Transformers: ROTB Core/Voyager Optimus Primal is Something That Exists

The 1996 Beast Wars Optimus Primal toy

So, I'm just gonna ramble for a bit here. I picked this up basically because I needed something to do that wasn't, in some way, Project Chem-Dogs. A change of pace. Things were going OK with that, and real/work life was a bit bumpy, but objectively not bad. I have to remind myself of that sometimes. I felt the need to write a Transformers article, but my my most recent Legacy toys were fine, but not blog material. I had also been awaiting that new Tidal Wave, and I certainly would have had something to say there, but the it was starting look like the dispatch was gonna go from May to July on the pre-order. Boo! As a result, I allowed myself the gorilla counterpart to that Optimus Prime toy I liked and painted up. It was similarly a mass market core/voyager release, at 12 quid, so whatever happened, at least I was being borderline adult about it. As it would turn out Tidal Wave would dock later that week, but no harm done.

ROTB Optimus Primal’s wiki picture

 

Now, when it comes to Beast Wars characters, I do not consider myself to be especially familiar. Beast Wars was outside of my nostalgia window, I did watch a lot of Beast Machines on cable, if that counts, and I was mentally elsewhere during Kingdom. But I think I have a pertinent observation to make regarding Optimus Primal. He works best if he's allowed to be fun on occasion. Both as a character and in plastic. As his name implies, originally he was intended to be your basic Optimus Prime archetype, but the Beast Wars cartoon made him a totally different chap, a freighter captain with much less baggage and actual room to grow. And potentially be funny in a way Prime hadn't been allowed to be since the 1986 film. This was important, as when you get right down it, he's a humanoid robot that turns into a humanoid animal, which is kinda underwhelming as transformations go. So the toy needs to do more than that in order to justify the price. And frankly, if you're not playing the silly monkey card with this guy, at least a little, you are only highlighting the problem. Unfortunately, they treat him very seriously these days. The question becomes then, how fun is Rise Of The Beasts Optimus Primal? As a character, I'd say probably not. Its not a fault of voice talent, I want to stress that, whom I’m a fan of. Ron Perlman has his qualifications as voice actor, as well as a regular actor, has done the character before, and his depiction of Hellboy proves he can do fun. The problem is that the writers seemed to take their lead from the relatively recent Machinma cartoons, which Perlman voiced, rather than the 90s cartoon. This leads me to conclude that the writers were idiots, but this sort of crappy adaption is par for the course for the live action movies. Are the toys fun though? That's an interesting one. Most of the mass market toys tend to be more colourful than the animation models at least, and have more fun focus. Is this core/voyager fun? Let’s find out.

 

This toy is packaged in robot mode, so I'll start there. Its based on early concept art, like a lot of these things are, but it passes the glance test. They went for the mouth-plate look, not my first choice, although the piercing blue eyes make up for it. He's mainly grey shades with metallics for robot bits. Animal bits are textured like fur, although the detail is gets a bit lost with the colour choices. There's an unpainted maximal symbol on the chest, that would have benefited from the highlight. Its not a bad look, but I feel an ink wash would do a lot here. There are also has two buttplates, I just wanted to mention that. Play value isn't bad either, there's two swords with dedicated storage tabs, these are very similar to the 90’s toy above, and a level of articulation matching the Legacy standard. So, its a quite acceptable robot mode, with all the joints it needs for sword poses. A Darth Maul is entirely practical, as is a one-legged pose, and this aspect of the toy did grow on me. It moves well, and certainly isn’t unattractive in its way.

 

Putting Primal into beast mode is a topic of legitimate interest, as there is a spark of actual innovation in a scheme that is likely familiar to Primal fans or otherwise guessable. You open up the chest by moving aside two sets of panels, to reveal a block that you pull out and rotate to switch the heads. You then, and this is the clever bit, you close the panels in reverse order, completely changing the look of the torso, a nice touch. Stowing the robot mode feet is less elegant, I find these are tricky to pull out after, and the arms do basically nothing. And the resulting ape? Well, its got much of the same strengths and weaknesses as the robot form. Its just its crouched down, and the articulation in the legs is hampered as a result, and you can’t really move them much without breaking the illusion. The head sculpt is nice, good blue eyes again, and the organic elements are more noticeable, if still downplayed by the greys, but its largely the same experience. And that's adequate given what the toy is based off, but its not much more than that.

 

Adequate is probably the best word to describe this Optimus Primal toy. Its doing the basics with competency, but unlike that Prime, I can't say its punching above its weight. It needed something a little more to justify its original £30 price tag. Maybe different hands for beast mode, more accessories, more paint, a bunch of bananas, I dunno, something. Granted, they are presumably aiming for superficially-screen-accurate-non-gimmick-toy with this, and he's certainly OK by those metrics, but the basic design hits the fundamental issues I discussed above. If your source material is a grey robot whom turns into a grey gorilla, and doesn't have a hugely memorable screen presence, you aren't starting from the best position. It exists, and it was £12. I think I got my money's worth.

To close things out, here's a nice picture of Ron Perlman I found.