Bot Reviews: Transformers: Age of the Primes Leader G2 Universe Grimlock, with Wheelie

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:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.”

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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. 

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. 

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.

There’s also a few ways he can interact with Grimlock, but I’ll save that for the main event. 

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

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. 

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.

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.

And uptop, he’s got a well-sculpted cartoon-style head, even if it’s in toy colors.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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. 

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.

They also made the ends compatible with blast effects, if you’ve got any lying around.

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

It’s not too noticeable, though. It’s more noticeable that the right side of his head is covered in screwholes.

Maybe screw covers will be the next big standardization in Transformers design, now that almost everyone’s got wrist swivels and ankle tilts. 

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. 

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.

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.

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.

And despite that weight, you can even stand him on one foot, he’s that stable! 

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.)

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.

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.

This is the whole reason Wheelie’s really here, and to their credit, it works well, and looks good. 

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. 

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 (™).

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.

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. 

Overall 

Age of the Primes Grimlock’s just really fun.

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.

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.

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.

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