Optimus Primes are dime a dozen, and there’s also dozens of Optimus Primes the size of a few dimes, like this one. There’s something almost primordially appealing to me about miniature desk-toy versions of the big red guy, and I’ve wound up impulse-buying quite a few of them over the years. This newest flavor of minifigure is a Core-class, and first came out in the debut wave of Kingdom. I managed to skip over him, mostly because I was busy grabbing that line’s Beast Wars updates, but he’s gotten a straight re-release in Legacy. And this time he hooked me, largely because I needed *someone* to fight the concurrently-released G2 Megatron. Whether or not these Core guys are worth it these days is a matter of debate, with prices for them ranging from 16 Canadian, to 20 Canadian before tax (protip: Despite their impressive selection, Toys R Us charges more than other places, so make that your last resort). So, while I have a look at this Minimus, I’m going to try and figure out if he’s worth what they’re charging for him.
Robot Mode
So small, I had to add a platform to get some of these photos.
That’s an Optimus, alright. They didn’t re-invent the wheel with this design, he’s still the red, boxy G1-toon-ish guy you know and love. In fact, not only did they not re-invent the wheel, they put the previous wheel in the wash for too long, because this version’s really specifically based off of Earthrise Optimus Prime’s sculpt, but shrunk down.
In this case, calling him Mini-Me is particularly valid.
Granted, they’re both just riffing on his G1 cartoon appearance, but if you look closely, a ton of really specific sculpting on his arms, legs, chest, and even head are really specifically imitating the specific panel-lines and greebling of the larger figure. It’s not a bad look, it all works, it’s just a funky choice.
Buff-bodied bot.
That being said, proportionally, he’s a lot more squat and boxy than his larger counterpart, probably due to the logistics of shrinking him down, and his extra chunkitude, and smaller-feeling head makes him look like a bulky, thick Optimus, almost like the Tensegrity one. But he’s not actually bulky, he’s a tiny Core-Class figure, having almost identical height and mass to Soundwave, and a hair taller and wider than Hot Rod.
The Autobot Leaders assemble for a scale photo.
Importantly, he’s not literally a downscaling of the Earthrise design, and this is most clear around the back of him, which isn’t nearly as clean, and comes with sticky-out wheels, and truck-mode panels hanging down behind his thighs.
Despite the pose, it’s his bad side.
It’s not visible from the front, but it’s kind of ugly to look at from most other angles. Funny enough, he has the exact same Hasbro 6-inch figure problem that I ragged on when I reviewed their recent Spider-Man figure (which didn’t have it!) where his hands are pinned into his forearms, resulting in a circle of blue on the red. But on a figure this size, it’s not the unsightly distraction it proved to be on those larger figures.
Distant cousins. Also, this scale kind of works?
I do appreciate that his feet are sculpted slightly askew, letting him naturally pose in an a-stance without ankle tilts, a detail shared with the old 2010 Legends version. For a quick comparison, that one had a cleaner back, but this one manages to have cleaner arms, and generally better proportions.
What 12 years does to a guy.
Uptop, Optimus’s tiny face is the familiar Optimus mug, and like his body, feels a bit wider and bulkier than a standard Optimus.
Stoic.
He redirected all his negative emotions to the back of his head.
Another thing that’s typically Optimus is his colors, which specifically follow the lead of the Earthrise one (and not the Netflix repaint), with a lighter, less Sunbow-accurate blue, on top of bright red and a bit of light grey for plastic colors, with most of his other detailing done in silver, plus some grayish-blue windows. It’s what you’d expect, and it looks and feels complete.
“Y’know, I thought he’d be bigger.”
The one real issue is his eyes, which share the same issue as Earthrise Optimus of being way too dark and barely visible, thanks to what seems to be a nearly-identical share of blue paint used on them.
“Give me a second to pull myself together.”
So, that lower-backpack of truck parts I mentioned earlier is a source of some stability issues in the figure, in that it’s meant to peg together in multiple places, but the connections are way too loose to be effective. Basically, there’s microscopic pegs that go into holes on his back-mounted truck grill that don’t hold together, and a fold-down panel behind his head that’s meant to attach to the assembly that similarly doesn’t actually peg in.
Those tiny pegs sticking up on his bumper are meant to go in those tiny recesses on his grill.
Granted, the whole thing actually stays together fine on sheer friction, but it doesn’t feel great to handle. At least that’s the only trouble spot, the rest of him’s nice and sturdy-feeling.
Prime Kick!
This Mini-Optimus is nearly entirely articulated via ball joints. Specifically, he’s got ball jointed knees, hips, elbows, and shoulders, plus a swivel head, all what you’d expect from a figure this size. What you don’t expect is that he has an ab crunch, due to his transformation, so he can lean forward, and menace micro-figures.
It’s the pelvic thrust that really adds a certain something.
He also technically has an upper-torso swivel, if you undo his backpack (an easy thing to do).
Looks a bit janky, though.
For accessories, he’s got his trademark Ion Blaster, cast in black.
The only thing he needs, really.
Surprisingly, it isn’t the Earthrise sculpt, it’s more G1-toy-accurate, and a bit more proportionally large.
*stock sound effect goes here*
It’s got an interesting sort of two-peg system on its handle, in that it’s got a small peg that can plug into his hands (or the sides of his arms), and this small peg is on the tip of a larger, War for Cybertron-compatible peg, so you can have mainline figures also hold it, as a kind of miniature pea-shooter.
“Well, it’s better than nothing.”
Transformation
They didn’t literally copy the Earthrise transformation, but this Prime’s conversion is still derivative of most modern Optimus transformations, which are usually “the G1 transformation, but with a waist-twist in there to swap the stomach-grill” In fact, it’s once again very similar to the old 2010 Legend’s transformation, too, just with some more panel and hand-fiddling. But it’s not as solid of a transformation as it could be, or that earlier version was. Getting his folded up arms into place is a challenge, and it feels like they don’t really lock into any specific position. There’s pegs on top of his thighs that plug into them when you stretch his legs back, but a lot of manipulation is required to get them in place, and they feel similarly unstable.
The blurring is symbolic of my frustration at getting those legs plugged in.
It’s better than Hot Rod’s finicky transformation, but isn’t on the same level of obvious, locked-in simplicity as Soundwave, Rattrap or Vertebreak.
Vehicle Mode
Honk, Honk.
Optimus changes into his usual altmode of a cube with a flatbed in the back, to mixed success. It’s definitely not as cohesive-looking as the larger Earthrise one, or the 2010 Legend one.
Admittedly, the budget and parts count give the bigger one room to work more.
That excuse doesn’t fly with this one, though.
On the other hand, it’s a fair bit better than some of the messier attempts to pull it off, like the Robot Masters, Hybrid Style, and Classics Deluxe versions.
It could’ve been so much worse (Robot Masters Optimus pictured).
I think the big reason this one turned out better than those last three that they made sure the front of it is a flat, unbroken, fully-sculpted truck front, which goes a long way, though I’ll note it’s kind of long and tall compared to the usual more cubular look of it. The real trouble spots are the sides of the truck, which are just kind of a bunch of incohesive robot chunks.
The Jank Zone.
The back’s messy too, but that’s kind of a free space on most primes, same with the truck bed really clearly still being legs, with feet whose offset sculpt now sticks out a bit.
Ehh, most Primes are like this from the back.
I think I mostly rag on this little guy not quite pulling off because that older 2010 Legend managed to do it a bit better.
The leaders roll out.
The sides might have looked a little bit more cohesive if they’d sprued out the plastic so that he didn’t have a big grey chunk on the side, I think. Other than that, the colors are the same, with some more visible black wheels, which aren’t painted at all, but at this scale, it’s fine.
Important note: He can fit in the Earthrise trailer.
Speaking of those wheels, they’re a bit too tightly on there to roll well, I’ve found. Meanwhile, his other feature is his gun being able to plug into his truck bed, facing backwards, like on Studio Series Bee Movie Prime.
The ultimate tailgater defense.
There’s also a sort of “attack mode” highlighted in the instructions, where you can plug his gun into the side of his truck mode via a specific peg and hole, but in practice, it’s a really loose connection, and the weapon’s handle hits his smokestacks, so it barely stays on.
Plus, it looks weird.
Overall
Trion misplaced a decimal point on the size.
On one hand, this new mini-Optimus completes the assignment of “being a tiny, cool-looking Optimus Prime,” which satisfies a certain primal (hah) urge in me, collection-wise. And for all my grousing, he’s not *bad,* he’s just got enough bothersome design flaws, like a kibbly back-end, a fiddly transformation, and a messy altmode, to make him fall short of previous efforts, and sort of cement the 2010 Legend as being the best take on this concept.
I still got Optimus here.
I think a part of it is just that most my other Core-class experiences (Soundwave, Rattrap, Vetebreak/Dracodon) were exceptional figures, with only one dud so far (Hot Rod). And this Optimus isn’t a dud at all, he’s just somewhere in the middle. He satisfies the mission briefing, but doesn’t stand out, and for what they’re charging for Core-class guys now, only the exceptional ones are worth it. So I’d say either wait for a sale, or see if you can get a cheap iteration of the 2010 tooling.
Strong enough to beat Megs, though.
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