was young.”
“All that trouble for a mere bauble.”
The thing I keep coming back to with The Fallen is how uncompromised he feels. There’s a saying, or rather, a shape in the business world, a triangle with “fast,” “cheap,” and “good” written on its corners. The idea is you can only pick two out of the three when putting out a product or service, and that one is sacrificed for the other two. With Leader-class Transformers, I think there’s a similar thing, but it’s a shape with a few more corners, and they say stuff like “size,” “high partscount,” “high articulation,” “Lots of color,” “a lot of accessories,” and a few other things, and it’s generally understood that a figure having some of them means it needs to give up a few others. But The Fallen is somehow hits every corner of the shape, with no compromises. He’s big, complex, poseable, and has a ton of features and accessories. Plus, he’s based on the first, and best version of the character.
Compare him to Grimlock, who’s bigger, but much simpler, and with fewer accessories and features.
“GET IT OFF! GET IT OFF!”
Even if you don’t know who The Fallen is, he’s just an incredibly cool-looking figure, one with a ton of playability, and one that’s just very well-designed.
He speaks for himself.
I said I’m not getting any of the other Thirteen Primes, but if they’re all as good as this one, we’re in for a fun line, indeed. As for The Fallen, if you have Leader-class money to spend, he’s absolutely, positively worth picking up, and I highly recommend him. Just maybe forget the “Megatronus” part of the name, like history was supposed to have.
But what does Cappi think?
Trust me, she said he’s cool.
For over 200 Bot, Non-Bot, and Retro Bot Reviews, click here to view my archive.
Sometimes, you need to wait for the right repaint to come along before grabbing a figure, like me with this particular Grimlock. Let’s look at a little release timeline, and why I held off until now:
Time-travel with me to the Space Future Year 2021.
It all starts with Studio Series 86 Grimlock, pictured above, who came out back in 2021, and aimed to be a perfect replica of the big, tough brute’s appearance in the 1986 animated film. But honestly, he didn’t appeal to me, just because I already owned, and still own, Masterpiece Grimlock, pictured below.
He’ll show up in some photos below, but here’s the Transformer Wiki’s stock photo.
The Masterpiece is a great figure, and fits in pretty well with my mainline collection already, which is why he’s the only official Masterpiece I still own after selling them off. Plus, word on the street was that the Studio Series 86 figure was basically the same design, just downscaled a little bit. So, I felt like there was no reason for me to grab one.
“But what if he was purple?” they asked.
Next, they repainted him in Trypticon-style colors, as the evil Shattered Glass Grimlock, above. I’m not really a Shattered Glass collector, except for Flamewar (reviewed here) (who doesn’t count), and if I was going to get into Shattered Glass, I wouldn’t start with Grimlock, so again, it was a pass from me. Then, he got an eye-searing repaint in yellow for the Toxitron Collection, pictured below, based on an unused Generation 2 repaint concept, and I said hell yes, this is the one I’ll get.
Lemon-raspberry goodness.
But the Toxitron Collection version was a dreaded Wal-Mart exclusive, which meant that I just never saw any stock of it show up locally. And when I saw a couple at TFCon, the price markup on them was insane, so I had to let him pass me by, regretfully.
He looked at Darth Maul, and said, “I can do you one better.”
After that, he got one more release, seen above, in the Generations Comic Edition collection, with a big pile of swords, and a deco made to look like he was dramatically inked and shaded. But, as I said when I reviewed Straxus from the same series, I don’t actually like how these “comic book panel” paint jobs look, with Straxus only being the exception, because it was so subtle on him. That, and the fact that Comic Edition Grimlock was premium-priced Hasbro Pulse import, meant I passed one more time. Well, it took four years, but they’ve finally put out a version of the Dinobot leader that’s just right for me: Age of the Primes G2 Universe Grimlock, who has nothing at all to do with this brand-new toyline’s actual theme, and is instead based on the deep blue 1993 Generation 2 repaint of the G1 original. I actually own, and reviewed the vintage Generation 2 figure on this blog, giving me a very direct basis of comparison.
Turns out, the key to getting my money is to go back to 1993.
As someone that started Transformers with Generation 2, a shout-out to that era of Transformers is always a winner with me, so it’s time to belatedly have a look at this big blue bully. But first, let’s talk about his little companion.
Wheelie
I’m not going to be doing any rhymes.
Because this started out as an ‘86 movie figure, and Wheelie saddled up on Grimlock’s head in the movie, he’s represented here by a little non-transforming minifigure, which, in toymaker parlance, is apparently called a “slug figure.”
“Who are you?” “You, but bendier.”
So, back when this set of figures was originally released, fans talked a lot of trash on this guy, mostly because his legs are stuck in a bent-at-the-knees pose. Me, I say, if you pretend he’s from the 90s, like this Grimlock is, then you can contextualize it as the kind of action-squat the anti-heroes of the decade liked to assume, instead.
For Arcee, it’s like herding sheep.
Aside from that, Wheelie’s smaller than most Core-class Transformers, but bigger than a Battle Master, or other modern minifigure. His sculpt is going for cartoon accuracy, and aside from being pre-posed in that squat, his arms are also pre-posed, with his right one holding a slingshot, and his left one bent at the elbow, with his hand doing some kind of pointing gesture.
Dramatically hailing a taxi!
To me, more than the pre-posing, the real big problem he’s incredibly hollow from some very obvious angles, including the back of his head. They were really trying to save plastic, here.
The back of his head is sad about it.
Now, the really interesting thing about this Age of the Primes version of Wheelie is his colors. There was no Generation 2 Wheelie to accompany Grimlock, so instead, they based his colors here on his appearance in The Story of Wheelie, the Wild Boy of Quintesson, a 1986 storybook, with painted illustrations from artist Earl Norem that gave him an odd, seemingly made-up colorscheme.
As seen here.
This means he’s got orange arms, legs, and an orange face, with yellow paint on the arms, torso, eyes, and inside the helmet, and then a bunch of bright blue on the helmet and chest. He’s also got a sketched-on black Autobrand, and a black back of the torso. It’s a really clever deep cut to do as a colorscheme, and more importantly, feels like something from Generation 2, making him fit with Grimlock.
Honestly, his headsculpt fits the Earl Norem vibes, too.
For build quality, he’s solid enough, just really hollow. More importantly, he can stand just fine on his bent legs, you’ve just gotta make sure his stance is wide enough. Also, I say Wheelie is pre-posed, but he’s also got more articulation than I’d expect. His shoulders and hips are both on fairly tight balljoints, and he’s got a swivel waist and neck, which is…not bad? Like, you can actually pose him a bit.
Just a bit, though.
For other features, you can actually take his little gray slingshot out of his hand. It’s small enough that my Titans Return Wheelie can’t hold it, but it fits in the hands of all of the Core-Class figures and Prime Masters that I checked, so it probably works with the Studio Series 86 Wheelie I never bothered to get.
Arcee just got more lethal.
There’s also a few ways he can interact with Grimlock, but I’ll save that for the main event.
Don’t think about this too hard.
Overall, Wheelie’s got a lot more going on than I expected, and I like his deep-cut color scheme, but I can see why people were underwhelmed. I’ll get into this with the main figure, but at times, I wish they’d included a different accessory instead of this Wheelie.
Grimlock, Robot Mode
YO LISTEN UP, HERE’S A STORY….
Now, this is a big guy (for you). On one hand, I don’t judge modern Leader-class figures for being a bit on the small side, since they tent to spend their budget on other things, but on the other hand, it’s good to handle a Leader-class figure that’s just huge, like an older Prime Wars-era Leader. Grimlock feels chunkier than any Leader-class I’ve handled in a very long time, and he’s got immediate presence because of it.
He towers over any squad of Neo-G2 guys.
Visually, it’s true what they say: He’s more or less a downscaling of Masterpiece Grimlock, which was aiming to be “the cartoon design, but with some added details from the G1 toy.” There’s a couple different details here and there, but it’s clear that they started from the MP.
Which is Junior, and which is Senior here?
This is an interesting choice conceptually, because Studio Series is usually about heavy animation accuracy. I don’t mind, though, because it basically just means he’s got extra detailing on him, not just the smooth, empty surfaces of the animation model. Importantly, he looks like the guy he’s supposed to be. It helps that Grimlock’s G1 toy was already pretty animation-accurate (or rather, the cartoon didn’t take too many liberties,) so this guy’s pretty much just a more proportionate version of the G1 toy, with the biggest change being that the tail halves hanging down the sides of the original’s legs are hidden. Even the dino parts hanging off of the back of him don’t feel like bad design choices, since I’m so used to seeing them.
It’s called *fashion.*
And uptop, he’s got a well-sculpted cartoon-style head, even if it’s in toy colors.
Y’know, he never looked as fierce to me as he was supposed to be.
His colors are, of course, homaging the third, and final, Generation 2 release of the original figure. This means he’s got a lot of deep blue on him. Something particularly impressive to me is that it’s a perfect color-match to the blue on the G2 original, which I can confirm as an owner of the vintage version.
A pretty direct update.
His non-blue other colors are a bit different from the original, though, since the gold chrome’s been swapped out for metallic gold paint, and the silver chrome is now flat gray, both of which are more durable choices of material than chrome, which loves to scratch, flake, and wear off. Between those colors, and some red and black, he’s got a very subdued, very cool color scheme, where the bright gold and red really pops against the darker elements. He’s got a red Autobrand on his chest, beneath smokey clear plastic, and a couple of silver and red details on his arms, imitating stickers from the original toy. If I did have an issue with the colors, though, it’s that he’s mostly just a straight pallette-swap of his Studio Series 86 release’s colors, which were shooting for animation accuracy, when I feel like there’s a bit more they could have done here to match his layout to the G2 toy, beyond the couple sticker details on his arms. For example, the green, red, and black accents on his lower legs are an animation model detail, instead. Still, it’s hard to really complain, when the vibes his color scheme gives off are just so good.
Grim Kick!
Another thing that’s so good is his build quality. Grimlock’s hefty, solid and chunky, with no obvious hollowness or lightness as the tradeoff for his size, as is usually the case. Well, he’s got gaps in his forearms, but his fists need to go there for transformation. Also, it’s a tiny thing, but I also appreciate that his dino head pegs in securely to his back, and doesn’t just hang there.
Making fun of Wheelie.
In fact, I’d actually say he feels nicer to handle than the Masterpiece he’s cribbing his design from. On the MP, there’s diecast metal bits that make his weight distribution feel a bit odd, and he’s got ratcheted joints, and a torso, that both wobble a lot. But the Age of the Primes one has none of those problems, and just feels more friendly to being picked up, posed, and played with.
Showing off his leg tat (more on that later.)
Grimlock’s articulation is really good, and in some ways, also better than the MP, since he has usable ankle tilts. But he doesn’t have opening hands like the MP, so maybe it’s actually about even. I’m not complaining, though, because Grimlock’s got all the swivels you’d expect, plus bonuses like the ability for his head to look down, poseable wings in the back, wrist swivels, the works. The only odd bit of him is his elbows, because his arms lock into a straightened position (presumably for dino mode stability), and it actually takes force to unlock them for poses. But that’s about the only issue with him.
Time for the team-up!
His accessories and features are where he starts to feel a little threadbare, but I guess that’s the tradeoff for the size of him.
He’s on there good and tight.
First off, you’ve got his interaction with the Wheelie minifigure. Big Grim’s actually got little pegholes on the top of each shoulder that fit a peg on the back of Wheelie’s left leg, so you can secure the little guy, rather than just balancing him and hoping. I like that they thought to do this, and I like how Wheelie’s brighter colors pop against Grimlock’s darker ones.
They’ve got both sides covered.
Grimlock’s only other accessory is his traditional double-barreled gun. It fits just fine in his hands, or you can peg it onto the back of one of his wings via a c-clip to his T-rex arms.
The second Generations (2010) callback in only a few weeks. And both bots were blue!
They also made the ends compatible with blast effects, if you’ve got any lying around.
As ever, Kingdom Rodimus Prime’s are a great choice.
I wish he had his sword to go along with that gun, though. The original toy still included his sword, so this update not having it feels like a lost homage.
“Me Grimlock want what you have.”
Now, granted, the original Studio Series 86 version of this tooling didn’t have a sword either, because he never used one on the cartoon, and most of the other repaints of it didn’t come with one as a result.
Asking the King if he can borrow his.
But the Comic Edition one released last year came with his sword (as well as extra swords to give to the other Studio Series 86 Dinobots), so the tooling for one exists. If it’s a budget thing, I have to admit, while Wheelie’s interesting, if omitting him would have gotten the sword in here, I’d have liked that better. I did discover that he can sort of hold the Masterpiece figure’s sword, but the sword’s hilt is so thick, that he can only hold it in a sideways whacking mode, instead of a correct slashing mode.
He’s gonna bonk his enemies on the head.
Now, for his last feature, let me first tell you that there’s been speculation in the fandom for a long time that the earliest Studio Series 86 figures, including Grimlock, were supposed to come out in the third chapter of the War for Cybertron Trilogy toyline, Kingdom, but got turned into a Studio Series imprint after Kingdom decided to shift over to updating Beast Wars characters.
I was very happy with this decision.
Speculators point to evidence like Galvatron, Rodimus and Cyclonus still coming out in Kingdom, but they also point to how Grimlock, and other early Studio 86-ers kind of look and feel like War for Cybertron toys, and I see what they mean. In Grimlock’s case, it’s partially because of how his sculpt isn’t as slavisly cartoon-accurate as this line usually is, but it’s also because he’s actually got a bunch of 5-millimeter ports on him, something Generations and Legacy figures love to do, but Studio Series usually avoids. I count 9 ports in this mode: One on his back, two on each arm, one on each lower leg, and one beneath each foot. And they’re all in good places to arm him up with weaponry.
It was the style in 1993.
I like using Powerdashers Cromar (reviewed here) and Aragon (ditto), because they’re mostly red, and it contrasts nicely against the blue.
Transformation
Grimlock’s transformation is like an alligator: It hasn’t evolved very much in eons, because they got it right the first time. Okay, it’s not 100 percent the same transformation as the original, but it’s pretty close. You still move the torso down, close up the wings and dino head, turn the arms into legs, and fold the robot legs up into a tail. It’s mostly small little changes here and there, with the biggest one being that the robot legs forming the dino tail is now a bit more complicated, thanks to the trick of hiding the back halves of the tail inside the robot legs, instead of having them hang off the sides. But that complicated tail transformation is still way simpler than the version on the Masterpiece, which I transformed at the same time, and honestly had problems figuring out. Comparatively, Age of the Primes Grimlock’s straightforward, and fun.
T-Rex Mode
…AND ALL DAY AND ALL NIGHT AND EVERYTHING HE SEES, IS JUST BLUE LIKE HIM, INSIDE AND OUTSIDE….
This mode’s kind of funny to me, because I read it as straight-up cartoon Grimlock, just blue. I think it’s the head that sells it.
“Me Grimlock” lookin’ MF.
That’s a doofy cartoon head, the “no kisser, me king!” guy, down to a tee. Oddly, the headsculpt lacks front teeth for some reason? It’s a problem the Masterpiece doesn’t have.
Maybe the Masterpiece punched him in the face.
It’s not too noticeable, though. It’s more noticeable that the right side of his head is covered in screwholes.
C’mon, man.
Maybe screw covers will be the next big standardization in Transformers design, now that almost everyone’s got wrist swivels and ankle tilts.
Yaaaaay!
Below the head, though, the rest of him is a pure G1 toy-based sculpt, meaning he’s got way more detailing on him than the smoother cartoon design. This includes a bunch of computer circuitry at his neck, behind a shell of clear plastic. I think the only inaccuracy here is that his tail is kind of short and thick compared to both the animation and original figure. In fact, generally, he’s a bit chunky in this form, but in a fun way.
Legacy of Blue.
Grimlock’s deco is now way more dark blue, but he’s still got those hits of gold, gray, and red, plus the clear gold neck. I find myself really missing the G2 toy’s sticker details in this mode, though. Even if they didn’t have the budget to tampograph it all on him, there’s a lot of obvious things they could have done, like moving his Autobrand from his chest up to the top of his head. I like how it looks, I’m just really noticing how it’s mostly the G1 cartoon deco, with the hues shifted, rather than something specifically imitating the G2 toy. I say mostly, because besides his clear computer-neck, he’s got pair of G2 Autobot symbols on either side of his tail, with the word “Autobot” written next to each of them.
Just in case we weren’t clear.
It’s a toy detail that’s nice to see, but, uhh, it’s only supposed to be on one side of the tail, not both. And it’s supposed to be yellow, not gold. And the font’s wrong! It’s not that big of a deal, it was just such an easy layup for the deco artist.
Stompin’ along.
In terms of construction, Grimlock’s even more of a big, solid chunk of plastic, now that he’s all closed up. He’s just got a very pleasant sense of weight to him.
Ever been kicked by a dinosaur?
And despite that weight, you can even stand him on one foot, he’s that stable!
No matter how poseable he isn’t, he can still munch metal.
Grimlock’s articulation is a bit limited in this mode, even, in some ways, compared to the G2 figure. Firstly, his mouth opens and shuts, and his head raises, lowers, and rotates at the neck. Moving down, he’s got two joints per T-rex arm. His tail doesn’t articulate, but no surprise there, thanks to the transformation. For his legs, his hips are on universal joints, but he can only bend his knees backwards, which is odd, because even the G2 toy can bend his knees both ways, as can the Masterpiece (which also has articulated fingers). (UPDATE: Nope, he has proper knees, they just take excessive “will I break this?” levels of force to unlock.)
We’re two for two on “things the ’93 one can do that the AOTP one can’t.” Is what I said before discovering he has knees.
The limitation is a bit odd (Update: Nope, no limitation). What I do appreciate, though, is how like the original, he’s articulated enough to assume a modern, realistic, horizontal T-Rex pose.
Historical accuracy mode!
For features, Wheelie can now sit on Grimlock’s neck, in his slingshot-firing position from the ‘86 film, thanks to two pegs at the bottom of Grimlock’s neck fitting into holes on the inner edges of Wheelie’s feet.
Giddyup!
This is the whole reason Wheelie’s really here, and to their credit, it works well, and looks good.
…..Giddyup again!
Meanwhile, you can stash his gun onto his back, in a way I couldn’t figure out at first. Turns out there’s little tabs on the left side of the gun that plug into little holes at the base of his tail.
For shooting enemies to the left.
A more interesting feature in this mode is that Grimlock’s got a blast effect port in his mouth, so if you’ve got any particularly impressive effects, you can put them in there for Flamethrower Action (™).
BWARGLEBWARGLE
It’s not Grimlock’s fault, but I’m sad that the fire-breath effect from Legacy Transmetal 2 Megatron (reviewed here) doesn’t fit, since they made it out of hard plastic that stopped it from fitting over ports like the one in big G’s mouth.
Gun-o-saur.
But what does work on him is Weaponizing, thanks to some of those 5-millimeter ports still being accessible. He’s got three pegs on each side of him, and something about their placement really works for adding six guns (or Six-Gun, if you’ve got him), to this T-rex, making him deadly at close and long range.
Have another angle, just because it looks cool.
Overall
Age of the Primes Grimlock’s just really fun.
It’s a toss-up between him and Sideswipe being the best of this lineup.
His simplicity is a strength, because he’s just a big chunky Dinobot, full stop. I like him better than the Masterpiece, because it feels like this downscaling of the design was used to iron out some rough patches on the bigger figure.
Smaller, but sleeker.
This version’s plenty big on its own, not too complicated, and plays well. He’s not perfect, since his deco isn’t hitting the Generation 2 homage as well as it could, but he still looks good on his own merits.
The devil on his shoulder could bring him down.
On the other hand, while I like the little Wheelie more than I thought I would, he’s still kind of anemic, and I’d still rather Grimlock have just come with a sword instead. Still, this is a fun toy, in a deco I like, and he’s big enough to feel worth the Leader-class price. I’d say it’s worth owning some version of this tooling, and this release is as good a version as any. And even if you have the Masterpiece, I’d call this a solid upgrade.
Can you say no to this face?
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Y’know, I’m not really the biggest Ninja Turtles fan, though I like what I’ve seen of it just fine. For one thing, I didn’t watch the original cartoon growing up, and I’ve just seen clips here and there. Funny enough, I think the only Ninja Turtles show I watched regularly was The Next Mutation, a live-action series from the 90’s that was tied into Power Rangers through a big crossover event, and as I understand it, it’s a contested, controversial entry in the Turtles canon.
Either way, this was wild to witness as a kid.
On the cinematic side, I liked pretty much all of the movies I’ve seen (never watched Turtles in Time, or TMNT, though), and the latest film, Mutant Mayhem, was genuinely really excellent.
Seth Rogen casting a bunch of actual teenagers and letting them ad-lib turned out to be a stroke of genius.
And I’ve played a good deal of the recent retro beat-em-up, Shredder’s Revenge, a genuinely fun game that’s even better if you’ve got friends over to join you.
It just oozes charm (and ooze).
Really, it’s my wife, and one of my good friends, that are the Turtles people, so me picking up Party Wallop, the Ninja Turtles/Transformers collaboration, was more out of respect for them. An expensive bit of respect, too, considering he costs about the same as a Leader-class mainline figure, an example of how Collaborative figures can get a bit pricey. So, let’s see if he’s worth it.
Robot Mode
Politically neutral Turtle-bot.
I’ll lead off by just talking about Party Wallop’s main gimmick, before anything else, since it affects his whole presentation: You can remove the top of his robot-turtle-head…
AAAAAAAA
and swap it out for four additional bandanna-wearing head-halves to make him “become” any one of the four Ninja Turtles, or keep him as he’s packaged, as a neutral, non-bandanna’d turtle-bot. This is accompanied by a little dial you can turn on his belt buckle, switching it to have the first letter of each turtle’s name, or keeping it blank.
Here’s a fun game: Find the few times in these photos I forgot to switch the belt’s letter to match the head I put on him.
So, right off the bat, there’s five different guys this bot can be, and they’re kind of subtly encouraging you to buy at least four of him, so you can assemble the full Ninja Turtle cast.
Leaders meditate a lot.
My Turtles-loving friend was actually considering going in on four of them, but even he didn’t go through with it (I think?).
Dance Dance Mikey-lution.
It does kind of raise the question of who, or what Party Wallop is supposed to be. Me, I like to imagine he’s a Transtector, as depicted in the 1988 Transformers anime, Masterforce. Those Transtectors were lifeless Transformer bodies that a human (or Ninja Turtle) could fuse with, and pilot. So I like to think that the bandanna and belt that Party Wallop’s wearing depends on which brother’s in the driver’s seat.
“God On, dude!”
He’s become a bot of rage.
There’s also another big visual change you can decide on when it comes to his whole torso: You can leave the front of his alternate mode plugged into it, making him look more like a transforming Transformer, or unplug it to serve as a shield, exposing the more Ninja-Turtle-y chest (and belt).
After too much pizza.
Me, I like leaving it off. However you choose to display him, Party Wallop’s a bit short for his price, but incredibly wide in each direction. The guy’s stout.
I never saw (or played) Turtles in Time, so you can’t tell me this isn’t how it starts.
The funny thing is, he’s supposed to be a ninja, but the sculpt says samurai to me, largely because of how some of his altmode exterior has been folded over his shoulders and hips. And that’s sort of the big elephant (turtle?) in the room with this guy, he’s just lousy with parts of his vehicle mode hanging off him, including a huge backpack made up of different parts of the roof, and things like lasers and headlights poking out above it. But, honestly, I don’t hate it?
Death’s Head and Raph hate everyone, so it’s got nothing to do with all the altmode parts.
They obviously put work into making it all look good, and even his big backpack sort of works if you remember he’s a turtle, and so ought to have a big shell on his back. To skip ahead again, I think another reason I don’t mind is that they were careful to engineer him so that his van parts stay out of the way of his articulation.
The better to run freely with.
As for the rest of him, they basically took the default Ninja Turtle design, and put it through a “robot” filter, which means changing all of the round, curved shapes on him into straight lines, and harsh angles. It’s a delightful childish idea, like a kid drawing a “Ninja Turtle Robot” in a notebook. The headsculpt, in particular, is basically just a Ninja Turtle head, complete with the gritted teeth of the original action figures, but made out of boxes.
Schroedinger’s Ninja Turtle.
For colors, we’re operating in a very bright, cartoony space. He’s mostly cast in solid yellow and green, with some gray bits. I do feel like he’s got too much yellow, and not enough green, to read as normal Ninja Turtle Colors, but that’s down to the needs of his transformation. He doesn’t feel like he has a ton of paint on him in this mode, but he doesn’t really need it, with most of the deco being used on a slightly darker yellow chest, adding some more green and yellow where it’s needed, and some blue for his eyes, and white for his teeth. There’s also the extra color added when you swap around turtle bandannas, and belt buckles. The vibes of the deco are very “chunky kid’s toy,” which feels just right for the rest of him.
The Raph persona is trying hard to lose his children’s toy image.
His build quality is good, but strange. It’s kind of hard to explain, or quantify, but he doesn’t “feel” like a normal Hasbro/Takara Transformer. Something about his materials, the way his joints feel, all of it’s kind of different. If you told me, sight unseen, this was actually a Playmates Ninja Turtle product, instead of a Transformer, I’d believe you. As it stands, I guess he was just designed and engineered by a different team than usual, and it shows. But not in a bad way, really, just a different way.
“So, you say you’re powered by a turtle? That might explain why you feel so different from us.”
Party Wallop’s made out of big, solid bricks of plastic, so there’s some real weight to him when you pick him up. All his joints are really tight, and in an even more impressive twist, he has no problems standing up, or even doing a one-footed kick, despite his big backpack of stuff. His only hinky part is that backpack, though. It’s supposed to plug in beneath his neck, but it’s an unstable connection, which frequently comes out of place.
This happens pretty consistently.
It’s not the worst problem, because the backpack is on a fairly tight friction joint, but it’s a black eye on an otherwise pristine slate of engineering. For articulation, he’s got everything you’d expect from a modern mainline Legacy figure: Ankle tilts, swivel knees, thigh swivels, universal hips, a waist twist, a neck swivel, universal shoulders and elbows, and best of all, wrist swivels, which are especially important when you’re using swords, and other melee weapons. And, as mentioned before, the designers made sure these joints are all unbothered by all the altmode parts, unless you’re like, twisting the waist over 90 degrees, or something extreme like that. There’s extra joints to rotate the panels on his shoulders, and the two hip-skirts that he has are on rods that can extend and contract, again, to keep them out of the way.
The better to swordfight with! Which brings me to….
Next up: The accessories and features, and boy is there a ton of them. We’ve already been over the five swappable turtle heads, and the five rotating belt buckles, but on top of that, he’s got melee weapons based on each Turtle’s loadout, all cast in solid gray.
Having failed to take over the Maximals, Dinobot goes for a group he thinks will be easier to usurp control of.
First, you’ve got two katanas for Leonardo, and two sais for Raphael, both pretty standard.
POV; You’re about to get stabbed.
See? Told you.
Next, you have two nunchuks for Michealangelo, which are, impressively, multi-part assemblies connected by a working chain.
Just imagine the technique.
I like picking him up and shaking him, to get them to spin.
They’re good for confounding his opponents.
Finally, there’s an unfolding quarterstaff for Donatello, and it’s the only one of these weapons that lets me down.
“Did they give me the lamest weapon *again*?”
Basically, it’s oddly short and stumpy for what it’s supposed to be, and can’t even really be held in both hands very well. It reads to me more like a long baton, or truncheon. In fact, I prefer to pair it up with his big shield, like he’s using riot gear.
*WHAP* “You stop that.”
Speaking of the shield, you can mount it on a 5-millimeter port on either forearm, for some defense.
He’s making some sick beats from hitting that shield.
Here’s another feature that sounds kind of boring, but is actually really interesting to me: He comes with this giant pile of accessories, and they designed him so that everything he has can store on him somewhere. The four Turtle heads that you’re not using go inside his backpack, and his quarterstaff folds up and goes underneath them, with dedicated panels that flip over it to keep it stashed away.
Let’s not examine the implications of him having a backpack of scalps.
Meanwhile, his katanas peg onto the sides of his backpack. Around front, each nunchuck clips in beneath his shoulder armor….
They’re basically emergency fidget spinners.
and finally, his sais plug into his hip panels.
I Imagine these see the most use, since they’re right at his hips.
I really appreciate this, because it means he can keep his accessories on him, instead of me throwing them into a bag. That being said, the engineering here isn’t perfect. Most of his accessories stay in securely, but his katanas and sais do like to pop out and fall off when I pose him, just enough to be irritating. And you don’t have many options to stash his shield, it either needs to become his chest, or stay deployed on one of his arms, when I’d have liked some other place to keep it, like on his backpack or something. Still, the whole setup’s impressively ambitious, even if it’s got a few issues.
“Pizza is the right of all sentient beings, dude!”
Speaking of the shield, his last feature’s just a fun extra: You can pop a green circle off the front of it, to reveal a little personal pan pizza. It’s in a green pan, but it’s sculpted and painted realistically, with pepperoni as the only topping. He can’t really interact with it, but the fact that they made sure he came with pizza is just…the icing on the cake? Nah, the cheese on the pie.
It turned out to be the key to ending the war.
Transformation
The transformation, unfortunately, is something of a low point for the figure. You see, he’s a shellformer (and yes, everyone’s made a turtle joke about that already). By shellformer, I mean he’s the kind of transformer where you’re wadding the robot up in the middle, and fitting the pieces of his vehicle mode together outside of it, like the opposite of cracking an egg. On the positive side, everything on him, including the shell parts themselves, are big, which makes them easier to work with. But, on the negative side, getting everything to snap together can be tricky, and often requires the robot parts inside of him to be in precise positions, otherwise things won’t line up.
Basically, he spends most of the transformation looking like this.
More than once, I’ve had to undo the transformation, and go back a few steps, to fiddle with a part, before doing a big panel-massage to get everything to line up. To be clear, this isn’t as complicated or tricky as, say, a Studio Series car-bot…
Studio Series Hot Rod provides a good example of what I mean.
….it’s totally doable, it’s just kind if difficult, and a real barrier to enjoying the whole figure. In terms of how his accessories are handled, you can leave the turtle heads, staff, nunchucks, and shield-chest in place during the transformation, but you remove the sais and katanas, and place them in new positions beneath the vehicle mode.
Hopefully, the cops don’t look under the van.
It can be kind of tricky getting the katanas to plug in at first, but after owning Mr. Wallop for awhile, they seem to have been broken in.
Vehicle Mode
If you see smoke coming out of this van, they’re just baking pizza inside.
Party Wallop changes into the Turtles’ vehicle of choice from the original animated series, the Party Wagon (or Turtle Van, accounts differ on the name). Me, I mostly know it from the Shredder’s Revenge game, where you’d drive it around the world map.
Like so.
It’s a kind of silly, cartoony vehicle, a big yellow van with a huge spoiler in the back, a turtle-shell roof, and a scowling mouth sculpted in the front. Plus, he’s got a bunch of techie stuff on the roof, including a couple of lasers.
Those can’t be street-legal.
It suits the bright, toyish vibes of the rest of the package, I think, in addition to being very animation-accurate, from what I can tell from screengrabs.
Looks right to me!
It sort of has the vibes of one of those banged-up VW vans, even if it’s not actually banged up, or VW-ish.
He feels like he’d hang out with these radical racers.
It’s also a very large vehicle, bigger than most Voyager-class Transformers, again justifying the Leader-class pricepoint. It’s a bit too small for my 4-inch action figures, but it kind of passes the squint test.
“Does this make us cool?” “Depends on what year it is.”
Too bad I don’t have any Ninja Turtles in that scale, just my wife’s NECA ones.
“I’m sposda fit into that?!?”
For colors, the yellow is really on display in this mode, with most of the green being relegated to the roof. The sides of the vehicle are oddly plain and uncolored, but again, that’s what it looked like on the show. There’s a big patch of gray on the roof that’s only there because of a transformation joint, which is *not* what it looked like on the show, but it’s the only obvious innacuracy. There’s generally a lot more deco visible in this mode, including painted blue windows…
The 5-millimeter tabs make me read it as a face.
…multiple shades of green on the roof, red head and taillights (including whatever’s going on with the stuff on the roof), and a front with white teeth curled into a scowl, extra white headlights, bits of silver here and there, and a little Ninja Turtles logo tampographed onto the green circular thingie on the front. Outside of the plain sides of the van, it’s very detailed-looking, and that includes the black wheels with painted silver hubcaps.
Van Bros.
As much as it’s tough and complicated to get his vehicle mode to peg together during transformation, once you actually get him together, everything is really solid, and the whole vehicle really feels like a singular, dense brick of plastic, in a really pleasant, almost G1 Transformer way. The only bit of instability is those swords stashed on the bottom, which can fall out, but they get more stable every day.
Scale? What’s that?
In terms of features, the overloaded robot mode stole all the thunder, so there’s a lot less going on here. He rolls well on his plastic tires, with a lot of ground clearance. Uptop, those laser cannon-looking things are on swivels that let them raise from forward, to skyward. They’re also exactly the right size to accept blast effects on their ends.
*Definitely* not street-legal.
You can also twist the lights on either side of the van’s roof up and down. And finally, you can still pop the circular thing on the van’s front, to reveal that personal pan pizza. Maybe the engine keeps it warm?
“Think this is, like, safe to eat, Pete?” “I’m exactly broke enough not to care, Miles.”
Overall
There’s a lot going on with Party Wallop, and that’s a good thing. Some Transformers Collaboratives are definitely overpriced, but this is one time where that doesn’t feel like the case.
“Kid, I ain’t your master.”
He costs as much as a Leader-class mainline Transformer, and there’s a Leader-class figure’s worth of stuff here, so he’s worth it, unless you just think Leader-class figures are overpriced in general (which is a valid point, too). Beyond the question of value, though, this is just a fun figure, with a real sense of creativity behind it. Whoever made this may not have been the usual HasTak team, but they were obviously having fun with the premise, and made a really complete turtle-robot experience. He just radiates good vibes, man.
With cheetah-ride-giving action!
The only real problem I have is his annoyingly shellformer-y transformation, but both of his actual modes make up for that, to me. I’m not even a huge Turtles fan, and I like the guy, and I can recommend him if you’re both a Turtles and Transformers liker. Just maybe don’t buy four of them.
For over 200 Bot, Non-Bot, and Retro Bot Reviews, click here to view my archive.
Some would say that the last few years of Transformers collecting have seen them make way too many Optimus Primes. Studio Series, Legacy, Missing Link, Reactivate, there’s been a big red and blue wave.
For evidence, look no further than the amount I’ve reviewed here!
But you don’t hear too many complaints about how many of them there are, because a lot of them have come out really, really good. I thought I’d take today to talk about one of the stranger Optimii to hit the market in the last while: VNR Optimus Prime, a figure without a home. See, leaked listings and cryptic comments from the designers tell us that VNR Optimus was supposed to be a branded Amazon collaboration, kind of like that Target Optimus Prime that just came out. That’s why he changes into a branded, licensed Volvo VNR 300 truck, of the model commonly used by Amazon to deliver their goods. But for whatever reason, the collab fell through, but only after HasTak had already invested in designing, engineering and making a brand-new tooling, which means they wanted to release it *somewhere,* if only to get back the money they spent making it. So, Christmas 2022 saw the strange, fun release of “Holiday Optimus Prime,” a snowy, jolly, candy-cane-wielding robot who inexplicably changed into a licensed Volvo.
A new level of real-life disguise.
The word was that he was a shockingly good figure, beneath the holiday decor! Then, in 2023, he received this normal-Optimus-colors repaint, which, by the way, got a very delayed release in Japan, only coming out in December 2024, so I’m still gonna count him as a recent release.
The toy without a line.
Anwho, the oddness around his release also extends to his packaging, which just has generic “Transformers” branding, without belonging to any specific toyline…but the instructions name him as a Transformers Collaborative.
The least exciting Collaborative ever.
Maybe they decided a Volvo collab wasn’t as exciting as Ninja Turtles, or Back to the Future, or Knight Rider. But, whoever he was, the word once again spread around that he was a real good figure, so I decided to belatedly check him out (and also, I wanted his trailer to give to Legacy Deluxe Prime, as a bonus).
Truck Mode
Available on a highway near you!
As befitting a figure where the vehicle mode is a draw, Optimus comes packaged in his truck mode. Now, I’m not a big truck-model-knowing-guy, but I have 100 percent seen this specific model of truck on my local Toronto-adjacent streets and highways, or at least models close to it, with the same diagonal slash with a circle in the middle on the grill. I’ve even seen at least one in red!
Nothing but respect for truck drivers that manage to do complicated turns and parking and whatnot in these things.
So many Transformers with licenced altmodes tend to change into flashy, luxury stuff, but there’s an appeal to seeing one change into something more mundane, that you’re more likely to see in the world outside your window. The only other time I can think of them doing this is with Chevrolet Aveo Swerve, literal decades ago.
If you ignore the scale, this is what the average Toronto highway looks like. Earthrise Hoist is here because tons of maintenance trucks around here have that exact deco.
While the concept is great, I did immediately find the actual vehicle mode a bit lacking right out of the box, if only because it’s strangely small. If it wasn’t for the really long truck bed on the back of the cab, I’d think the front section was really a Deluxe, when the figure is supposed to be a Voyager with a trailer, like Earthrise Optimus.
More cohesive, at the cost of size.
Part of it is that I’m comparing him to the old First Edition Transformers Prime Optimus (another red long-nosed truck), who absolutely dwarfs him, but to be fair, that toy’s like 15 years old (and I’m even older, sheesh). He’s also noticeably smaller than Legacy Laser Optimus, though, who’s also a longnose.
He’s smaller because he shed the 90s attitude.
Still, I think the small size happened to make room for all of the extra flourishes that the truck mode sculpt has (plus, he really expands in robot mode, but more on that later). Those extra flourishes include the nicely-sculpted grill, all the different side mirrors, lots of model-kit-like details. It’s the back of the truck that’s especially impressive.
That’s the stuff.
See, usually on an Optimus’s alternate mode, the back of the truck, and especially the truck bed, are treated like “free parking” by the designers, and used to stash as many robot mode parts as they can cram in there (with Studio Series Rise of the Beasts Optimus being the nadir of this trend).
Going from good, to iffy, to not even trying.
That’s not the case here. Ths truck bed is completely flat, with no robot details visible, and even has taillights, and mudflaps with “Volvo” written on them.
They paid for the name, after all.
The back of the cab itself is also detailed and sculpted up like a truck, instead of being made of robot parts, and in an interesting twist, actually has a clear rear window, through which you can see his hidden Matrix of Leadership. All together, this is probably one of the cleanest Optimus Truck Modes I’ve ever seen, in general.
They feel like a matching pair.
The colors, meanwhile, are mostly what you’d expect from an Optimus. I say mostly, because while he’s got a lot of red, there’s way less blue on him than usual, and a lot more black, along with some silver highlights. Most of the truck cab is bright red, and it’s all done in unpainted matte plastic that maybe doesn’t look as nice as painted red, but is also way less prone to QC problems, scratching and chipping, so I always prefer this approach.
Unlike the real trucks, he’s clean.
The dark blue’s limited to a couple of panels on his sides, and most of the truck bed’s cast in black, along with his wide mirrors, grill, and tires, with silver being used for his singular smokestack, accents on the grill, and hubcaps. Finally, he’s got clear windows, through which his robot feet kinda-sorta pretend to be seats, clear headlights, and tiny accents of yellow above his windows. It’s about as complete as it should be, and if anything’s missing, I don’t really notice.
A full package that’s used for delivering packages.
His build quality’s kind of mixed, unfortunately. A big visual issue I have with my copy is that the whole truck cab splits down the middle along a vertical seam, and no matter how many times I transform it, or adjust it, the split is a little askew, and his left side is a millimeter higher than the right. It’s not the worst problem, but I definitely notice it from the front, the way the yellow above his windows is uneven.
No matter how I try, he’s asymmetrical.
I don’t know if I rolled bad QC, or what. The other major instability is that truck bed of his, which looks nice, but is made up of a bunch of parts that don’t really lock or tab in. So, the mudflaps closer to the body, the truck hitch, even a big transformation joint in the middle of the bed all move around pretty freely, and are loose enough to come out of place when you, say, use the truck hitch.
This kind of thing happens way too easily.
It doesn’t make him unusable, but they really should have added some tabs or pegs or something here and there to keep it together.
An accessory bigger than the bot.
For features, he rolls decently, but the real feature is, of course, the trailer that he comes with. It’s a repaint of the G1-style trailer that originally came with Earthrise Optimus Prime, and in fact, I’ve never reviewed it in my writing before, just talked about it back when I stickered a copy up with some Toyhax labels. So, collector reception of the Earthrisetrailer was mixed, mostly because the designers were clearly fighting with the budget when it was made, so it wound up being kind of….anemic, features-wise.
Undersized, too.
And sure enough, it does feel like it’s made of plastic that’s thinner and more flexible than what you’d expect. Still, I think I like it better here than I did on the actual Earthrise Optimus. Part of this is because VNR Optimus’s smaller scale means that the trailer doesn’t feel too small for him, like how it also scales well with Legacy Deluxe Optimus.
Scale!
Another factor is that it’s actually got a bit more color on it than the Earthrise release, with the stripe on the side being filled in, and the back door being solid black, thanks to how the plastic on this release was sprued out.
Two-tone trailer.
For features, it attaches to the hitch of the truck just fine. An interesting thing about that attachment is that there’s a newly-tooled adapter added to the bottom of the trailer, since the hitch in VNR Optimus is further back than on Earthrise Optimus, and most other modern Optimii. The trailer still works with them, though, because they made it so you can just pop the adapter off.
VNR mode….
….and Other Primes Mode.
For other features, one relevant thing in this mode is that nobody needs to pull the trailer, because there’s two little support struts that can flip down and keep it flat when it’s not being pulled. At the back of the trailer, while you can flip down the door, you actually have to crack open the trailer first to untab it, which feels like a bad design choice.
It’s cramped in here!
Here’s one place where the trailer’s small size causes problems, though, since most Autobot Cars are too big to fit in there.
They’ll never hear the end of this.
Even most modern Deluxe Minibots don’t fit! I managed to get Netflix Bumblebee in there, but Legacy Gears was too big.
“Finally, I can breathe!”
Transformation
Something I said the last few times I reviewed an Optimus, is that most modern versions of the guy basically have the same transformation, where it’s just the G1 toy transformation, with an added waist twist, and then a ton of little extra unique steps. One novelty to VNR Optimus is that he bucks the trend, and transforms completely differently from his modern brethren. Have you ever heard of an Optimus where the truck bed doesn’t become his legs? His doesn’t. It just folds up into a backpack. Instead, the long nose of the truck is where his legs are, and unfolding them is the most complicated part of the figure.
It’s a panel explosion!
It’s a lengthy conversion, with a ton of steps, and a ton of little panels to adjust, but it’s intuitive enough that I can handle it without instructions, even if about half of it is spent fiddling with those lower legs, which, by the way, seem to almost double his mass in robot mode, thanks to the Great Unfolding.
How he looks all tucked in.
For a couple of tips when going back to truck mode: Make sure you remember to unfold his abs into two separate panels, otherwise his whole chest section won’t fit. Also, remember to rotate his head back around, or the truck’s back end will hold together even worse than it already does
Robot Mode:
You know him, even if he’s a little different.
VNR Optimus feels like an unlikely counterpart to Studio Series Transformers One Megatron, because of something they share in common: Their really long legs.
“I see you’ve got legs as well, Prime! But do you know how to use them?”
There’s some gams on this guy. Like Megs, Optimus doesn’t feel disproportionate, but he is probably really good at running.
Showing off the goods.
So, what we’ve got here is a Voyager-sized robot, standing just a hair taller than Earthrise Optimus, that’s recognizably the big red guy, but with a design that’s dedicated to remixing the Optimus look, in a way we haven’t really seen since the Prime Wars Trilogy.
Same size, different mission.
Granted, he’s got a (very good) Optimus headsculpt, the usual truck window chest (with visible Matrix) and grill-abs (both fake parts in this case, though the chest window does make the truck’s rear window), and a couple other signifiers, like details at his waist, but other than that, this is a very different design.
Inspiring the troops.
Even when a modern Optimus is remixing the classic look, like with Rise of the Beasts Optimus, or Transformers One Optimus, they usually keep details like the solid blue truck-bed legs with wheels on them, or the smokestacks on the shoulders. On VNR Optimus, his lower legs are big, stompy boots made out of the front of the truck, and most of his wheels are on a fairly unobtrusive backpack.
If he lies on his back, he can scoot around the room.
I think it’s the lack of stacks, or towers, or anything on his shoulders that throws me the most, because of how it changes his silhouette away from what I’m used to. Still, I’m not complaining about the changes, and it’s impressive how he still reads as the character.
This guy’s about to deliver the original “one shall stand, one shall fall.”
Like I said before, the very traditional headsculpt helps. It’s different from the Earthrise version, and feels like it’s specifically trying to be ‘86 movie Prime, in a way that even the new Studio Series 86 one isn’t. The figure’s even been designed so you can pop the head off, and give it to Earthrise Optimus if you want.
“Can…can I have your face?” “What? No! Thanks for asking first, though.”
For colors, it’s interesting how much the transformation changes the mix on him. Most of the black has been folded away into his backpack, and we’re left with a pretty traditional Optimus colorscheme of red, additional blue, and newly-exposed gray parts, with far more yellow accents to go with the silver. Not only that, but the red on his arms and chest is actually glossy paint, giving those parts a very different look from the red on the truck cab (and luckly, I got no QC problems). It’s interesting how much they used the transformation to change things up.
Having a deep moment.
For build quality, he’s way more solid in this mode than truck mode, since his cab is split between his legs, and his troublesome truck bed folds away and clicks into his back. All of his joints are nice and tight, and his stability is….interesting. So, his feet are kind of small, and while they do have heel spurs, the big piles of truck cab on the back of each leg unintentionally act as support anyway, since if he falls backwards, he’ll only tilt back like, a half a centimeter, and just rest on it instead. Probably not what they intended, but hey, it works.
I forgot to flip out his heel spurs in a bunch of these photos. Luckily, not this one.
Speaking of poseability, he’s got a lot of it, and the fact that he’s so skinny and person-shaped means that it’s all pretty unimpeded, giving him a big range of motion. He’s got ankle tilts, knee swivels, universal hips, a swivel waist, enough joints around his shoulders and elbows to make both universal, swivelling wrists (impressively), and a neck swivel. Guy can move!
Pictured: Movement.
It does seem like he ought to have double-knees, but it’s an illusion, since the second joint’s used for the transformation, and locked up tight in robot mode. If I had one criticism, it really feels like he ought to have opening and closing hands. Earthrise Optimus does, and he was the exact same size class as this guy, who’s also trying to look and feel like a premium package. I think it mostly bothers me because his having closed fists really hampers how he can interact with one of his accessories, which makes for a handy transition.
Oh look, a Matrix!
For features, firstly, you can flip Prime’s chest down to access his Matrix of Leadership, stashed in a techie-looking bed of clear plastic. While it has the same basic look as the Earthrise Matrix at a glance, it’s a lot more shallow, and made of clear plastic that’s been painted over silver, gold and blue, so it’s very much a new tooling. There’s a peghole on the back of it, that for some reason, is too big to be five-millimeter compatible, so it can’t take part in any Weaponizing fun. And, like I mentioned above, Prime’s lack of opening hands means he’s got no way to hold it, unless you, say, balanced it on one of his arms.
He can only light the darkest hour if it’s right above him, and he stands very carefully.
So, nice that it’s here, but I wish it did anything. Next up, he’s got the same Ion Blaster that Earthrise Prime had, cast in black.
A familiar friend.
It felt a little small for Earthy, but since VNR isn’t exactly the cartoon’s design, it feels more natural here.
He isn’t normal, and neither is his weapon.
You can fold it in half, and try stashing it on his back via a peg on the side of it, but it works better if you unfold it, and store it by the handle.
It’s a bit of a loose fit.
It works best if you shoot with it, instead.
Of course, the big accessory is, again, the trailer, which you can split open into a miniature Combat Deck for him to stand in and around.
A figure of controversy.
The big criticisms against this trailer were always that, firstly, it was really small, secondly, the plastic on it was oddly thin, and thirdly, that there was no color on the interior at all, it was all solid gray. And, well, most of that’s true here, still.
“You call this taking cover?”
But, they did fix the color problem, sort of, by making some of the trailer out of black plastic, so there’s some actual color blocking. It’s still a bit plain, but, much like his Ion Blaster, the fact that this isn’t a normal cartoon-style Optimus makes this whole thing read as a spin on the original combat deck, rather than an iffy recreation.
Repair mode barely works, though.
And there’s still a lot going on with it, too!
He’s got a great personality!
The repair-drone-creature-thingie at the back of it has a triple-jointed “neck,” with the top joint able to swivel sideways, too, making it very expressive. It’s got a couple little claw arms on ball joints (they’re a bit too big to hold most accessories, though), and two ports at the front of it for blast effect.
Heard u were talking smack.
All he can do is dangle the gun.
In an interesting addition, you can also just pop the entire thing out of the trailer, and it’s got enough 5 millimeter pegs on its base that you can mount it on Optimus himself, like some kind of companion creature.
“Over there, Prime!”
A handy grabby claw.
You can also pop a bit of the ramp at the front off, and have Optimus mount it on his arm as a shield.
There’s a few nubs for blast effects, too!
The trailer also has eight weapons ports inside it, for stashing accessories, though I admit, they’re all close enough together that you’re probably not getting eight whole weapons in there.
Best I could manage.
Also, technically, you’re supposed to stash his Ion Blaster on the underside of the trailer in truck mode, but a) there’s no reason you can’t fit in in the trailer, and b) it looks….kinda awkward there.
Yup.
Speaking of ports, Optimus has four of them between his forearms and shoulders, one on his back, and, oddly, four on the backs of his thighs, if you want to get creative with the weaponizing.
The rest of him isn’t yellow, but these updates are splendid.
It’s not something I’d expect from a one-off novelty figure like this, and I appreciate that they included it.
Overall
Unlike some, he appreciates his Trailer Crab Friend.
Okay, so, I mostly got this guy for the trailer, but I’m happy I got a chance to check him out. Overall, this is a good, solid take on Optimus Prime, one that’s elevated a bit by the novelties of his real-world altmode, and his unconventional design. I like that he’s very G1-styled, despite not being his G1 self, and you could easily make him the leader of your G1 Autobots.
Taking care of his son.
Heck, if I’d gone in on collecting the Legacy updates of Transformers Prime characters that shifted their designs to be more G1, I might have got this guy to be a new version of his Transformers Prime self, since it’s a similar altmode, and he even pulled a trailer in one episode of the show.
See the resemblance? c. Seibertron.com
On the other hand, the market’s crowded by Good Optimus Primes, and this isn’t on the level of, say, the Legacy Deluxe, where I go “everyone needs to own this,” and not just because VNR Optimus is more expensive and harder to get.
They need to pick which one will lead them. Cosmos is pitching a race.
He’s a good figure, make no mistake, but there’s a lot of good Optimuses, and the only things this guy really has going for him is that unique altmode and layout, plus, he’s got just enough wrong with him (the unstable altmode and such) that he’s not really a perfect 10. Still, I like him, and if you’ve got a good excuse to get one for a decent price, like I did, you’ll have fun with a solid figure, just don’t expect some kind of transcendent cultural reset, or anything. It’s just a truck-robot. Still, I can’t help but wish that the tooling wasn’t locked behind Volvo licensing, and that it was the current go-to longnosed Optimus Prime whenever Target or Godzilla or whoever needed a random repaint, instead of the inferior Legacy Laser Optimus one that’s currently seeing a lot of use.
These are some nice colors, but they’d look a lot nicer on the VNR version.
Maybe it’d be worth HasTak’s money to retool this one to remove the Volvo-ness of this one, if only so there would be more avenues to grab one.
For over 200 Bot, Non-Bot, and Retro Bot Reviews, click here to view my archive.
Transformers News
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Hot on the heels of Takara Tomy’s livestream and official announcements, Western retailers are now offering the next Masterpiece Optimus Prime, MPG-17. Read on for official pics and info, hit our sponsors to snag yours! TFSource,...
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This page may contain affiliate links. We may earn commissions when readers interact with or purchase items through these links. Hey Seibertronians -- remember those jaw-dropping reveals from Cybertron Con and Hasbro’s 1027 event? Well, it’s...
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I get magnus is harder to find. Cash on top or possibly pay shipping both ways. Local preferred (Vancouver) but open to anything. Source: Cybertron
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This Sunday will be Part 1 of a relaxing chat with our Collectors in Disguise. News, updates, reveals, and anything behind the scenes during our TelaTraan 1 segment of the Frenzy Freestyle Sunday. Join us in the chat or comment after the stream.
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This Sunday will be a two part relaxing chat with our Collectors in Disguise. News, updates, reveals, and anything behind the scenes during our TelaTraan 1 segment of the Frenzy Freestyle Sunday. Join us in the chat or comment after the stream.
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Our Collectors in Disguise will reveal some of their recent cool finds on this weeks TelaTraan 1 segment of the Frenzy Freestyle Sunday. Join us in the chat or comments and let us know what new or old Transformers you were able to find this week.
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We will chat with all our Collectors in Disguise about Transformers they would never buy and their reasons for not buying certain characters or lines within franchise. Join Us Live in the comments and let us know which Transformers you not buy as well.
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This Sunday night our Collectors in Disguise will talk about Autobot Sandstorm. Is he a pacifist or a Wrecker? Join Us Live in the comments!
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Our first story time featuring Autobot Hauler. A funny short from our Sunday night Freestyles. You can watch the full video here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TMFQrm6uWk #storytime #fyp #shorts #frenzyfreestylesundays #blogbots #transformers #transformersone #childreofprimus #autobots #decepticons #maximals #predacons #transformersg1 #tilallareone #transfromersprime #transformersrid #transformermasterpiece #transformertitans #transformersgeneration #transformersfans #tfelites #warforcybertron #earthrise #transfomerstuesdays #shockwavescorner #blasterssaturdayshoutouts
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