Bot Reviews: Transformers: Kingdom Voyager Optimus Primal

As far as good-guy Transformers leaders go, Optimus Primal was always a little bit different. It helps that he wasn’t the leader of an entire faction, or even a wartime commander, but just a starship captain peacefully exploring space, with a small crew of Maximals who found themselves in an unexpected predicament. Character-wise, he was still essentially a dad, but unlike Optimus Prime, he wasn’t the platonic ideal of one. He was a realistic, exasperated, in-over-his-head kind of dad, just trying to keep his everything and everyone together in the middle of a crisis he had no idea he’d be stuck in the middle of, and that made him interesting to watch.

The Beast Wars figure that served as his initial form on the show (after his earlier bat version, reviewed here, was skipped over) was a big, Ultra-class gorilla, taking advantage of an exceedingly simple transformation to cram it with a ludicrous amount of gimmicks. Outside of an extremely noticeable change to his mouth, he was even pretty show-accurate by Beast Wars standards, albeit hugely out of scale. Since then, Primal’s Season One/Ultra Gorilla design has received a few updates, including more show-accurate retools of the original, a smaller Robot Masters figure (reviewed over here), and even a fairly nice (if a bit overly complex) Masterpiece figure.

This puts his Kingdom Voyager figure in a weird niche, tasked with being the first time the design’s had a normal mainline western release in a long time, but definitely not the first good take on the design, especially when the original was already that. Let’s see how this one stacks up on its own merits.

Robot Mode

Y’know, it’s weird to complain about a lack of kibble on a character, but I’m so used to Optimus Primal having a big round hood-like hunk of backpack behind his head, both in toy and in CGI form, that this version missing it makes his silhouette look wrong, somehow.

Something else that initially looks odd on him: The fact that he has textured fur, instead of the blank, smooth surface that 90s CGI gave him, but I can’t blame them for deciding not to imitate the limitations of old CGI animation. That’s what the Masterpiece is for, and this figure wears it well.

Thirdly, another bit of visual weirdness: He comes packaged with a pair of shoulder cannons deployed in this mode which, as per his previous toys and TV show appearances, are supposed to be able to fold away, but it initially seems like you can’t on this toy. However, if you unplug his torso for transformation, you can actually flip them away, though it’s not made clear until you actually go to transform him.

Anyway, aside from all that, Primal’s actually really show accurate, in that same “almost the same but about 10 percent stylized” way the rest of Kingdom is. It’s not occupying the same hyper-accurate space as Masterpiece, but it’s not really a new take on the design the way pre-War for Cybertron Trilogy Generations typically was (including his Power of the Primes figure). It’s somewhere in the middle, and gets all of the important details right.

It’s funny how much of a Standard Human Man Primal is in terms of proportions. He’s basically a furry person with robot bits stuck on. But hey, that’s what he looks like. Aside from his backpack-hood, all the important details are still there, from the piston-feet, to the weird chest panel, to the shoulderpads. Scale-wise, he’s a little bit short for a Voyager, but not an outright Deluxe, like Studio Series 86 Hot Rod was. Importantly, he feels pleasantly chunky and substantial in hand.

This is another headsculpt where they really nailed his TV show likeness. I’m starting to wonder if the difference between recent figures that get the heads right and the ones that aren’t quite there is whether or not they had a Masterpiece release that the sculptors could crib from. Sure enough, his noggin looks pretty ripped from the show by my eyes. He’s sort of Prime-ish, but the proportions are a little bit different, and he’s got that mouth-cut in his faceplate. They even gave him an expression that looks just a tiny bit annoyed and tired, perfect for the character.

Another thing that’s just right is the colors. It’s one of those situations where I had to check screencaptures to confirm its show-accuracy, just because his slightly-different original toy colors live in my head so much. When he’s not black from the Gorilla fur, Primal’s got the whites and reds on his robot mode parts, and the dark, nearly-grey blues on his head, chest and other parts, unlike the bright blues of the toy. Plus, he includes a lot of tiny painted details on his head and chest, likely because so little paint is needed for most of his body. Speaking of paint, though, there’s one problem to watch out for that I’ve heard from multiple sources: The whites on his thighs are prone to scratching and chipping, both from transformation and posing. I’ve not had any issues yet, but I’ve been careful when handling and transforming him.

Nowadays, Generations figures aren’t full of spring-loaded gimmicks, so one of Primal’s “we are making up for his simple design and transformation” gimmicks is loading him up with articulation.

Outside of the Siege Standards, including ankle tilts and wrist swivels, Primal shares some DNA with Studio Series 86 Hot Rod, in that all his joints have a lot more range than usual, either through their own design, or through the addition of extra swivels.

There’s a particularly pleasing aspect to the way his hands (which are jointed like gloves) combine with his wrist and arm swivels to make him really good at expressive hand gestures.

For actual gimmicks, firstly, Primal’s got those shoulder-mounted weapons that come auto-deployed out of the box, and again,  I really wish it was possible to casually flip them in and out of his backpack, instead of needing to open his torso up to flip them away.  They’re also kind of tiny and close to his head compared to the show versions. On the other hand, they do have ports for blast effects.

Outside of that, Primal’s got deployable guns on his forearms, where you press down on one side of each forearm to pop them out on the other side (my fingers are large enough that I tend to grab one of his swords and poke it with the handle instead). These wrist-rockets are, again, a bit dinky compared to the weapons on TV show, but I appreciate that they managed to fit them into his forearms without any ugly flaps of skin hanging around, like on the Robot Masters version. And to make them more visible, there’s a bit of an upwards swivel in them, too.

Funny enough, he used the one on his left arm exactly once on the TV show, in the second half of “The Trigger,” favoring the right one at all other times.

The cannons in his other arm are just grandfathered in in the name of show-accuracy, like Prime’s yellow energy axe.

Finally, he’s got a pair of big, curvy swords.

These are nicely painted with bright silver blades atop blue handles. They fit tightly in his hands, and the swiveling wrists mean he can do a LOT with them.

He can’t do the Darth Maul thing that the original toy could, though, but the Masterpiece and Robot Master can’t without an extra piece anyway, and it’s a toy-only thing to begin with.

They can slot onto his back pretty nicely, mirroring where the original toy (and Robot Master) stashed them, though in that case they hid inside his backpack, vanishing, whereas these ones are extremely visible, so I tend to leave them off.

Transformation

Funny enough, this isn’t too different from the original toy. Rotate the waist, swap his feet out, flip his shoulderpads down, and fiddle with his torso. The big difference is that his beast head is inside his torso, instead of on the front of it, so you have to crack it open to get it out (the same motion that you need to do to hide or deploy his shoulder cannons).

The big problem here is that it takes some excessive force to get his torso opened up. I even checked video reviews to make sure I wasn’t going to break anything, given how hard I had to tug to pop it out. But, no, you just need to pull really hard to crack it open. It’s the same situation with his shoulderpads when flipping them out, too, where they stop halfway down, and require enough force that I wasn’t sure they weren’t being blocked by something. The upshot is that it gets easier the more times you transform him.

I’ll mention again that there’s reports of the white paint on his thighs scratching and chipping, so I’m very careful when hiding them beneath the flap of fur that flips over them, and don’t try to plug them in too hard.

Beast Mode

Like other Kingdom releases, Primal transforms into a realistic beast form, instead of one that hews closer to his tv show look. Like most Beast Wars toys, though, Primal’s less than perfect when it comes to actually looking like a realistic animal. In his case, this gorilla’s got a really gappy neckline, and his lower torso is a mess of panels and joints that don’t really come together.

The back of his robot legs doesn’t really plug into his buttflap, even though they’re probably supposed to, which makes him feel less stable and solid in this form than his robot mode, though on the other hand, I’m not trying to plug them in too hard, specifically because I don’t want to scratch that paint up.

Visually, aside from the gaps, he’s also got bits of white and red robot parts poking out around his legs and arms. Though really, in terms of aesthetics, that’s just how it goes with a mainline Beast Wars toy, same as in the 90s, and even the Masterpiece has this kind of stuff. It’s never going to be perfect, but I do wish it were a bit more cohesive.

The contrast against this is the sculpting, and boy, did they go wild with it, from the sinewy muscles on his torso, to the nails on his hands and feet. He looks mean and muscly. In particular, I really love his headsculpt, with all the tiny details, including the painted eyes with pupils. It’s a grumpy gorilla face, and you can hear it making an annoyed huff. Speaking of that, there’s not much new paintwork in this form, save for all the detailing on his face, and his grey gorilla chest.

Primal’s mostly got the same articulation in this mode, since his shape didn’t really change that much. His neck and shoulders may look really gappy, but the tradeoff for that is that the head itself has a really versatile neck joint, one that lets him look way up for when he’s on all fours. His expression, again, combines with his hands in a way that I like, and there’s some real basic fun to be had with this Poseable, Emotive Gorila. The upper arm swivels are a problem here, though, in that using them means that the robot details on his upper arms rotate out and become visible.

Technically, you can also transform him into a second, standing gorilla form by altering the placement of his knees (no, not just bending them). It’s kind of odd looking, but gives him the appropriate stumpy appearance, and works better for character displays, since he’s taller instead of squat. I wish it was just a single knee motion, though, instead of needing to re-transform his legs.

Oh, and while he doesn’t technically have any new features in this mode, you can still get him to hold (and stash) his robot mode swords, if you want the dangerously hilarious image of a gorilla coming at you with blades.

Overall

He was never going to beat the original Ultra-class figure, but this version of Primal does a lot of things right. That being said, he’s also saddled with a lot of little issues, and they drag him down, to the point where I’m surprisingly pretty lukewarm on him overall.

His robot mode’s great, but his missing backpack, un-foldable shoulder cannons, and, most importantly, his potential paint problems make it feel a little less than it should be. Meanwhile, he’s got that tough am-i-going-to-break-this transformation, and a messy gorilla mode.

That being said, these are issues piled onto what is, at its core, a good figure. He’s still mad poseable, super expressive, full of little gimmicks, and really chunky and solid. It’s definitely not the slam dunk Rattrap and Blackarachnia were, but he’s still decent. And he’s by default the most easily accessible iteration of this version of Primal, especially if you want a mainline one, though it’s with an emphasis on “by default.” Still, I’d say he’s worth getting, but temper your expectations, and maybe put Rattrap and Blackarachnia higher on your to-buy list.