Bot Reviews: Transformers: Power of the Primes Prime Master Bludgeon/Quintus Prime

For a few months now, I’ve been part of an online book club over at the Transformers Wiki Discord, where we’ve been reading the original Marvel Transformers comics, in both US and UK form. Lately, we’ve hit the point where the comic grappled with some of the oddball concepts from the G1 toyline’s later years, like the Pretenders.

When it came to the toys, the idea behind the Pretenders was small, standard transforming robots which fit into hollow, humanoid, action-figure sized shells, meant to disguise them as humans. In practice, this didn’t make much sense, considering the shells were a combination of humans in fantastical science fiction armor (most of the Autobots), and a crew of Masters of the Universe-esque monster-people (most of the Decepticons.)

The fiction tried to play the disguise angle straight, made worse by the fact that the pretenders were still depicted as gigantic while inside their shells. Before long, though, the comic gave up trying to make them make sense as disguises, and treated the shells more as battle armor (Over in Japan, the Masterforce anime had them shrink down to human size and lose the armor to disguise themselves, summoning it back as a Tokusatsu-style transformation, while treating the more beastly designs like the animation equivalent of that same genre’s rubber suit monsters.)

As for this particular member of the group, Bludgeon was one of the later, small pretenders, a Decepticon who changed into a tank, and fit into a particularly cool-looking shell, that of a skeletal samurai warrior. What makes him into a fan favorite is that, for whatever reason, Marvel author Simon Furman chose to make him an important player towards the end of the comic’s run (even showing up on the final issue’s cover), characterizing him as an ambitious, deadly martial arts master that even managed to become leader of the Decepticons for a time.

So, when it comes to modern updates, most of the time, new versions of the Pretenders don’t bother with the fit-into-the-shell gimmick, opting to re-imagine them as standard Transformers, typically with a robot mode styled after their shell, and an alternate mode based on the inner robot. Bludgeon gotten a few updates like this over the years, and Legacy is continuing with this trend, with ex-pretender Iguanus receiving a similar update.

But a whole bunch of the Pretenders did get updates in 2018’s Power of the Primes line, in a way that tried to work in the original concept in an unusual way, turning them into something called the Prime Masters. The story around these guys was contradictory and confusing, but basically, each inner robot, instead of being the original character, was now one of the original 13 Primes (a latter-day Transformers idea, basically they’re the original ancestors of all Transformers). Each of them was wearing “Decoy” armor that happened to look like a familiar Pretender, meaning today’s figure was technically “Quintus Prime, in Bludgeon Decoy Armor.” But, like I said, this was poorly explained, there were no comics or cartoons that elaborated on it (not even the actual Power of the Primes webseries!), and so a lot of people just bought these guys to be new versions of the Pretenders they looked like. This is the only one I’ve got, and it was given to me as a tiny little gift during a convention earlier this year. I chose Bludgeon from the lineup, as the One I Recognized, largely thanks to his latter-day roles in IDW’s comics and the Cyberverse TV show. So, let’s see how this odd little concept shook out, especially with the benefit of hindsight.

Pretender Shell

He’s just a little guy, but a mean-looking little guy. When fully shelled up, Bludgeon is about as tall as a Siege/Earthrise Micromaster, but a fair amount thicker and bulkier.

He passes the squint test for being human-sized compared to mainline Generations figures, which is funny, since he’s one of the ones that wasn’t depicted as shrinking in any fiction (though some of the Pretenders who appeared in Masterforce, and could shrink, did get new figures in this line). Really, he’s a big block of mostly-immobile plastic.

This block of plastic is sculpted really really well, though, in his familiar Skeleton Samurai Warrior style, and it’s extremely accurate to his G1 design. Tons of really specific details on his chest, legs, arms, and helmet are replicated here in miniature. The only point of deviation is the skill face itself, which now has a cool kind of cheek-mandible situation happening. It’s a timeless look, and even without Marvel picking him for the spotlight, probably would have made him popular.

As for the rest of his sculpt, he’s a bit chunky and kibbly from the back, and his legs do a poor job of pretending (hah!) not to be a fused-together block. Of course, the big thing is the solid chunk of weapon hanging off him, but it’s meant to be popped off for a cleaner look.

In an interesting sculpting twist, his head’s eyes are actually hollow, and you can shine light through them from a hole in the back, a sort of anti-light piping, and one time where “head empty” was actually cool.

Bludgeon’s got a ton of paint apps, surprisingly, though they’re all at the front of the shell. The back half is cast in purple, and the front half is cast in orangey-yellow, but it’s positively slathered in purple, gold, gray, white (for the skull), and a silver Decepticon symbol. It all looks really nice, even if it does cut off the second you venture around the back.

Bludgeon being essentially a brick means that he’s really stable on his feet, but also means that he has very little in the way of articulation. He can only move at the shoulders, swiveling his arms forwards and backwards, which, funny enough, is exactly how articulated his G1 shell was. Though, really, I don’t see how they could have made him poseable at this scale while still replicating his classic gimmick.

For his accessory, Bludgeon keeps a large tower of a weapon stashed on his back. According to the wiki, it’s an akanabō , or metal stick. It fits into either of his hands, and the way it points forward, combined with the little nub on the end, makes me see it as a retro-style zappy sci-fi laser instead.

Either way, it’s humorously large on him, and probably comes with a ton of recoil. I do wish they’d tooled up a katana for him, since that’s the character’s signature weapon, but that might not be feasible at this size.

 

Inner robot

To reveal the robot inside, you flip open the front of Bludgeon’s shell, at joints located at his ankles, to find his inner robot nestled in there. Honestly, something about this is cool in a way I can’t explain. Visually, he looks like he’s piloting a mech, or powered armor, and there something satisfying about the motion of opening and closing the shell.

Once you pop him out, you have a figure of what’s technically supposed to be Quintus Prime, whom the Wiki tells me thought all life was sacred, and can grant powers related to creating life. Despite who the box says he is, though, he’s sculpted to resemble the original Bludgeon’s inner robot form, or rather, as much as they could do so on a figure this small, and proportioned this way.

Basically, Quintus/Bludgeon is a Titan Master, from the previous toyline, Titans Return, just without their ability to change into a head for larger characters.

Still, they managed to give him molded tank treads on his arms, a visor over his eyes, and other Bludgeon-specific details. Unfortunately, he’s cast in purple and orangey-yellow, without a trace of the original’s green, or any paint apps, really, a common problem with figures in both this line and Titans Return.

For articulation, he’s got knees and hips (both fused into one joint) and shoulder articulation, just barely beating out his shell.

Fold him up into a box, and you’ve got a mode that isn’t a head, but is instead, a “Prime Spark.” Basically, it’s a block with an ornate pattern sculpted on the end.

The outside of it looks like vines or brambles, with the inside looking like some sort of insect, highlighted in orange paint. In terms of what it does, if you want, you can give it to a Titan Master-compatible figure, resulting in a really strange looking head…

…but it’s meant to be plugged into the “Prime Armor” accessories that came with the line’s larger figures (I have Punch/Counterpunch, previously reviewed here, to demonstrate).

This doesn’t do anything, but we’re meant to imagine that the larger character is now wielding Quintus Prime’s life-seeding powers.

It’s kind of a nothing of a gimmick, honestly, and it leaves Bludgeon with a mode that’s even more nothing on his own. Now, if they had, say, sculpted the face of this to look like a tank turret, even if that turret was just a 2D pattern, then this could have been fudged into a really basic tank mode, which would have been good enough at this small scale, and would have resulted in a self-contained Bludgeon. This isn’t a specific problem to him, though, the whole size class is like this.

Combined Weapon

Maybe it was to help get over the disappointment of the Prime Spark thing, or maybe it was to give him a way to interact with non-Power of the Primes figures, but there’s a whole other weapon mode included in all of these Prime Masters, Bludgeon included. To make it happen, you remove the inner robot, attach the weapon to the shell, flip it up and over the shell’s head, then plug the Prime Spark into the back of the shell, fitting the holes on the inner robot’s feet into specific pegs (it’s a bit of a tricky fit, but the result is nice and secure). Finally, you flip a thick peg down that was hiding between his feet.

Bludgeon is now a big gun, slightly larger than a Siege Battlemaster gun (and probably the prototype for those, considering Siege came right after this). Again, given that the end is supposed to be an akanabō, this is probably supposed to be a melee weapon, but it still reads to me as a zappy space raygun, with a big orange block at the back.

Of course, from the bottom, it’s blatantly a Skeleton Samurai Person with a big object behind his head, but from most other angles, it works just well enough to pass a squint test, though you have to squint particularly hard around his still-just-out-there robot arms.

On the positive side, the peg at the end of the weapon does seem to be compatible with the War for Cybertron system, though it’s a slightly tight squeeze in some hands, meaning you can add it to an arsenal of weapons to trick your current Generations figures out with.

And, since Titan Masters and Prime Sparks are really just the same thing, you can swap Quintus out and make this into a face-powered gun, if you’ve got any Titan Masters lying around.

Overall

I like Bludgeon better than I expected once I got him in-hand. It’s a surprisingly cool looking representation of the character at a small scale, It Does The Thing where there’s a little guy in there in a way that I find weirdly satisfying, and the whole thing can form another weapon to cycle into the WFC-system.

Admittedly, my enthusiasm is probably easy when I consider I got him for free, when really, the big issue is that conceptually, the whole Prime-Master-With-Decoy-Armor gimmick felt, and still feels half-baked, to say nothing of the unclear fiction about how it’s supposed to work. That means that Bludgeon feels only about 2/3rds complete, and if his inner robot changed into a tank instead, even if it was a lame attempt at one, it would at least feel like a full figure (especially since most G1 Pretenders had lame altmodes, anyway). He’s no substitute for a full-sized, full-blown modern Pretender revival, but given that we’re still getting figures like Legacy Iguanus, I don’t think that’s in the cards.  Regardless of Bludgeon’s two-thirds-complete nature, he’s a fun little guy to have on the shelf, and I like flicking his shell open and closed. If you can find him, or any of the Prime Masters on the cheap, it’s a neat little novelty way to have some Pretenders, especially if you’re fond of any of these characters (and now that I’ve actually read Marvel, I wish I’d gotten Skullgrin, too).

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