Bot Reviews: Transformers: Studio Series Leader Optimus Prime (Age of Extinction)

Before I start, let’s get one thing straight off the top: Age of Extinction is the absolute worst of the Transformers films, and it’s a crowded market.

Sure, everyone always mentions the bit where the boyfriend pulls out a laminated card with a copy of the law saying he’s allowed to date Markey Mark’s underage teenage daughter, but there’s just so much more wrong than that. The thing’s a whopping 2 hours and 45 minutes long, and feels double that. You feel worn out by the end. It’s got a massively overwritten story (there’s four entire antagonists!) and yet loves to just waste time on weird unfunny pointless tangents. Every supposedly good character is an unlikeable, violent jerk, human and robot together. Cade Yeager is one of the least sympathetic protagonists I’ve ever seen, and it definitely wasn’t intentional. The heavily-advertised Dinobots don’t appear until the last 30 minutes. There’s so much bad, obvious product placement (the bit with the Bud Light was really funny, though). The politics (both American AND Chinese) are abhorrent, especially if you know even a little bit about Hong Kong’s situation. I could go on and on. Sure, a lot of the other Bayverse films have these problems, but this one has them the most. 

They *did* make a couple of good-looking Optimus Prime designs for this movie, though. I’d go so far as to say I’ve never met a live-action movie Optimus design I didn’t like. Still, though, I’m on record as liking Guy from Thing when it comes to collecting, and if the Thing is Bad, I’m Soured on the Guy. It’s why I have very few Bayverse figures. In fact, I think I only currently have the Studio Series Last Knight Hot Rod, and this guy. See, getting this Optimus was entirely down to word-of-mouth from a friend on how much of a good figure he was on his own merits, divorced from the source material. And luckily, I had the chance to grab a loose (complete) copy from a lot of figures for a cheap price, so it gave me the perfect chance to look at a potentially good toy of a character from a bad film. 

Robot Mode

Now, another thing that deterred me from picking this guy up for full price at retail is that he’s a Leader-Class that’s around the size of a Voyager, due to scale, partscount and engineering.

Just last review, I was talking about one of these “we’re selling a smaller figure at a larger pricepoint because budget” figures, and how it’s up in the air if they’ll feel worth it. This guy, he reflexively seems more worth it than Fugitive Wasp did. I think it’s because he feels like he’s got bulk and density to him, despite being the height of a Voyager. Maybe it’s his broad shoulders, maybe it’s his backpack, maybe it’s his bulky torso, but you can tell there’s a lot going on here in terms of complexity just looking at him.

Speaking of that backpack, it’s amazing how far we’ve come with different plastic takes on this specific Optimus design. The early Age of Extinction Optimuses used to lug around ridiculous mounds of truck parts…

…but this guy’s managed to get it down to a compact little package of folded-up truck front.

And, in an unintended feature, the backpack is actually on a mushroom peg, meaning you can Studio-Series-86-Arcee it, and just pop the whole thing off of him.

On one hand, this definitely isn’t an intended feature. On the other hand, there’s sculpting on his inner back that resembles the back of his screen model (those two rows of pipes, for example,) so it does successfully make him more accurate to the film, if that’s what you’re after.

Me, I actually prefer leaving the backpack on, as the extra bulk suits him a bit, I think. 

What can I say about this design? It’s Optimus as some kind of buff, Conan-esque barbarian knight. You can tell who it’s supposed to be, but it’s almost like one of those Timelines figures of an Optimus from another era. It’s not for everyone, but I like it, and I think he’s got a real cool presence, just standing there. And the sculpt is a good, clean translation of the design, with only the aforementioned backpack, and some bulk around his legs for altmode parts. He’s got blue plastic…thingies dangling off of his shoulders, too, but those are on the film’s design.

Also, want to know something you can’t unsee? Between the loincloth parts around his waist, and those two panels sculpted where his pecs are, he almost seems to be wearing a Red Sonja-esque Chainmail Bikini-type setup. You’re welcome. 

Uptop, his headsculpt’s also familiar, yet not. He’s got the vent, antenna, and mouthplate, but his squinty-eyed expression, and the general angles of the thing make him look meaner than usual, like a grim warrior.  I almost want to headcanon this as a different version of Optimus, or maybe the Thirteenth “Arisen” Prime, he feels like too much of a menacing warrior to be the guy we know and love. Then again, that’s how they’d often write him in these films.

Also, to make sure the bullet point trivia gets noted, this is actually Optimus’s second of three bodies he had in Age of Extinction, but you can only tell because of his forearms.

In one of many unexplained moments in the film, Optimus stealing a sword from Lockdown’s armory results in the weapon upgrading him, armoring up his arms a bit. The just-released Nemesis Prime retool gives him the upgraded forearms, though.

The colors here are interesting, because they’re kind of a catch-22, but I’ll get to that in a moment. So, Optimus is a pretty straightforward combination of light blue and gray, with red and gold accents on him. My usual shpiel when it comes to Studio Series and live-action movie designs is that their onscreen decos are way too complicated for mainline Studio Series to copy, so we have to settle for hitting the highlights. But a positive consequence of this figure being a “smaller size, bigger budget” deal is that he actually does manage to hit like 85, maybe 90 percent of his onscreen colors, from what I can tell. He’s got stuff like the miniscule Autobrand on his chest, and the flames on his bikini top (sorry), details that previous mainline takes on this design have overlooked. There’s a couple accents of gold and silver here and there that are missing, but generally, they got it. So, what’s the catch? His head and torso look really plain, thanks to them mostly being a big field of unpainted gray.

The thing is, that’s what he looks like in the actual movie, it’s just that all that gray is mostly silver. No way they’d paint the entire surface, mostly because it would pick up paint chips like crazy, but I do find myself wishing they’d found a type of gray plastic that was more metallic, or just less plain-looking. Generally, he looks fine, but I can’t help but wonder if there was a better way to do the torso.

For build quality, like I mentioned uptop, he feels decently dense in your hands, and visibly has more mass and plastic to him than a normal Voyager, so you can feel the extra cash being used. He also manages to stay together solidly…mostly, with two issues. Firstly, the sides of his torso peg into his chestplate as part of the transformation, and if you don’t line them up perfectly, his torso can split open along the sides when you pose his arms, as seen above. Similarly, the heels on his feet are on little friction joints, and I’ve accidentally popped them off a bunch of times trying to elaborately pose him, though they easily pop back in.

Neither is a terrible problem, but both are an eyesore on a figure that’s otherwise immaculately engineered. Despite the backpack, he stays standing just fine, and I even managed to get him to stand on one foot!

The articulation is one of the other areas where you can feel the extra budget getting used, because he’s a bit lush, at least in the upper torso. I’ll say something weird here: I love this figure’s hands. They can open and close at the fingers along a “mitten joint,” they’ve got swivelling wrists, and they’ve got wrists that dip down, too. Combine that with his double-elbows and universal shoulders, and it’s really fun how expressive he can get.

He seems built for reciting Shakespeare with those arms, or just being melodramatic and theatrical in general.

Plus, those blue things on his shoulders have two joints each, one of which is universal, meaning they’ll never get in the way of any poses. 

Meanwhile, his head’s on the kind of balljoint that lets it tilt sideways a bit, for a menacing bit of expressiveness, which makes up for the fact that he’s not great at looking sideways due to how his collar’s shaped. The rest of him’s a bit more conventional in his articulation, not that that’s bad. He’s got ankle tilts, swivel knees, swivel thighs, universal hips, and a waist swivel. The “loincloth” pieces at his waist are also on swivels, and you need to lift them to rotate his waist more than a little bit, which makes it look like he’s got a helicopter at his waist.

Also, the backpack does block the waist a little bit, but not until you go beyond human waist-swivel range, and you can always pop the backpack off, if that bugs you, you weirdo. 

For accessories, well, Optimus has got a ton of ‘em, six pieces in total. Let’s start with the weapons that this body’s supposed to come with. Remember, getting his big sword and shield upgraded him into his third form, whereas in this form, the only weapons he used were a wristblade, and his three-barelled cannon that first appeared in Dark of the Moon. And he *sort of* comes with both of these.

For starters, he’s got one of those wrist swords he’s used since movie 1, albeit painted in solid silver, with no orange (he hit a budget limit, I guess). The purpose of his wrist dips are to expose pegholes in his forearms for the sword to slot into, for some slashing action.

He can also hold it in either hand, if you want to give him a Stabbing Knife (which, again, seems appropriate).

Next up, the piece that forms the core of his shield is kinda-sorta styled to look like that three-barreled Dark of the Moon weapon, but it’s a) undersized, b) sculpted with a big t-bar across it for assembling into a shield, and c) solid unpainted gray.

Also, he can’t actually hold it very well in his hands, the peg seems a bit poorly-sized, and the weapon’s got a tendency to tilt forwards.

If I might get pedantic for a moment, I’m surprised the Studio Series Dark of the Moon Optimus figure didn’t come with this weapon, and this guy only comes with an approximation. I guess they’re saving it for when they make his Evasion Mode body from this film, since he also used the same gun. Anyway, if you don’t care about accuracy, you can also peg the weapon into one of the 5-millimeter ports on his forearms.

Next up, he’s got his Body #3 weapons, a sword and shield. The sword’s technically two pieces, it’s got a removable handle on a less-than-5-millimeter port.

The removable handle was actually done so that you could give the weapon to figures that don’t have opening hands, which I really appreciate.

It’s a big, nicely-sculpted blade, cast in gray, with a bit of red, and it’s really easy for him to look cool and dynamic with it.

It does make me wish his wrists could dip forwards in a way that tilts the blade forwards, but that’s an “unsatisfied with all the riches under heaven” kinda complaint from me.

Next up is his shield, which you create by pegging two halves onto his gun, on 5 Millimeter pegs.

It’s very underpainted, being mostly gray, with some red accents, but it still looks good, and fits onto either forearm peg.

In a nifty little combining feature, you can actually attach his shorter blade onto the end of the shield, turning it into both an offensive and defensive weapon.

You can also split it for its ranged weapon mode.

Well, “split,” but you’re actually removing the halves, and pegging them in on the father-apart holes on the gun. It’s another tiny complaint, but unpegging and repegging them’s a bit of a pain, I’d rather they figured out a way to let you just split the shield along a rail, or something. I suspect it’s just down to partscount.

Finally, he comes with a little rectangular block, with a peg on one end, and a hole on the other end, which is meant for weapon storage. What you do is fold up a panel on his back, and stick the block into the hole it reveals.

From there, you can slide the sword through the block, and plug the shield into the hole on top of it, attaching his smaller blade to the shield, to stash everything in one place, preferably tilted to the side, for the coolness factor.

He does look a bit overburdened with everything on his back, but I appreciate the option, and it looks remarkably characterful.

For some other storage options, you can also attach his smaller blade to either side of his backpack along a rectangular peg (but I’m told this can scratch the paint, so I never do it). You can also, unofficially, just slide his sword into some gaps in his backpack, like I did in a couple earlier photos. And when you’re not using the little rectangular block, you can store it on its own by hiding under the folded-up front of the truck, in his backpack.

So, yeah, he comes with a *lot* of stuff, enough to make it fun to noodle with his implements of death, and figure out different ways to hold and use them.

It’s important to note that for all the grousing I’m hypothetically making about screen-accuracy (his half-hearted DOTM-gun, the fact that the sword and shield are from his *next* form), I don’t actually care, the movie’s too bad, and the figure’s too fun for me to think about that. 

Transformation

This was one of the big things that sold this figure to me, and yeah, the hype is real. Somehow, they managed to make a transformation that’s both intricate and complicated, but also somehow intuitive enough for me to easily remember each time, and I didn’t have instructions to help me out, just an Emgo “Just Transform It” video (which, by the way, are an amazing resource.) The backpack does unfold into some of the front of the truck, but otherwise, he’s not really a shellformer, so much as a “strutformer.”

Basically, a lot of the transformation is moving things around on long plastic struts into new locations.

And it works! Okay, mostly. One of the last steps always gives me trouble, plugging in the piece that forms the roof, and a bit of the back and sides of the truck. They never want to sit flush, and those side panels love to not plug in, and fold inwards, when I can’t easily retrieve them without detransforming the thing a bit.

I hope the photo makes what I’m saying make sense. Still, that’s it, that’s the only issue. It really is a marvellous bit of design and engineering. 

Vehicle Mode

Apparently, this is a real model of Western Star truck, but I’ve never seen anything like it. Looks cool, though. It’s a longnose, but swooshier and more high-concept, with big pipes in the back. It’s also a shockingly clean altmode.

Sure, there’s some transformation seams, but there’s a lack of visible robot parts, too. Around the back, you can see some hinky bits around the truck bed, but they made the whole thing as flat and compact as possible.

It’s not quite as clean of a truck mode as VNR Optimus, but it’s getting there. It’s also, again, technically a Voyager-sized truck, but feels a bit more meaty and substantial.

For colors, we’re in old-fashioned Bayverse Prime territory of blue, with red flames. Odd to think people don’t like these flames, I think they look slick.

Beyond that, he’s got some silver (including painted hubcaps), some gray (including, unfortunately, one square of unpaintable gray against the blue on either side of the truck), and opaque black windows (my preference, translucent ones look bad and cause problems). Of course, looking at the physical prop from the movie, they’re missing silver highlights in places on the body, and other little details, but it doesn’t feel like he’s underpainted the way the robot mode inadvertently looks. All the colors are here, and at a glance, they look nice and complete. 

In terms of build quality, as mentioned, he feels nice and substantial when you pick him up. He’s one of those complicated Studio Series vehicles where he holds together on a macro scale, but on a micro scale, there’s a lot of seams that I find myself pushing on whenever I grab him, to try to close them up a bit better. That roof/back/sides piece that I complained about during transformation, in particular, still doesn’t quite like to sit flush, and I end up squeezing on it a lot.

It’s not the worst issue, though, and the whole thing still holds together nicely.

For features, we’ve got some good truck rolling going on. And, well, they saved most of the rest of the features for robot mode, because all he’s got going on otherwise here is accessory storage. Specifically, you can plug the little mounting cube into the back of the truck, and attach the swords and shield into a big mushroom-shaped pile of accessories.

They’re not fooling anyone, but at least they’re fairly snug. You can also stick the smaller sword into tabs on the side of the vehicle. 

For a bit of toy science, I decided to see if he could tow any trailers, and the answer is not really.

There’s a hitch there, but the hitch doesn’t have a hole in it, just a recess, so pretty much every trailer I tried wound up levitated a bit off the ground. 

Overall

They took a character from a terrible, terrible movie, and made an amazing figure out of him. For all my little tiny criticisms, the whole package comes together into something really premium feeling, a bot that just looks effortlessly cool, is incredibly fun to pose and arm up, and whose transformation’s a wild work of art. The only thing I’d really change is the shade of gray plastic on his torso, so it doesn’t look so plain, but even that doesn’t feel like a big deal. 

But for Leader-Class prices? Well, he’s small, but this is one case where you can see where the money went. He’s pricey and premium in the specific way Figma Samuses or Figuart Kamen Riders are, where the extra craft that went into them justifies the price bump.

So, yeah, if the idea of him being the Optimus from Age of Extinction isn’t an impediment to you, then I highly recommend picking him up, just pretend he’s someone else.

And his Nemesis Prime retool’s apparently about to hit the market, and among the other little changes, it darkens the gray plastic on him, so that might even address that issue. Either way, The Legend Exists.