Bot Reviews: Transformers: Haslab Omega Prime: Part 3: Optimus Prime

We’re back with more of my multi-part look at HasLab Omega Prime, a big box of figures that I never thought I’d get a chance to own, based on characters from the 2001 Robots in Disguise anime and toyline. If you want more of the schpiel about what this big box’s deal is, read the intro to part 1! And then read part 2 to learn about Ultra Magnus. Today, it’s time for the big red guy!

As dubbed into English by Neil Kaplan, the self-described “George Lazenby of Optimus Primes,” this version of Optimus (called Fire Convoy in Japan) was a little bit younger, a little bit more fiery (no pun intended), but still basically the same stalwart character we know and love. Optimuses are the same, I guess. The most unique thing about him was that he turned into a fire truck, and that he was a Powermaster Optimus-type combines-with-his-base Super Robot.

I had a copy of the original release (pictured above) when I was younger, and it’s always been a design and figure I’ve liked, despite having problems with chipping chrome and splitting tires. Naturally, an update without those was right up my alley. In terms of this HasLab release, though, here’s where the big quality control problem that every set suffers from reared its ugly head, and where a fix was necessary. I’ll get into it as I go, but if you’re buying one of these, you’re going to need to do this sooner rather than later. For now, I’ll start with his alternate mode.

Truck Mode

Oh, this is good. There’s an immediate, visceral appeal to a cool-looking big red fire truck, and this is a great one. Like Ultra Magnus, he feels dead-on to the original figure at a glance, and you could probably fool me for a few seconds. Also like Magnus, he’s a Commander-sized vehicle, about as long as Kingdom Rodimus Prime.

Unlike Magnus, he isn’t hollow, so he’s got a real sense of chunk and mass to him. 

In terms of sculpt, he’s not dead-on to the original, and some of the specific lines and angles of the windows and general detailing upfront have been changed, apparently to make him look a bit more like a specific modern model of fire engine. The same chunky goodness of the original is preserved here, though, and I’ve always liked the unusual (by western standards) curved front end of the thing. 

A flaw he shares with the original is that you can pretty clearly see his Super Robot head and chest right in the middle of the truck just hanging out, but this version lets his head fold in a bit more than the original figure, so it’s at least a bit more believable as a bit of Fire Truck Detail. 

For colors, he’s mainly a vibrant cherry red, as he should be. His second color is light gray, and he’s got bits of white (painted and plastic), silver (painted and chromed), and some translucent blue (for his windows) and red (for his lightbar). Oh, and his wheels are black, with silver rims. There’s an interesting deco choice here: He’s got white autobrands on either side of the fire truck mode, which was a detail added to the North American release of the figure, and not present on the Takara release, or in the animation. It’s funny, because the new Magnus that Optimus is packed with opted to be Takara and Cartoon-accurate, instead of North American Toy accurate like Prime is. 

The rest of him’s extremely Takara, though, including a group of Japanese characters, and the word “Cybertron” written beneath his driver’s side door (or passenger? Since it’s a Japanese truck?). Plus, both his front and rear license plates have “C-001” written on them, his Japanese ID number, and another animation detail. Oh, I almost forgot he’s got painted orange head and taillights! Like Magnus, he seems plain on the deco, until you look closely.

His build quality, ignoring the big obvious problem (still getting to that), is really good and solid, considering he breaks apart to transform. You can hold him up and shake him, and he’ll stay together. Plus, he’s shockingly hefty, more than Magnus was. He’s got density! I also appreciate that a) his tires are no longer rubber, but hard plastic, so they won’t split, and b) he’s got no chrome on him, aside from the chromed antenna in his truck bed, and those are fine, they’re nice and out of the way. 

For features, he’s got a lot going on. Firstly, he rolls nicely on his wheels. But most of the fun’s in his ladder, which can rotate, raise and lower on its base. It does so on ratchets, and let me tell you, the specific ratchets to raise and lower the ladder are LOUD. Like, when I livestreamed his unboxing, the sound startled my fellow streamers. 

On the left side of the ladder’s base, there’s a little control chair, and it’s the exact right size to host Titan Master Cerebros. Not only that, but there’s little pegs on the bottom of it that clip his feet into place. Seeing a modern toy able to interact with a gimmick ecosystem that’s about nine years old now is fun, plus it gives Cerebros a place to hang out when he’s not being a disembodied head. 

Moving up the ladder, you can also extend the whole assembly to double the length (the first time I did so, it took some doing to get it sliding, but it broke in after that). You can also flip down the front end of the ladder, for rescue purposes, and there’s space for Cerebros to fit in there, too. 

That’s all the rescue features, but there’s also a whole separate set of battle features. Firstly, there’s four missile launchers hiding in the ladder that you can flip out.

The big red missiles on the ends of them can fit blast effects on the end, or you can yank them out of the launchers (they take a lot of force), to expose a set of 5-millimeter ports (the missiles are also 5-millimeter compatible).

There’s also a pair of flip-out blasters at the end of the rescue bucket. Strangely, they’re not 5-millimeter or blast-effect compatible, but you can rotate them on ball joints. 

Speaking of weaponizing, there isn’t as much here as on Magnus, but he’s still got 13 ports across his truck body, along with six pegs, on top of the four missile ports uptop. You can also remove the two clear sirens on his roof, exposing two more pegs, and, I guess, letting you mount the sirens on something else? 

You’d think I’d miss the original’s various spring-loaded gimmicks (the launchers and blasters deploying, the missiles shooting), and the light-and-sound gimmick, but there’s enough going on here that I don’t mind.

If you can’t tell, I’m very enthusiastic about this truck mode, but it’s time to transform it, which means it’s time to talk about the Big Problem, and the Big Fix. 

The Big, Painful Fix

If you’ve spent any time following the release of this guy, you’ve probably heard that every copy of Haslab Optimus Prime has a specific quality control problem, and that you need to repair it. Here’s the abstract: There’s a piece inside his robot-mode abs that slides up into his torso for his transformation, and they made that piece too big. If you force his torso to compress when you change him into robot mode, then, sooner or later, his stomach is going to start to crack and splinter, as the plastic strains against the too-large inner bit. I’ve even heard that some copies came out of the box with the stomach already cracked. 

So, to fix it, you need to partially transform him into robot mode, take a screwdriver, unscrew and remove his robot-mode backpack, unscrew and open his torso, take some sandpaper to the offending part, and grind it down until it fits properly. There’s a million video tutorials on what you’re doing, and an especially helpful Instagram post that I’ll go ahead and link here.

Here’s the thing: I had a very bad time doing this repair. Episodes 1 and 2 of my livestream opening mostly consisted of me doing this fix, and they’re a record of my despair. See, I had a set of screwdrivers that I always use for Transformers whenever there’s a fix needed, and they did NOT work here. I stripped multiple screws, and it was only because I found a different set of screwdrivers that worked better that I was able to finish unscrewing everything, and sanding the part down. By the way, when you get to the sanding, remember to wear a mask, and open some windows when you do the sandpaper part, so you don’t inhale any microplastics. 

Now, this was partially on me, for not making sure I had the right screwdrivers, and for not abandoning ship when it was clear the ones I had weren’t the best fit.  Still, no two ways about it, it’s a humungous problem that every Optimus is busted this way, and that it’s on you, the customer, to fix it. It’s not like Earthrise Grapple, where you just had to sand some pegs down. This is a half-hour-plus job, where things can go wrong, and you’ve got to work to fix it. Heck, if I was getting this guy on the aftermarket, I’d pay extra money if it was for a copy that had already been repaired. Still, I’m going to put this aside for a moment, and get into the….

Transformation

This is a fun, intuitive transformation for a couple reasons. Firstly, I owned and remembered how the original figure worked, and this isn’t exactly re-inventing the wheel, so muscle memory kicked in. And secondly, unlike Magnus, transforming the front part of this truck into his robot mode is just a bunch of big, chunky movements and sliders that feels great to do. You’re basically just unfolding a cube into a guy.

Oh, be sure to remember to fold out his heel spurs, and push his neck forwards a bit (and backwards when changing him back!) The back half, meanwhile, is about 50 percent partsforming, and 50 percent fiddling with the ladder, but it’s similarly easy and fun. 

Robot Mode

Now this is a nice design. Basically, it’s what if G1 Optimus Prime was a) younger, b) more aerodynamic, and c) way more Anime Super Robot. Instead of a man made of boxes, he’s a man made of shapes with more than four sides, and odd angles.

Plus, he’s been working out, if those abs are anything to go by. He’s technically kind of kibbly, in that he’s got big boots made out of truck front, a bit of a backpack, and panels on his arms, but it’s all so well-integrated into his look, that I don’t really notice or care. 

Love that headsculpt. It embodies all the design sensibilities of the character. Optimus as a modern super-robot, with swept-back antenna. 

He’s also deceptively large. Like, you look at him, and expect a Voyager-class figure, when he’s actually about as tall as a modern Leader-class figure. 

I do have an issue with this update’s design, though: He’s strangely wide. Both his original toy and animation model are way thinner in the chest, pelvis, and legs. I’m not sure why they decided to stretch him horizontally. Maybe it has something to do with his chest no longer being one unbroken piece, but with his window-pectorals being separate pieces. It doesn’t bug me that much, but it’s a bit of an odd choice. 

A less odd choice is his colors, which are pretty dead-on. He’s still got that cherry red, and a bit of gray plastic, but there’s a lot more white plastic on him. There’s also a lot more metallic silver and blue on him, as well as bits of yellow and orange. His head’s got more of that metallic blue and silver, and chrome gold eyes, and I’m pleased to say that’s the only bit of chrome on him.

See, the original had a solid chrome chest and stomach, and it attracted chips and flakes like a magnet, especially considering that it needed to be clipped into other parts for the transformation. Not so, here! Just solid red, silver paint, and translucent blue for the pecs. 

Speaking of that, he’s very solidly constructed, aside from the Torso Problem. He’s also still oddly dense for a bot this size! His feet may be kind of tiny, but he’s got no problem standing up, because of that density, and because of some easily-forgotten heel spurs. I’d say the only thing on him that isn’t solid is those sirens on his backpack, on those 5-millimeter connections, they pop off kind of easily. On the flip side, some of his joints are on extremely tight, loud ratchets, most noteably, his hips and knees. This stiffness feels excessive in this mode, but pays off in his super mode.

His articulation fits well with the dynamism of his sculpt, particularly the fact that he has that all-too-rare ab crunch, that action figure joint that lets a figure bend at the waist, and not just twist. Something about his sculpt makes me naturally rest him that way, too, slightly bent. As an oddity to his articulation, because that ab crunch is on a waist joint, using it slides his torso up his spine a little bit, and you need to slide him back down whenever you disengage it. 

So, let’s go over the rest of his joints: His ankles are on ball joints, letting them tilt in all directions as much as the sculpt will allow. Moving up, he’s got universal knees, and thigh swivels (he didn’t need both, but they did it!) as well as universal hips, and that ab crunch. Some of those are those tight ratchets, so you have to fight a bit for leg poses. His arms have swivelling wrists, universal elbows, and universal shoulders. Meanwhile, you can use the transformation joints attached to his chest and shoulders to cheat even more action out of him, by pulling the arms outwards, and pushing them forwards. Finally, his neck swivels, and is also on a ball joint. So yeah, he’s bendy. If I had any complaints, it’s that some of his joints feel like they should have more range to them, mainly his ankles, and his neck balljoint, but the sculpt blocks them a bit. Well, that and opening and closing hands would have been nice on their infinite budget, but it really doesn’t bother me much.

For features, we’ll start simple, with his little handheld pistol, cast in dark brown, with a red wheel on it, because it forms the front wheel of his truck mode. I’d say it doesn’t look intimidating, but somehow, he makes it work.

It’s also got a dedicated smaller-than-5-millimeter hole on the side, to let it stash on a bespoke peg on his back.

As for 5-millimeter compatibility, a lot of them are meant for his super mode, but I count 16 ports across his body (plus his fists), mostly on his legs, and six pegs, mostly on his arms (plus the two holding his sirens on), so you’ve certainly got options when it comes to arming him up with other implements. 

His biggest accessory, of course, is his battle base. To be honest, though, it’s not really trying to be anything other than his super mode armor, and ladder, laid out in an upside down T-shape.

You’ve got his chest and head pretending no one can see them behind a crotch flap in front, and his fists hanging out on the sides.  The tall, upturned ladder is the only thing doing something special for this mode, flipping out panels on the sides of the ladder that evoke radar fins. 

That being said, that’s what it looked like on the show, and the show did put in the work to sell it as a battle base.

I think it has more screentime in minutes than the original Optimus’s trailer base in the G1 toon.

For features, everything the ladder did in truck mode is still accessible (and on the show, the ladder did lower to use some of its weaponry), and Cerebros can still hang out in the little chair beside it.

For weapons, you can rotate the hands around, since the fingertips are meant to be lasers, and there’s little double-barelled guns closer to the center that can rotate, and also raise and lower, a new feature on this release. It’s really strange none of these weapons are blast-effect compatible, but at least you can pop the guns out on 5-millimeter pegs, for -izing. Speaking of that, counting those newly-exposed ports, the base has got 18 total 5-millimeter ports on its surface edges, and an extra 10 ports on its bottom, if you want to try building it out, plus four pegs next to the guns (admittedly, in hard to reach spots).

One thing that he, oddly, lacks, is the little peghole found on the original figure next to the (poorly hidden) robot head, used to stash his pistol. Really strange that this was left out. On the flip side, if you open up the Autobot Symbol on his (also poorly hidden) Super Robot chest, you’ll see his Matrix of Leadership, a translucent green computer chip-like doohickey, deco’d some silver paint, because that’s what it looked like on this show.

Unlike the original, you can pop it out, and they’ve added an interesting new feature: There’s a slot on the main robot’s back, just underneath his backpack, that can stash the Matrix in. 

Presumably, this is for the narrative reason that it’s odd to leave his Matrix behind in his battle base. Like Ultra Magnus, I like the implied narrative behind this change. But let’s not dally with the base any more, let’s look at its proper use, as armor for his super mode….well, in a minute. There’s an extra half-mode, where you can pop the base of his…well, base out, split it in half, and stick the two chunks on his shoulders.

There’s racks of missiles there, painted in blue and dark gray, for an attack mode. On one hand, he looks really cool with them on, which is probably why they appeared in the show’s opening.

On the other hand, this leaves his base in pieces, so, narratively, I’m not super fond of it. But hey, it’s there! 

Transformation to Super Mode

This is a good old-fashioned armoring-up, like on Siege (and Kingdom) Ultra Magnus. You start by taking the core robot, stretching his torso and arms, and hiding his head. Then, you apply the chunks of armor that were once his base. I’ll admit, it’s not as easy and quick as I’d like to get this done. I have to fiddle a lot with his small feet to get them to clip into his boots properly, and the same goes for getting his new head and torso over the smaller one, there’s a lot of finagling. On the other hand, they do a cool thing with his gauntlets, where you’re encouraged by the instructions to leave them untransformed, clip them onto the outsides of his forearms, and then transform and fold them over his arms, like literal super robot stock footage.

So, some good, some bad, but I think it comes out pretty aces at the end.

Super Robot Mode

Hooo boy, this is such a good design. It’s got that Super Robot Sauce to burn. So, firstly, he’s incredibly massive and dense. Ultra Magnus may only be a hair shorter than him at the head, but Optimus feels more hefty and substantial, probably because there’s literally more Transformer here. 

Visually, he’s just this big red robot with stompy boots, meaty forearms, shoulderpads, a tabard with a sash, and a big firetruck ladder stashed behind him, and to the left. But that doesn’t do the design justice.

It’s just really cool. I like his headsculpt best, because it’s got the usual Optimus signifiers (mouthplate, forehead vent, antenna), but bigger and beefier, and a little bit different.

Outside of that ladder at the back, he’s a really clean design, too, where everything seems integrated into making him look cool.

It’s also really nice that he wound up proportionately human-shaped, despite being a smaller humanoid covered in armor. I feel like I need to say more here, just because he looks cool!

Okay, onto colors. The interesting thing is how they make so much of his Optimus Blue vanish. Sure, he’s still got blue accents on his boots and forearms, but the color balance is now as overwhelmingly red as in his fire truck mode. Maybe it’s just because they replaced the blue on his face with red (they kept the gold chrome eyes, though). Other than that, it’s the same set of accent colors, white, dark gray, lots of silver bits, among other stuff. There’s a tiny bit of chrome, again, for the antenna on his head, as well as the Autobrand on his chest (and the circle around it), but it feels less egregious (and less chippable) than Magnus. There is a bit more orange now, specifically on his sash, and the Matrix chamber. 

Okay, the real story here is how STABLE this guy is. Back in 2019, when they released Siege Ultra Magnus, aka the first armor-up super robot in Transformers to actually be solid and stable, I wondered what that engineering would look like applied to RID Optimus Prime, and now that they’ve done it, it’s everything I wanted it to be. You can pick him up, shake him, flip him, toss him around, and his armor stays on, and it all stays together. It may be fiddly to get on there, but once it’s on, it’s locked on. Similarly, his nice big feet keep him stable, with the ladder at his back coming in clutch as an extra leg if you, for some reason, need it. And those tight ratchet joints on his knees and hips actually make sense on a bot this big, and no longer feel weird. 

There is one single, solitary unstable bit on him, though: The ladder at his back-right side is attached to him by a single horizontal swivel joint, and it’s kind of loose.

You pick him up, and while nothing is going to fall off of him, that ladder’s going to go tilting and wobbling and swinging back and forth, and doesn’t have any way of locking in. It’s not a figure-killer, just an odd miss on an otherwise amazingly engineered bot.

His articulation is another post-Siege-Magnus revolution that I’m happy to see here. Basically, this super mode has all the same articulation as the inner robot, almost. Well, he’s missing the ab crunch, and while he has a waist joint, it’s slightly restricted by his hanging tabard. But other than that, everything is here, which is another exceptional feat. They engineered his boots to have ankle tilts, he has the same leg and arm joints (including the shoulder/pectoral crunch), and he even has some additions in the form of hands that can swivel, open and close mitten-style, and have opposable thumbs. Also, his Super Neck Joint is an improvement over his inner robot joint, in that it can look up and down much better.

Okay, onto features, as though his rock-solid super-robot engineering wasn’t a feature. Firstly, like in his base mode, you can still flip open a chest panel to pull out his Matrix…..

…and you can also flip, raise, and remove the little cannons on his forearms. 

The big thing, though, is that you can still access all the features on his ladder. The extender, the guns, the missiles, sitting Cerebros in the little chair, all of it.

And get this: You can ratchet the ladder up over his shoulder, and extend it in front of him, and he’s still stable enough to stay standing!

This is some kind of engineering miracle.

And thanks to my friends for pointing out another secret feature: You can just pop the ladder out and off of the gray bracket it’s located on, if you don’t want it on him for some reason. It deliberately comes right off. 

I think the only new feature he has in this mode compared to his other modes is the ability to flip the antenna on his head forwards as extra guns, if he didn’t have enough already.

Oh, and you can fit blast effects on those. In fact, let’s count his ports. I count 39 normally, plus 2 more if you pop his wrist guns out, plus six more ports on his ladder (the missiles, and two on the underside). The most interesting of these are two ports on the back of each of his hands. At the same time, I only count about 5 pegs on him, not that I feel like he’s lacking them.

I, again, do find it odd that he doesn’t have the shoulder-mounted port for his little pistol, though. It needs to stash on his backpack, again. But that’s barely a complaint. 

Overall

What a strange set of contrasts we have here. Let me just live in a world for a minute where this Optimus didn’t ship with a massive, universal QC problem. If I ignore that, this is my opinion: This is the best part of this excellent set of figures, by a country mile. They took an already great figure, and made him better with the best engineering and quality of life updates 25 years of Transformers can give you. He’s unbelievably well-engineered, looks great in all modes, is loaded with features, and just has incredible vibes. If you’re buying this set piecemeal, this is one to seek out. If they ever release this on its own (say, as the yellow Sam’s Club repaint the original version got, which the designers are aware people want), then it’s a must-have.

But then we get to the big, horrible problem where the core robot of this figure can and will break, unless you do a complicated, time-consuming fix, which brings the whole exercise down. It’s a real drag that it shook out this way. I can say this, though: I completely screwed the pooch during my repair job, and it still turned out okay at the end, and I’m still enamoured with the final figure. I think that’s worth an hour and change of stress exactly once. And hey, if you get him on the aftermarket, maybe the seller will have already done the fix. They’re apparently in the process of sending out some manner of replacement figure (not the whole set) to backers, too, so there’s going to be un-messed-up Optimii out there, one way or another. 

Coming Up!

One more entry to go: The final Omega Prime Assembly, some roads and stands, and a really big sword! And if you’re interested in seeing me encounter all that stuff on livestream, I did a full unboxing and assembly over four entire episodes of Children of Primus, over on the “Live” tab of our YouTube Channel.

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