Retro Bot Reviews: Transformers: Lost Age Power Battler Nemesis Prime

Wanna see the weirdest Transformer I own? It’s in that lovely category of “strange gifts friends have gotten me,” which is how I get all of my oddball Transformers. 

So, we’re back to talking about Age of Extinction, the worst Transformers film (don’t @ me, just read my review of the recent Studio Series AoE Optimus for my thoughts on it), called Transformers: Lost Age in Japan. Back in the day, poor sales of 2011’s Dark of the Moon toyline had lead HasTak to rethink their approach to Age of Extinction’s line, leading to bots with simpler, more kid-friendly transformations, and a bigger emphasis on gimmick toys, to lure in the younger crowd (which is funny, considering the movie).

The Power Battlers were one such gimmick toyline, sub-Deluxe transforming bots, each with a simple combat gimmick. The whole movie cast got figures in this range, plus a few extra characters, and when the line was imported to Japan for Transformers: Lost Age, many of these cheap gimmick figures got strangely premium paint jobs. And then there was Nemesis Prime, a toy-only evil repaint of the line’s Optimus that was added to that Japanese release, and that’s what my friend gave me, because it was a fancy Takara import. Now that all that’s out of the way, let’s look at what a Takara-exclusive redeco of a North American gimmick toy from 2014 feels like in the year 2026, because I love keeping things current and relevant.

Vehicle Mode

I’ll stat with this mode, because it’s the more conventionally “good” of the two forms. They were paying licensing fees for this swooshy truck mode, so it makes sense that they’d want to get it right (and they probably had to, legally, to use it).

So, this is a pretty accurate copy of his fancy concept truck mode from the movie, just scaled down to about the size of a small Deluxe, the kind of size that’s usually reserved for Minibots these days.

It’s a surprisingly clean sculpt from most angles, too. There’s even an absolutely miniscule Autobrand sculpted into his truck grill.

The only issues are that it’s hollow from the back, with his head just hanging out there, and his truck bed, while very tidy, does have his robot arms visibly a part of it.

Still, it comes together pretty well, though I think this is a Nemesis Leo Prime situation, where him being a black repaint makes him look more cohesive than he ought to.

Speaking of those colors, they’re not reinventing the wheel here. This is the same set of colors most Nemesis Primes have had, ever since the aformentioned Nemesis Leo first invented it in the late 90s. He’s mostly glossy black and dark gray, with fetching metallic teal for his highlights, along with red windows, and a bit of dark silver. The best choice here was making his truck’s flames into teal fire, and there’s a cool inverted effect on the hood, where there’s also black flames overtop of them. He’s also got a teal Decepticon symbol on his left side, for some faction confusion. He looks nice, and solid black definitely works as a way to avoid painting things like his wheels or smokestacks. 

His build quality is…serviceable, I’d say? You can tell he’s on the cheap side, because of how light he is, and his plastic’s of the glossier variety that I associate with a leaner budget, but he holds together fine, even if he’s got a few gappy seams. My biggest complaint is that his truck bed kind of free-floats along his shoulder and elbow joints, rather than plugging in, so you’ve just got to manually adjust it to be even with the ground. 

For features, this isn’t the mode with the gimmickery, so all he does is roll. It’s possible for his sword to drag on the ground beneath him, so I transform him a little differently from the stock suggestions, and have the sword rest above the truck bed instead of beneath it, for extra ground clearance. There’s no hitch on him, so he can’t pull a trailer, sadly.

Transformation 

Nemmy transforms in a pretty unique, but straightforward way. Basically, he’s a bit of a shellformer. You crack the truck canopy in half, and fold the halves outwards and forwards, exposing his robot torso, and then folding the truck chunks up into legs.

After that, you split the truck bed into arms, fold and rotate them down, and you’re done! Easy-peasy in both directions.

Robot Mode

Okay, here’s where we get real Gimmick Toy about it. You know why the Cyberworld toys are universally all pretty good? Because they were designed as toys first, and then adapted into animation, instead of being character models that had to be stretched and warped to fit the gimmick, which is what’s happening here.

This is a funhouse-mirror version of Age of Extinction Optimus (specifically his concept art design, too, with its different-looking chest). He’s skinny, with chunky legs, arms that are way too high up on his shoulders, and perpetually stuck in an aggressive “stanced up” pose. It’s his turn on the Xbox. 

Something about this thin, tall headsculpt is oddly angry-looking, too, which combines with the pose to make Nemesis look appropriately mad.

He’s funny and weird looking, and not at all accurate to the Optimus he’s supposed to be. I’d love to see an artist try and draw a toy-accurate version of this.

His colors, meanwhile, are in pure Nemesis mode, again, maybe with a bit more dark gray than black. This mode adds metallic teal accents to his arms and chest, as well as angry red eyes.

Nemmy’s build quality is solid enough, maybe a bit more solid than his altmode, since that seamy-ness isn’t relevant here, and he can stand nicely on generous heels. As for his articulation, well, he’s not a complete statue, but he might as well be.

You can raise and lower his shoulders, and rotate his elbows, but neither of them support meaningful poses.

Okay, so, time for the big gimmick, the thing the toy’s built around. The idea is this: You squeeze his legs together, and he draws and slashes the sword at his back, retracting it when you let go.

Only, that’s not exactly what he does. What actually happens is this: His robot arms fold up behind him, and then a second, tiny, prehensile set of feeble arms emerge from his back, holding the sword, which flops forwards.

It’s extremely silly, isn’t convincing at all from any angle, and implies that Nemesis is some kind of eldritch four-armed monster, which is unintentionally characterful.

Also, it relies a bit on gravity to even work, so if he’s tilted slightly back, the sword won’t make it over his head. You can pivot the sword a bit along its attachment point to his baby arms, to make him, like, stab downwards, I guess.

That said, it does make for a decent stim to do, just squeezing the legs and flipping the sword in and out, like some kind of switchblade. 

Overall

It’s funny how ill-conceived this whole figure is, on multiple levels. I remember these Power Battlers selling fairly poorly, though not as badly as some of the Dark of the Moon stuff that preceded them. I don’t see why kids would want this, they’re smart enough to want something that looks like the guy from the movie, and this figure just doesn’t. And it’s all in service of an amusingly badly-executed sword-slashing feature. 

The second level of ill-conception is that it’s immensely funny that Takara looked at the line and decided that it needed extra paint, and extra toy-only characters like this. Who was this for? I’ve got no idea. I’m glad that I, personally own one, though, because a) it’s amusingly strange, b) the fact that it’s a Takara repaint of something amusingly strange adds another layer to it, and c) a thoughtful friend got it for me as a gift, and I’m always going to cherish and appreciate it because of that. But you, dear reader? Don’t bother, unless you, like, get one in a lot of figures, or something.