Here’s a figure from a few years ago that’s suddenly relevant again, thanks to an upcoming re-release. So, Punch is another one of those odd little d-lister Transformers characters that I’ve really become fond of due to his conceptual weirdness. Introduced midway through the original G1 toyline, Punch’s gimmick was that he was an Autobot double agent, who, in addition to his robot and car modes, had an entire second robot mode he used to infiltrate the Decepticons, under the alias of Counterpunch.
How it started.
He briefly made his way into the final episodes of the original cartoon, had a more substantial but mostly-for-plot role in the Headmasters anime, spying and reporting the Evil Plans of the Week, and since then, has mostly had tiny cameos or side-roles in comics and other media. His episode of Transformers: The Basics sums him up really well, and if you have time, the old Collector’s Club prose story “The Truth We Make” is pretty much the definitive take on the character, for me.
How it’s going.
On the merchandise side of things, the fact that his whole deal is that he’s supposed to have an entire second robot mode has kept him from getting many new figures, which has meant he only had his G1 figure, and a pair of really expensive Collector’s Club retools, up until 2018’s Power of the Primes line decided to shock everyone by giving him his own brand-new, original-mold figure, as an Amazon exclusive.
I can’t stress enough how bizarre this was: A totally new tooling, not a repaint or remold, of a nobody character, one that ignores one of its own toyline’s main gimmicks (all Power of the Primes deluxes could change into combiner legs and arms, but not this one) and it wasn’t even available in brick and mortar stores. This kind of thing never happens in Transformers. I was already a fan of the character, and him getting his own unique tooling meant I had to have one.
Since his Amazon release came and went, he’s been expensive on the aftermarket, retailing for triple digits pretty regularly. However, we’ll soon have another shot at owning him, thanks to getting a redeco and re-release in Eathrise, again as an Amazon exclusive, and this time in a 2-pack with the Decepticon Barricade. That’s not out yet, but as an owner of the original release, I thought I’d have a look at it, for those considering this second shot at this duplicitous fellow.
Prima Prime and the Prime Armor
I’ll start it off with the stuff that the new version doesn’t come with. All of the Amazon exclusives in the Power of the Primes line came with small Prime Master figures, each representing one of the original 13 Primes, and Punch came with Prima Prime, the “first Transformer,” according to some media. The Prime Masters were essentially just reskinned Titan Masters, like the one that came with Overlord, and Prima is no exception to how they work.
If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.
Prima’s just a few inches tall, with a sculpt that’s kind of a bog-standard robot with a visor, helmet and mouthplate. Like a lot of Titan and Prime Masters, this is because it’s a robot mode that was repainted and re-used in multiple places. One fairly unique thing about him, though, is his colors. He’s cast almost completely in translucent light-blue, covered up with bits of silver paint, and a few silvery-grey plastic parts, which means the whole figure glows nicely when held up to a lamp. There’s nothing particularly Primely or god-ish about the sculpt, so this unique set of colors is appreciated.
Like the rest of his ilk, Prima’s got a poseable head, shoulders, hips and knees, with a solid block for his lower legs, and has a pair of peg holes on his feet for mounting him on different Titans Return and POTP figures.
A quick compression of the legs later, and he’s transformed, not into a head like Titan Masters, but as a vaguely gem-like thing that’s either the spark of the Prime himself, or the core of a Matrix, depending on the fiction (it was kind of nebulous). What it means is that he transforms into a translucent blue block of indistinct detail, with a few bits of the pattern picked out in sky-blue paint. Amusingly, this pattern seems to be based on the pecs and abs of the 2007 movie’s Protoform Optimus Prime toy, entirely because of a game of broken telephone, after one of the Revenge of the Fallen movie comics repurposed that figure as Prima’s appearance.
Compare this guy’s chest with the last photo.
While he might not be a head, you can still use Prima as one on any Titan-Master-Compatible figure, where that ab pattern suddenly begins to look like a creepy face.
Hot Rod’s hot new look.
What you’re supposed to do, however, is use him with the included Prime Armor.
No, not like this.
Ok, to get this out of the way, the Prime Armor’s really a gigantic hand. All POTP deluxes came with one, because they were supposed to all become combiner team limbs, even though Punch actually can’t do that. But you can fold it up and use it as some kind of giant, multi-barreled weapon easy enough, or a set of armor.
The bit of interactivity is that the transparent portion on top of it is removable, exposing a hole you can slot the Prime master in, the idea being that equipping it, and giving the armor to a figure was supposed to make them use….The Power of the Prime! As far as gimmicks go, it’s oddly half-baked, relies a little too much on imagination, but is basically harmless. I do appreciate that the transparent cover is sculpted to sort of look like an extra gun when not in use, though.
Still, it’s kind of an undercooked nothing of a gimmick. Typically, I put Prima inside Titans Return Overlord’s chest, to approximate his Powermaster gimmicks.
The Pecs of the Primes.
I often forget this whole gimmick ecosystem is a thing, except to occasionally insert a Titan Master instead, for fun with disembodied heads.
The rambling, dubious wisdom of the ancients.
Anyway, onto the main event.
Punch Mode
I like it when a figure’s design gives a sense of their personality, and Punch’s shape does that to me. There’s something a little different about Punch’s silhouette, in that he reads as very slim and lanky, compared to the usual heroic builds of most Transformers. His legs are kind of long, his torso slim, and his head narrow. This seems less of a heroic Autobot, and more of an awkward, paranoid, skittish character.
How I see him.
This contrasts with the rest of his sculpt, which reads very much as a generic background Autobot carformer (not that that’s a bad thing for his role, either), what with his car-trunk feet with wheels on them.
In particular, his face, with its mouthplate and helmet, could effectively be any 1986-and-later G1 Autobot. Impressively, from the back, he manages to mostly hide that there’s a whole other bot hiding there, so long as you don’t look too closely at the back of his head.
Secret identity.
Another strange thing about his silhouette is his shoulderpads, which are parts of the car’s front, flipped diagonally backwards (and slightly mistransformed in package). They look oversized for him, like he’s about to buckle under their weight. Again, it almost feels characterful.
For his colors, he’s got a very late-g1 combo of dark blue and light, cheesy orange-yellow, in a way that somehow manages to be both garish and understated. It’s augmented by bits of red, silver and blue, including silver-rimmed details on his thighs and chest that replicate the look of the stickers on the original toy.
A meeting of the minds, and of the toylines.
In terms of how he feels in hand, there’s a noticeable difference in materials and build when it comes to a Prime Wars Trilogy-era figure like him, and today’s War for Cybertron figures. It has something to do with the plastic Punch is made out of, in that it’s a lot more shiny, smooth and slick, compared to the more matte, grainy, heavily-detailed plastic of modern mainline Transformers. It just feels different. Not worse or better, just different, perhaps a bit more toy-ish and a bit less collector-ish. Plus, while modern WFC figures often go to great lengths to hide their hollowness, Punch has his completely empty, gappy lower legs right out there on display. For the record, though, he weighs about the same as an Earthrise deluxe, so there was no cost-cutting here.
Rebirth or Headmasters? You decide.
For poseability, this is before the era of commonplace ankle tilts and wrist swivels, so Punch lacks them, but otherwise comes with all of the joints you’d expect of a modern figure. His lower legs don’t have feet or heel spurs sculpted into either side of them, so you’d think he’d have stability issues, but it turns out that the flared bottoms of his legs are wide enough to support most poses. That being said, his shoulders are kind of irksome, and the big panels hanging off them have a tendency to bump into each other or his body, hindering his articulation a little bit. On top of that, they frequently come undone from the tiny pegs on his shoulders they’re supposed to be connected to, though they’ll typically stay in place even when undone.
For accessories, firstly, Punch comes with a little orange pistol. It’s a nicely-sculpted laser gun, but it almost feels too cool for this dork to use, so I tend to give it to Counterpunch.
Punch can also use the Prime Armor in a few ways. Firstly, he can hold it like an awkwardly large gun, and you can insert Prima into it, for god-powered weapon action. While he does this, he can also hold the clear plastic cover to Prima’s slot as another small pistol.
If you want to do something really silly, though, you can use the (advertised in the instructions) feature of folding down the Autobot symbol on his chest, and pegging the Prime Armor into the hole underneath. It doesn’t look great, and makes him look like he’s using some kind of papoose to carry around Prima. Still, it’s totally optional.
There is no way to make this look good.
Transformation to Counterpunch Mode
Punch becomes his alter-ego through a series of simple, but effective steps. Basically, you turn him around, hide one faction symbol and reveal another, rotate his hands away to reveal a different pair, tilt his helmet to reveal one set of eyes and hide the other, and mess around with his shoulderpads. Quick, easy, and surprisingly effective.
Counterpunch Mode
His coolness factor just shot way up.
It’s amazing what a good pair of shoulderpads can do. Case and point: Counterpunch still has the same lanky proportions as Punch, but his shoulderpads-with-wheels now extend outwards, and are a little bit diagonal, for that extra coolness. That alone manages to alter his entire silhouette and vibe.
He feels like he belongs here.
Combine that with his now solid-blue colorscheme, and alternate headsculpt with an actual mouth, and you have a character that visually conveys the opposite personality from Punch. He looks more like some kind of sleek professional warrior-spy.
Between the visible wheels on his shoulders, and the car roof on his chest (which is actually fake!) he also looks more obviously like a car-former, even as his legs (which now have a bit of purple paint on them) look less like the back of a car, and more like proper armored robot shins. The one detriment to this form is that him having a yellow back makes the fact that he’s hiding a different person behind him more conspicuous.
He hopes he’s cool enough that you don’t notice this.
He’s got the same poseabiliy in this form, maybe a bit more now that his shoulderpads are out of the way.
Unlike Punch, this man will definitely kick you in the face.
He’s also got the same accessories, including the yellow pistol that works so well with him.
The man with the gold-ish gun.
You can, once again, fasten the Prime Armor to his chest, and even this guy can’t make it look cool.
At least he tried.
There’s a bit of extra functionality in this mode, too, in that you can attach the Prime Armor to his back (his shoulders blocked this from working in Punch mode).
Jetpack of disguising!
In this form, it looks like a Jetpack, and I like keeping it here, because it hides his orange Punch-mode chest, making for a more convincing disguise, and further differentiating the two.
A couple of shifty fellows.
Transformation to Car Mode
Out of everything it could have reminded me of, Punch’s transformation makes me think of Universe 2.0, the 2008 iteration of the perpetual Nostalgia Line of Transformers. Something about a lot of panels unfolding and snapping together to make a car mode puts me in that headspace. Unfortunately, that also means it’s a bit of a pain to get him into car mode. Basically, 2/3rds of the car’s body (everything from the windshield back) is contained in his legs, and you unfurl it all, flip it around, and pop it over his body (while his shoulders and a bit under Counterpunch’s chest form the front of the car). It’s a pain because you have to make sure his arms, head, and other bits of him are all aligned perfectly in order to compress them enough, or you’ll have problems closing the panels up, like you’re trying to zip up jeans that are too tight. At this point, I’ve managed to make it work well enough (and without the instructions), but there’s definitely a learning curve.
Car Mode
All of that work for a fairly standard sports car. To be fair, that’s always been what Punch changed into, and this new version is at least curvy and sleek compared to his G1 toy’s stock, boxy thing.
The car’s shell is completely composed of that slick, Prime Wars-esque plastic, and he comes with a clear windshield, though it really only manages to show his fake, smaller car roof underneath, plus the back panel’s just silver paint.
Speaking of that, it’s a well-painted car mode, and I appreciate the red on his rims, his painted taillights, and the extensive silver work that went into his bumper. What I don’t appreciate is that, no matter how I fiddle with him, his ground clearance is such that his wheels don’t really roll without scraping.
Pretty sure this isn’t street-legal.
For the rest of his features, he’s got a peghole on top of his car mode that you can use to mount his weapon, or the Prime Armor. Combine it with a Prime Master, and it can either be a supercharged booster rocket, or supercharged weapon, depending on the direction. He’s also got a pair of small pegs at the back of his car mode, and you can use them to mount Titan and Prime masters there, for a dangerous ride-along.
Whee!
Finally, you can stash his weapon beneath his car mode. While it stays on there securely, the means to connect it is really hard to sus out, so have a look at this photo:
Hopefully he never gets flipped in car mode while he’s pretending to be Counterpunch.
Compared to Earthrise Re-Release
So, let’s have a look at the upcoming reissue, as part of Amazon’s exclusive “Galactic Odyssey” imprint of Earthrise. Firstly, he comes with an entire separate Transformer, the Decepticon Barricade, a repaint and retooling of Earthrise Smokescreen. I don’t own a version of this tooling, but I’ve heard he’s pretty good.
As for Punch himself, while he’s not out yet, we’ve seen both stock photos, and an in-person production sample, and he seems to be a bit of a sidegrade at best, and downgrade at worst. Firstly, he’s missing Prima Prime and his Prime Armor, and while I don’t really miss the minifigure, I liked the extra playability the armor offered, as a backpack, and as an alternate weapon.
In terms of colors, on one hand, they’ve added a yellow stripe to the bottom of his car body, which helps add some visual interest. On the other hand, he’s also lost some other paint apps, including the sticker-detailing on Punch’s thighs, and the red painted wheel rims. Counterpunch’s fists are also black now, but I think that’s an upgrade. Most importantly, though, his two main colors have been changed from darker blue and cheesy bright orange, to light blue and yellow, making him less accurate to the original.
Honestly, just from the visuals, I like the original better, however, I don’t “I’d pay hundreds of dollars on the secondary market” like the original better. The re-release keeps the important bits present, and comes with another decent Deluxe
Overall
Punch is a flawed, but unique figure. It helps that none of his flaws (awkward Punch shoulders, a tough transformation, some engineering jank) are real mood-killers, and that they’re all in service of trying to wrangle a goofy gimmick out of this guy with absolute sincerity. And it’s a gimmick that he actually manages to pull off really well! It’s still hard to believe that they gave him his own tooling, and that they preserved the functionality of the G1 toy.
Rebirth or Headmasters? Villains edition.
Both as a fan of the character, and as a liker of unique Transformers, I recommend grabbing one if you have the chance, and the upcoming re-release is a good chance, regardless of what it does differently. If it was a tie, I’d recommend tracking down the original, if for some miracle you found him for a good price, though it’s not a night-and-day difference, unlike Punch and Counterpunch themselves.
