Animated Universe Optimus Prime Looks great, less stable
Transformers Legacy Evolution Voyager
Item No.: Asst. F2991 No. F8542 Manufacturer:Hasbro Includes:Axe with telescoping handle, lightbar Action Feature:Transforms from robot to fire truck Retail:$34.99 Availability: December 2023 Other: A Prime Update
Sometimes a toy can be designed well, sculpted nicely, and undergo a massive stylistic transformation and turn out to not be fun for surprising reasons. Animated Universe Optimus Prime makes for a great robot figure with lots of articulation and a nice accessory, and a perfectly good truck mode with wheels that spin better than average. It's a little less stylized than the actual Animated toy, plus you get more wheels and more joints, but the transformation I found to be deeply unpleasant - parts kept coming off. The figure has so many joints and filled gaps that I assume the budget came for the joints, and it's really easy to pop off the torso or a hand through normal play. It's something I really don't like in my toys, but if this is will be a display piece you never transform, you won't notice.
When I opened the toy, I left it in robot mode for a few hours - posing him is fun, he looks great. I love the colors, I love the little yellow lights in the black of his chest look like I remembered, I appreciate the pop-on light bar, and just overall it does a good job capturing the spirit of the cartoon's very specific design cues and translates them to "Not Quite G1." Most elements are molded in color, resulting in a more unified appearance. He lacks the face mask, but does have the blue face with the mouth.
He holds his gear well, and can even sling the axe on his back. It has a telescoping handle, but may struggle to hold it with both hands. It's not impossible, but the shoulders do require some fussing to make it work. It's also quite a nice axe, with a clear blue blade and a 5mm port in back so you can use the blast effects you may have laying around to give it some visual "oomph" in a diorama. They designed this to look cool and display nicely - and for those whining it's not the same as the original, it's a different thing and you can still get the original toy if you want it. I would have loved a slide-up mask, but it's a chunky robot for the asking price and I appreciate that.
Changing Optimus Prime is not fun. I had to massage a lot of panels at the end, parts kept popping off, and the feet over the back of the truck look gnarly. It's a decent animated-ish truck, though, I just strongly dislike getting it configured into that position. I can appreciate "puzzle play" but once things pop apart at the torso I just start getting cranky.
The truck is fine, there aren't a lot of play features and it carries the very specific Optimus Animated chest over well. The wheels spin surprisingly well, the colors are nice, and while it lacks some of the panels to give the cab some more heft I can't complain too much. It looks like an Optimus Prime truck, minus a lot of fun play features. That's typical for most modern toys - if the budget didn't go ta articulation or deco, it went to accessories, and there's nothing wacky or weird here to appreciate/get in the way of posing the figure on a shelf with its arms by its sides.
I didn't see this guy sit around a lot, which is good - you want your Optimus toys to sell, and the price is fine. I think I would be pretty upset if I paid an inflated secondary market price in the future to find parts pop off when you twist the joints in instruction-specified ways, but in that way I am a child. I want it to work right, I don't want to make modifications for it to work right, but maybe you would prefer something another toy can rip to shreds in a diorama or something. I don't mind the changes made to the design for this line, I like the articulation, and I love the axe accessory - but I'm hesitant to recommend it only because of the parts that tend to pop off, and a few joints that make me feel like I'm about to break something during transformation. If you get it, be careful with this one.
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