To my pleasant surprise, I found Titanium Scourge and Optimal Optimus last Friday at TRU. Needless to say, I grabbed them on the spot, along with a free Scrapmetal, and ran like hell for the checkouts. (figuratively speaking that is)

 

I'll start with Scourge.

 

First off, they found a way to get even WORSE with twist ties! :wtf They were pretty tightly wound and in places hard to get to to cut making it a real pain to free. Upon doing so, I discovered that the legs do pop off rather easily, but on a scale quite as bad as Prime and megs. They are ball jointed, but not real loose or real tight.

 

While overall he looks nice, he's better off as a display piece. Seeing this is par for the course that's not so bad. His arms are pretty weak. The elbows bend, but only a little and pop off if you push them too far. They can also lift to the side from the shoulder and up and down. No swivels at all so they only move around in a rather clunky way.

 

His legs are a little better, but don't really move around enough to allow for any real dynamic poses. At the hips you can only move them in one direction at a time, either forward and back, or side to side. In order to switch, you have to rotate the upper leg. I never cared much for this design, a swivel with the ratchet joint to allow a more free movement should be on every figure by now IMO.

 

 

To transform him, it's a no brainer. Twist the legs to the side and out a bit, fold the feet up and plug them together to form the tip of his alt mode, put his arms at his side, flip the head down, and close the "cape"...that's it. Takes about 10 seconds....and that's if you take your time.

 

His alt mode is right on. Maybe a bit wider than I'd like, but not enough to really take anything away from it. The only real flaw here is that his seams want to come apart (kinda like how E-Slugslinger did, only not as bad), that seems to be more of a product of the weight of the metal though rather than any design flaws.

 

Being the generous fan that I am, I'll give him 3 out of 5 stars. Just having a nice representation of g1 Scourge that transforms and LOOKS good in both modes is good enough for me. I mean, he'll spend 99% of the time on the shelf anyway, so his flaws aren't as big of a deal to me as they will to others. If you're looking for a figure to play with, this probably isn't it. If you are like me and just like a good solid display piece then this will fit right in.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Be back soon with Optimus.

*prays for Rodimus not to be a QC nightmare*

Optimal Optimus

 

With the original being one of the best of the Beast Wars figures, it makes it pretty much impossible to top and they didn't really try to. Still, we end up with a pretty good little figure.

 

As with Scourge, Optimus suffers from being tied in by tight, hard to get through twist ties. I HATE twist ties!!! :grr

 

Anyway...Optimus comes in bot mode, which is obviously vastly different from his jumbo sized BW figure. No pop off armor, different forearms, and no monkey mode. His articulation is a huge improvement from Scourge. his arms and shoulders allow for a wide range in movement and his legs are much more capable of supporting a more dynamic pose. He's also got the two cannons that flip out from over the shoulder to give him some firepower.

 

The drawbacks are that his forarms are a bit loose, but they are light so it doesn't really keep from posing. Also his hands are in a static open position with 2 huge pegs in the palms that are used for clipping into the wheel in vehicle mode. Not too attractive, but I suppose a necessary evil.

 

Transformation is also rather simplistiic. All you do is push the legs in, clip them together, flip the wheels on the legs around, pull back the waist, flip down his head, pull out the canopy, unfold the front wheel, position the arms, clip the hands to the wheel and you have his ground vehicle mode.

 

This is nothing special, I quite honestly never cared for it. You kinda gotta play around with the positioning of various parts to get him just right.

 

From there you just unclip the hands from the wheel, straighten out his arms, fold the front wheel down under the canopy and unfold the wings and you have the jet mode. Another 10 second transformation scheme, but still quite fun.

 

Overall I give him a 4 out of 5 stars. I could have given him 5 but not with big ass pegs sticking out of his hands like that. He's a very nice little figure and even one I'd say CAN be played with. He's solid and nothing falls off. (at least nothing with mine has) So I'd say he's a good figure for collectors of all interests.

Get a GIANT pair of nail clippers. Folded up, they should be the size of your index finger. If you're small, then bigger than your index finger. (I'm 6'2".) Then clip away at the twisty ties from above the figure. Comes out in no time flat.

I was just going to say, get yourself some diagonal cutters. Nail clippers will get worn down over time. No fuss, no muss.

 

I just use some badass scissors. And I'm not feeling OpOp.

a primal with out a monkey(or beast) mode is flawed from the start IMO maybe some one could make a BM megs out of him

I was just going to say, get yourself some diagonal cutters. Nail clippers will get worn down over time. No fuss, no muss.

 

 

 

I do clip them, but sometimes they get them down deep in the jointed area, and in this case the plastic tray it's in kept me from being able to get the clippers in to where the twist tie was. I clipped it from the back but it was twisted again between the back and the inner plastic, which I almost had to tear apart to get it, but I finally managed to get it clipped...it just wasn't easy.

 

I used the file on the clippers to dig the twist tie out away further so I could get it. On the first few tries, the file acually bent a little, that's how tight they were.

 

I don't like to tear apart the boxes or inserts, otherwise I wouldn't say anything.

a primal with out a monkey(or beast) mode is flawed from the start IMO maybe some one could make a BM megs out of him

First of all: YES MAYBE HASBRO COULD DO THAT PLZ

 

secondly, I don't really miss the lack of a beast mode since he only used it like once. The big deal with OpOp story-wise was that he had vehicular alt modes, so I'm fine if that's what they focus on.

I hope these guys show up soon... But I could really dig a BM Megs redo out of Optimal.