Bot Reviews: Transformers: Legacy United Deluxe G1 Universe Optimus Prime

Earlier this year, a very interesting Optimus Prime figure was released by Takara. The first in a Transformers toyline called Missing Link, the idea was that it was a replica of the original 1984 toy, in all of its show-and-comic inaccuracy, but with the joints and articulation of a modern figure. It looked and sounded cool, and I thought it might be something I’d be interested in. And then I saw the price tag.

Yeah, no. Not for a novelty like that. If you can swing it, good for you, genuinely, as I hear it’s a pretty fun figure, but that’s too rich for my income bracket. I thought maybe it could be a TFCon purchase, if I made some money at the convention from sales, since that’s historically funded my more lavish buys. But! It turns out that I didn’t need to worry, because HasTak came through with an alternative. An alternative that I’ve heard very good things about, as I impatiently waited for my Gamestop preorder to come in. Well, this was a short intro. But, to be fair, there’s not much to say. You know who Optimus Prime is, and this is a tiny little Deluxe specifically sculpted to look like the original figure. It’s what it says on the box! So, let’s not waste time. 

Robot Mode

So, the big thing to note about this guy right out of the box is that he’s small.

It’s not just that he’s smaller than the original G1 Optimus, it’s that he’s very small in general. I’d heard he was tiny, but I was unprepared for how tiny.

To be fair, he’s a bit taller than your average Deluxe Minibot, like Legacy Gears and Netflix Bumblebee, but he’s dwarfed by most Deluxes, and the fact that he’s specifically a larger design shrunk down makes him read as very miniature.

I can see this being a problem for collectors that value figures that scale with each other, because this Optimus isn’t in scale with anything. He’s a size class unto himself. I’ve sort of had luck pairing him with Legacy Core Hot Rod, and the very old 2008 Universe Legends Bumblebee, but yeah, he’s kind of a one-off guy in terms of size. 

I don’t mind this, though, because he’s small enough that he registers to me as a miniaturized replica, which is cool in its own right. 

And that’s what he is, sculpted to resemble the G1 figure in exquisite detail, with all kinds of little quirks replicated on the smaller version. There’s all the little rivets on his body, the sculpted-in windshield wipers, tiny specific details on his arms and legs, a lot of work went into copying every element of the sculpt, with half of the very small amount of changes being allowances for extra joint cuts here and there.

The other half of the changes is a curious thing they did with the flat, stickered details of the original. His forearms and feet both originally had labels covering them, with tech detailing printed on, and in both cases, that detailing’s now been sculpted into his arms and legs. It’s neat, but it means Toyhax won’t be able to lay a flat sticker over it, when the inevitable upgrade kit comes out.

Oh, and they made one big, obvious quality-of-life fix: He doesn’t have a hollow back anymore, there’s a block of plastic there. 

Uptop, his headsculpt replicates those little vertical slits the original figure had in his mouthplate, the thing that always makes it clear that we’re aiming for toy-accuracy, and not show accuracy.

And there’s one thing on that head that also feels different: His eyes seem wider, compared to the squintier look of my Vintage Collection original Optimus. The effect of his eyes, combined with the general look and feel of him give him an interesting vibe: He’s cute.

Like, this isn’t Optimus The Noble Fatherly Commander, this is an alien friend from beyond space who’s here to save the day, and be a companion to the children of Earth. He’s a weird little creature. 

For colors, they’re not reinventing the wheel here, he’s the classic Optimus red, blue and silver, with yellow eyes, and all his colors are mostly in the same places as the 1984 original. The color-matching is decent, though the new guy’s less glossy, and more matte in general. Plus, all the chrome silver’s been replaced with either silver paint, or gray plastic, which is perhaps less flashy, but definitely more durable.

As mentioned earlier, he doesn’t have any of his sticker details painted on, just sculpted in, leaving room open for some kind of premium release down the line. He does have an Autobrand on his left shoulder, though. 

His build quality, meanwhile, is nice and solid, which is great, because I’ve heard that the Missing Link one feels a bit fragile around the legs. But not this guy. All his joints are firm, nothing on him feels fragile and breakable, and he stays standing nicely. Okay, he’s a little back-heavy, mostly since the design doesn’t have much in the way of heel spurs. 

And that’s good, because the selling point of this guy is “the G1 figure, but articulated,” and so he’s got a ton of it to show off. Basically, he’s got the full modern suite, and this time, I’m going to take a minute to try and name them all, bottom to top: Ankle tilts, pointable toes, knee swivels, thigh swivels, universal hips, a waist joint (his bumper can raise up, as can the wheels at his hips, to accommodate waist and leg movement), universal shoulders, universal elbows, and a ball-jointed head.

And there’s range to these joints, let me tell you. He’s incredibly bendable and expressive, the polar opposite of the G1 original, and I’ve been having fun just bending and flexing him into exaggerated little poses.

If there’s a criticism, it’s that he doesn’t have any wrist swivels, due to his transformation. It’s a bit funny that he’s missing them, because that’s one of the few joints the G1 original had.

It’s also a bit of a downer, because it limits what he can do with his accessories, a little bit, which brings me to his features. First of all, he hypothetically has lightpiping, meaning that you can shine a light on the top of his head, making his eyes glow. However, I’ve not really been able to get it to work, unfortunately.

Bad start, but there’s a lot more going on here. Next, you can flip his chestplate open, like on the original. Unlike the original, he’s got a Matrix of Leadership stashed where his driver’s seats used to be, and it can pop out.

Strangely, it’s colored clear blue, with no paint on it, but that feels like what a hypothetical G1 Matrix would have looked like, had they made one.

He can’t hold it in his hands, though, so it just kind of freefloats.

But the Matrix does have a 5-millimeter peghole on the back of it, if you want to stick it on an accessory. 

Speaking of accessories, he’s got his fair share, beyond the Matrix. Firstly, he has two different Ion Blasters, cast in glossy black.

They have slightly different designs, with one having a thicker barrel than the other, because they’re based on two different variants of the blaster that came with the original Optimus figure (most modern reissues, like the Vintage Collection one I have, just come with both of them).

Optimus can hold both of them, or stash one of them on a peghole on his backpack.

He’s also got a clear orange version of his wrist-mounted Energy Axe weapon.

It’s smaller and more orange than the one that came in the Generations Selects Centurion accessory pack, and fits on the top of his hand on a 5-millimeter peg, instead of sideways, like the larger one, due to his lack of wrist swivels.

He can chop pretty effectively with it, but I do wish it could store on him, like his gun can, but the orb that fits over his hand keeps the peg from being able to fit anywhere on him.

He’s also got a surprise set of extra accessories: You can pop the smokestacks on his shoulders off of the 5-millimeter ports they’re mounted on, and have him hold them like little pistols!

They’re a bit too thick to accept blast effects, though, as is the larger of his two rifles. The smaller one can fit them, at least.

It’s genuinely really fun to pose him with all of these accessories, because of how flexible he is.

And if you want to give him even more accessories, you can add them to the 5-millimeter ports on his shoulders, back, back of his legs, and the bottoms of his feet.

Transformation

You can probably guess how this guy changes shape just by looking at him, and you’d mostly be right, since it’s mostly just the original G1 figure’s transformation. There’s a few little things added here, though. Firstly, instead of popping his fists off to be easily lost, you flip open his arms, and swivel his hands away, switching them for his truck headlights.

It’s here that there’s something of a potential stability issue, though: It’s a really stiff, thin joint that you use to open his forearm up, and it’s tight enough that I was worried about breaking him the first time I tried it. But they’ve really conspicuously cast the strut that it’s on in a softer, semi-flexible plastic, and I’ve heard no reports of breakage, or seen any stress marks, plus the joints seem to be loosening up a bit with use, so it’s proooooobably fine? I’m still a bit careful transforming his arms, though. The other hitch in the transformation is that you need to make sure that some tabs on his bumper, and on his arms, properly plug in to make his vehicle mode secure and stable, but it’s not particularly tricky. Overall, it’s still the kind of transformation that’s fast, but fun, which is what you want out of a figure this size.

Truck Mode

I’ll tell you, the robot mode was small, but this mode’s even smaller.

The same Deluxe Minibots that he only very slightly towered over in robot mode are now larger than him!

I guess that’s what you get when a lot of his mass is compressing down into a cube. 

But, again, this is actually cool to me, because he really hits those “miniature replica” vibes in this mode. I wonder how he stacks up next to that transforming Hot Wheels Optimus that they’re supposedly making, the ludicrously expensive one. 

Next to the G1 original, he again, stacks up favorably, as basically all of the same vehicle mode sculpting, including individual bolts, are replicated here, but shrunk down. In some ways, he feels more accurate in this mode to the original, since most of his joint cuts are now hidden.

On the other hand, his truck bed’s covered in 5 millimeter holes, instead of being the smooth surface of the original, so I think it comes out to about the same level of fidelity (which is to say, really good).

His colors also feel more accurate in this mode, largely due to the missing sticker detail being hidden a lot better. He’s missing his rubsign, a single Autobrand on his right side, and his silver chrome has, again, been swapped for silver paint and gray plastic, but it’s all still fairly correct. 

One nifty thing about his build quality in this mode is that they actually splurged and gave him rubberized tires, which means that he rolls really well, with some actual grip to his wheels, though the tires do like to slide around on his wheel wells. 

As for the rest of this features, he has more going on than I expected. You can still open his driver’s compartment, but with his Matrix in there, there’s no room for a Diaclone-scale driver, or anything.

Meanwhile, he’s got weapon storage on his truck bed, with a total of five ports you can stash his guns on, and option to swivel his guns around for an attack mode.

More importantly, you can actually stash his energy axe on the large truck-hitch peg in the middle of his truck bed, thanks to the shape of it. And, once again, you can remove his smokestacks, to access the 5-millimeter ports there.

Going back to that truck hitch port on his truck bed, though, the figure’s designers deliberately made sure that this Optimus could pull various modern trailers, including the G1 original. But there’s a specific trailer that I think he goes really well with: The Earthrise Optimus Prime trailer. Or rather, the version that comes with VNR Optimus, which is the one I currently have (you need to pop out the little adapter they added on the bottom of the VNR trailer before it can fit, though).

See, the trailer was always kind of undersized compared to Earthrise Optimus, but this smaller Prime feels like it fits really well with the trailer, in both this, and robot mode.

And if you’ve got the Roller from the Centurion accessory pack, you can pretty easily replicate the Complete G1 Optimus Experience with this guy. 

Overall

I’ve only had this figure for about a week, but I haven’t stopped messing around with him, and transforming and posing him, as you can tell by the sheer amount of pictures here. I had other figures I was going to talk about first, but I just had to speak on this guy!

He’s just…really nifty. He looks cool, he’s incredibly articulated, and he’s just got that certain something extra that just makes him…Fun. Remember fun? This guy’s fun. I’m having fun.

Any little complaints I might have about him (no wrist swivels, non-functional lightpiping, missing sticker details) all just kind of vanish once I have him in hand, and start playing around with him. They got basically everything right. The only reason I could see you not wanting one of your own is the fact that he’s tiny enough that he doesn’t scale with anything. But, like, who cares? He’s fun. This is one of those figures where I’m going to put out a blanket recommendation: If you like Transformers even a little bit, you should grab one. It’s a Deluxe, so it won’t break the bank, either. 

I do hope this isn’t a one-off concept for a figure, though. “G1 Toy Accurate, but smaller, poseable, and affordable” as an alternative to Missing Link is a collecting niche I could really get into, especially if they’re all as fun as this one. But for now, just go and grab this guy.

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