REVIEW: TRANSFORMERS: ANIMATED VOYAGER CLASS OPTIMUS PRIME

 

 

Ah, Animated. Animated, Animated, Animated. How I did love you so.

 

TFA rocked me like few things in my life had ever rocked me before. In fact, one would have to go all the way back to 1984 and relive the debut of the Transformers proper to an American audience to find the last time my world had been so rocked. TFA was an oasis in an increasingly Bay-centric desert. Like few things before or since, it put the smile back on my face and re-instilled that childlike sense of wonder (I did love G1 Fireflight) that I had not truly felt since G1. All of a sudden, Transformers were fun again…but also startingly well-written to boot. There were flashes of this in G1 (especially parts of Season 3), and Beast Wars was incredibly well-written and conceived…but there was just something about Animated that set it forever apart from everything else: the fun and that childlike sense of wonder.

 

I’ll come clean. I was never a fan of Optimus Prime, and I’ll tell you why. I was singularly uninterested in seeing the trials and tribulations of a leader who was already revered, already wise, already a deified figure before his time. It didn’t interest me. I wanted to see the story behind the story…how he got to be that way. Which brings me to one of my favorite G1 characters: Rodimus Prime. I loved Rod. He was unsure of himself, he was trying but…he was in the shadow of Optimus Prime. How do you fill those boots? It’s an issue more people are apt to be familiar with than the issue Optimus felt, where even your enemies respected the very utterance of your name and all your comrades loved and respected you. In short, I just wanted to see the story of how a great and wise being came to be so great and wise.

 

…and then, along came Transformers: Animated. Channeling a ton of Rodimus Prime into their vision of Optimus Prime (I’m convinced of this), they told the story I’d always wanted to see: an Optimus Prime that was NOT great. NOT revered. Still finding his way in the world and struggling with the ins-and –outs of leadership. This Prime was a washout Elite Guard trainee. Something of disappointment to at least one of his superiors. Oh, this was ripe for storytelling gold..! And TFA struck that vein, over and over again. Transformers: Animated made me love Optimus Prime. But then, that was part of what made Animated special as well: reacquainting you with old favorites and making you love them all over again. In many ways, outside of (obviously) G1 Optimus, this Optimus is my personal canon.

 

As everyone knows by now, the Animated aesthetic called on heavily exaggerated, cartoonish proportions. This extends somewhat to the vehicle modes. In the world of Animated, Optimus Prime’s alternate mode—that of an Earth fire truck cab—falls on the Blitzwing side of the fence, where it is slightly more cartoonish than realistic. But then, in fairness: the fire truck was meant to be attached to a trailer (which apparently would have happened had there been a Season 4 of TFA), so we are not dealing with a complete product given the TFA mythos. With that said, the truck is nice and solid and rolls well. It is dominated by 3 aspects; 1) the forward-sloping cab; 2) the oversized front bumper and 3) the elongated rear of the truck, which are clearly the base mode boots. There is a strobe rack on top of the cab done in translucent blue plastic, fog lights, an unpainted area clearly meant to be the side windows and unpainted clearance lights. The unpainted areas don’t bother me much…I tend to think of TFA, Bayverse, Generations, etc.,etc. as unfinished model kits anyway. The shape of the truck is somewhat cartoonish, but…the truck is show accurate and has a foam cannon (which doubles as a working water pistol!!!) and a rudimentary trailer, which can form a crude battle axe.

 

The truck is kind of nice. It is rather solid, there’s no floppiness as the peg system works well. He also looks almost exactly like what he should look like, so that scores points. It is also a versatile mold, as it (apparently) easily adapts 3rd party accessory sets. I’d have to give this mode an 8.5.

 

Animated transformations tend to be economical, innovative and fun. Optimus’ transformation is much more economical than anything else, though. If you’ve ever transformed G1 Optimus Prime, then most of what happens here should be familiar. For starters, you have to simultaneously free up the upper body and get the groin and legs into their proper orientation. To this end, you unclip the front of the bumper and pull this—along with the entire front wheel assembly—apart, extending it all the way out to the sides. This toy comes with a sort of “automorph” feature (a “gravity spin” auto-transform feature) that involves pressing the lever molded in black plastic on the back of the cab. This will deploy the waist and auto-spin the legs into place. The gravity-spin on mine barely works, so you can do this all by hand easily enough. From here, make certain that the blue groin clicks into the silver grill area to form the lower torso, or your Prime will pull a Chubby Checker on you and do The Twist. Extend the legs, revealing the thighs (cast in grey PVC plastic).Swing the rear wheels into the recessed area in the back of the base mode boots. Unpeg the legs, and flip the rear bumpers of the truck up to form the feet. Flip the two ends of the bumper that articulate with each other down, and then fold the bumper/wheel assembly up on its hinge joint while also folding the whole assembly into the boots so that it lines up parallel with them. There are two sets of dedicated pegs to secure the bumper/wheel assembly to the legs: a peg behind the front wheels will peg into the ankles, and each articulated section of bumper has a peg that will slot into the uppermost rear section of the boots.

 

With the legs and lower torso done, you’ll note the two black tabs that sit underneath the foglights and frame the grill. Flip those out. From there, flip out the entire adjoining black section, and you’ll see the bot mode fists. Flip those out, and peg them into the black pegs on the black tabs you swung out earlier. From there—in a standard G1 Optimus transformation sequence—the rearmost sides of the cab swing out from their pegs to form the shoulders. Swing down the forearms to complete this process.

 

There are two hinge joints that connect the strobe rack to the cab and conceal the head. Unpeg the strobe rack and swing the whole arrangement back to provide clearance to swing the head up and rotate it at the base of the neck so the head faces forward. Fold the entire strobe assembly up so the two tabs located at the midway point peg into the upper back just below the neck. Then fold the upper strobe section down so that it rests on his back and voila..! You are finished.

 

I will tell anyone that is listening that this is one of the very best Optimus Prime toys I have ever seen. Noting the superb quality that Optimus Prime toys tend to have, that is saying something. Transformers: Animated was originally intended to be called Transformers: Heroes, and it is evident why here. Optimus Prime looks the part of a true-blue superhero. The neck is stocky, the shoulders broad, the arms and hands well-defined and powerful, the chest massive, the waist narrow, the grill simulates the abdominal muscle complex, the thighs are narrow, the boots and feet massive. This is where TFA Optimus Prime shines. Show accuracy is almost perfect, with the only true issues being small unpainted details (like the clearance lights, which should be yellow), the biceps are black where they should be red and the silver shoulder stripes are not screen-accurate. There is also the fact that the whole front bumper is now wrapped around his boots. But these are non-issues. Non-issues. I could part with every Optimus Prime figure I own outside of this one, G1 Prime and MP Prime. The TFA voyager is just that special. In fact, the only thing that it is missing is an Autobot sigil on the left shoulder—easily fixed with the aid of the friendly folks at Reprolabels.

 

All TF figures wherein the designers cannot find a realistic way to stow alt-mode kibble should take heed of TFA Voyager Optimus and learn. The bumper lined up on his boots represents kibble, but its’s so well integrated that it actually becomes a feature—in spite of the fact that it’s not show accurate. It adds to his look, and makes him look even more powerful.

 

Thanks to the nature of the ‘bot mode feet, Prime stands very well, and is capable of some dynamic poses. Like others before me have stated, I’d ditch the trailer/axe he came packaged with and utilize the solitarium ultra-axe that came with the TFA Prime/Megs “Battle Begins” two-pack—unless you were fortunate enough to get the third-party axe that came out a while back.

 

Animated figures in general are high on poseability and personality, and Optimus makes no exceptions. He has complete rotation at the waist, full rotation at the shoulder, full rotation and flexion at the elbow, the legs rotate at the knee, the feet swivel up and down (as part of the transformation, to be sure, but it is also readily employed to increase stability for posing; in fact, all this toy needs is a swivel joint in place of [or in addition to] the ratchet joints connected the thighs to the groin to make it a flawless poser), the head offers full rotation and a gimmick: pressing up or down on the lever on the back of his neck will engage or disengage his battle mask! The lightpipe is very effective, and as stated before he comes with a water pistol. You won’t set distance records with it, but it does work.

 

This is truly an amazing figure, and put across what Animated was all about: fun, poseable toys that maintained good to great accuracy with respect to their animation models with fun transformations and cool gimmicks that put the FUN back into Transformers. The base mode gets a 10, as it is as good as it gets. It’s a little late in the game, but hey: if you haven’t procured this guy, then you should—by any means necessary—get him. This toy is that good.

You know, your review of Optimus as a Character at the beginning really resonates with me, because it mirrors the way I'd been feeling about him for quite a while before animated came around.

 

When I was a kid, Optimus Prime was my favorite transformer ever. I have a G2 Optimus Prime that got played with so much it is practically in pieces sitting on a shelf in my room that testifies to this.

But as I grew up I began to realize that, as cool as Prime is, he's such a... simple character; almost to the point of being 2-dimensional at times.

 

And then when G1 finally returned through the Dreamwave comics; I found myself far more interested in Megatron as a character. Optimus was still cool, but... not nearly as compelling as this tyrant who hated humanity not because they were weak, but because they were selfish vermin; a plague that it would do well to eradicate. But Prime... was still in many ways Prime.

 

And then there was the Unicron years, and then rumblings of the coming movie and the Animated show, and I didn't really know what to think. I didn't get Cartoon Network and I didn't get the art style at the time, so I went with what was easiest for me to understand the '07 Movie, which I loved at the time... Prime was suddenly cool again.

I guess his awkwardness with Earth Culture and bizarre use of colloquialisms kind of helped with that, but guess what? He was still Prime.

 

And then Rotf Came out, murdering my opinion of the movie universe in one fell swoop. In my dejectedness I decided to give Animated a try, it certainly couldn't get worse, could it?

 

In so doing I discovered my favorite Transformer Series, and and my favorite Optimus Prime, for all the reasons you listed. He's like a regular guy just trying to get by and learn how to be "Optimus Prime". It's Brilliant, amazing!

 

I'm just sad I didn't find it till it was already going out of style. :/

 

Anyway, sorry for giving you my life story! Great review again! :thumb

You know, your review of Optimus as a Character at the beginning really resonates with me, because it mirrors the way I'd been feeling about him for quite a while before animated came around.

 

When I was a kid, Optimus Prime was my favorite transformer ever. I have a G2 Optimus Prime that got played with so much it is practically in pieces sitting on a shelf in my room that testifies to this.

But as I grew up I began to realize that, as cool as Prime is, he's such a... simple character; almost to the point of being 2-dimensional at times.

 

And then when G1 finally returned through the Dreamwave comics; I found myself far more interested in Megatron as a character. Optimus was still cool, but... not nearly as compelling as this tyrant who hated humanity not because they were weak, but because they were selfish vermin; a plague that it would do well to eradicate. But Prime... was still in many ways Prime.

 

And then there was the Unicron years, and then rumblings of the coming movie and the Animated show, and I didn't really know what to think. I didn't get Cartoon Network and I didn't get the art style at the time, so I went with what was easiest for me to understand the '07 Movie, which I loved at the time... Prime was suddenly cool again.

I guess his awkwardness with Earth Culture and bizarre use of colloquialisms kind of helped with that, but guess what? He was still Prime.

 

And then Rotf Came out, murdering my opinion of the movie universe in one fell swoop. In my dejectedness I decided to give Animated a try, it certainly couldn't get worse, could it?

 

In so doing I discovered my favorite Transformer Series, and and my favorite Optimus Prime, for all the reasons you listed. He's like a regular guy just trying to get by and learn how to be "Optimus Prime". It's Brilliant, amazing!

 

I'm just sad I didn't find it till it was already going out of style. :/

 

Anyway, sorry for giving you my life story! Great review again! :thumb

 

 

Thanks for the feedback! I appreciate it.

 

I feel you, man. I actually caught on late too...around the end of Season 1. The first two Animated toys I picked up where Soundwave (what a nifty little guy) and Screamer (for all its faults and QC issues, I do really like this toy). Since then, it's been all Animated.