Welcome to another Transformers Thursday, where I dig my mitts into a random drawer and pull out a Transformer figure from days gone past. Actually, if you want to know a secret, lately it hasn’t been very random! Today, I was going through some of my Optimus Primseses and I realized that I had yet to give this particular toy his due here on FigureFan Zero. Love them or hate them, the Michael Bay movies are part of the Transformers Universe, and while I’m not here to debate the merits (or lack thereof) of the movies, I can’t deny that at least some good toys have come out of the franchise. There were a ton of different versions of Optimus released in various scales for each of the three movies, but I only ever picked up one of them and that’s the toy we’re looking at today. I’ve had him for a while, there’s no in-package shot, so let’s just jump right in and look at his alt mode.

The movies saw Optimus’ alt mode revamped into a modern day extended cab. I hated it the first time I saw it. I thought the colors were all wrong, the flames were tacky, and he shouldn’t be an extended cab. You can probably only imagine how I feel about this toy. Actually… I freaking love it! It was this toy that eventually sold me on Prime’s new alt mode because it’s just so big and beautiful and majestic. It’s a beast of a vehicle mode, and I can only imagine how incredible it would look with a trailer, but then I remember he didn’t have a trailer until Dark of the Moon. Anyway, the sculpt here is excellent, right down to the little rivets! You get rubber tires and even the tiny Autobot insignia on his hood ornament. It’s a solid truck toy, that dominates the shelf and rolls along great.

I’m still not sold on the flames, but I can’t deny that the paint and deco is beautifully reproduced here. Sure, some vac-metal silver would have looked a lot better than the matte grey plastic, but in the long run, this stuff will last longer without getting chipped and worn. I need only look at my MASK Rhino for proof of that.

Yes! There are even electronics! I was surprised to find that they still work, as most of my electronic Transformers have drained the batteries long ago and I can never be bothered to replace them. There’s a button on the roof, which when depressed lights up the windshields and sounds Optimus’ air horn. I approve! This is a fun and great looking vehicle and one of the few Transformers that I am tempted to always display in his alt mode just because I love it that much. Can the robot mode possibly stack up? Well that depends…

Transforming Prime is rather fidgety, but you would expect that for a Leader Class toy. I used to have a big problem with it, but these days I can switch him back and forth relatively quickly without consulting any instructions, so it’s not too bad. There’s a lot of clever things at work here, like the way the feet auto-morph, the way the back wheels pack onto the legs with additional hinges so you can still pose him, and the way all the rest of the crap packs away on his back to form a backpack. And then there’s the electronic head reveal. Unclip the thing on the bottom of his torso and his chest auto-morphs, his head pops up, the windshields light up, and it plays some cool sounds. It just has that great gee-whiz quality that brings out the kid in me.

So, earlier I said his robot mode demands some qualification. If you’re looking for a great match to the move version of Prime, this isn’t really it. On the other hand, I find it to be an awesome amalgam of G1 and Bayformer characteristics. You can see how they tried to base it on the movie version, but the boxy torso and the bulky arms and legs, give him more of a shoebox G1 design. What some may call this toy’s failing, I celebrate as an amazingly original look that does away with much of that “bionical” feel in favor of something more substantial and familiar. Yes, the deco still shows too many flames for my taste, and yes, vac-metal in place of the grey would have made this guy look even more amazing. But still, I just adore the way this figure looks on my shelf.

Even the head sculpt on this guy strikes me as a more generic Prime than a really good approximation of the movie portrait, and that works for me too. I will say that the absence of any light piping for the eyes seems rather conspicuous. In a Transformer this size, I tend to take that feature for granted, and I think it would have looked great.

That’s not to say he doesn’t have some issues. A lot of stuff wants to come unclipped when you handle him. His hinged shoulders will sometimes open up, the backpack sometimes unpacks, and despite his heavy ratchet joints, his ankles still aren’t always up to the task of holding his great bulk. I’m not entirely sold on the way the knees hover too far out, and you can see in a couple of pictures where his right knee just kept wanting to flop down. You have to flip the knees back into place almost every time you reposition his legs. And while the back wheel assemblies are hinged to allow the knees to bend, you have to fiddle with them separately to make that happen. All gripes aside, though, I still love this guy!

Prime doesn’t have a traditional rifle, but he does have one that folds out and attaches to his right hand. It will deploy automatically as you push the sliding lever on the bottom of his forearm. The gun will fire a missile, but I have no idea what happened to mine. It’s probably become feline contraband behind the sofa in what I like to call The Cat’s Lair.

Hasbro released a new Leader Class version of Prime for Dark of the Moon and as many will point out it looks a lot more like the movie version of Prime than this one does. But then that’s why I never bought it. The truth is, I love this toy as a stand-alone piece, and I would have been a lot happier if Optimus Prime in the movies, and all the Transformers for that matter, looked more like this clunkier beauty than how they turned out. Hasbro certainly never intended it this way, and I’m sure they did the best they could, but I’m glad they weren’t able to nail the likeness, because this figure is awesome and as far as I’m concerned what we got here is so much better than what could have been.