Optimus Primal

I think I know what I’m talking about when I say the Universe line answered the prayers for some of our fellow Transformers fans. Me included. Back in the early 2000’s when the Universe line was released it was basically an entire line of repaints. Figures from both the American and Japanese Beast Wars series, Car Robots/RID, as well as the Unicron trilogy. If fans missed out on certain figures, that was a good a time as any to play catch up. I certainly did! Those were the good ol’ days where we didn’t have to see 200 different versions of Bumblebee, Optimus Prime, or Grimlock crowding up the store shelves…

Optimus Primal is a repaint of his original Beast Wars mold. Some may think the colors are horrendous but I like them for some reason. Makes him look like a more powerful version of his former self (if you ignore his Transmetal, Transmetal II, and Beast Machines bodies…) Primal is maroon with magenta forearms and green thighs with silver and red war paint on his face while is mouth and nose are flesh coloured. Quite a colorful combination. His body is covered with beautifully sculpted fur detail and his mouth has an angry scowl on it. Even his feet have individual toe nails sculpted on.

If you don’t know or haven’t noticed by now, Optimus transforms into a gorilla and he retains all of his action features. There is a switch on his back that when pressed in it either allows him to beat his chest or it rotates his forearms when he’s holding his weapons in robot mode. To switch between the chest beating and arm twirling there are two small black tabs on his upper arms. Push them both up for one function and back down for the other.

His loose accessories include a morning star/mace, two swords, and four long missiles (not pictured). I would’ve preferred the swords not be one color, but that’s my only gripe about them. They’re a good size and very well detailed.

Transformation to robot mode is simple for a figure this size, fun.

1. Pull down the gorilla head and flip the face around, flip out the shoulders, and flip the feet up.

2. Twist waist around, flip the robot feet down and that’s it.

In robot mode the colour green is added (upper arms) yellow (various spots on the legs), and some silver on the trunk region. On his chest there’s a shape that vaguely resembles the matrix, but there’s no room to put anything there. There are also Autobot symbols on his robot shoulders. Optimus’ robot mode is where all the fun is so get ready. In this form he has several hidden features. The arm function which you previously read about truly shines here.

The first thing you’ll notice when you first transform him is a hideous monster staring back at you. Don’t worry, it’s only his mutant battle mask. Almost all of the first wave of Beast Wars figures had these “mutant” masks. Both Maximals and Predacons. Unfortunately after the first wave the feature was completely omitted and only repaints of some first wave figures still had the feature.

Optimus’ left arms splits open to reveal a dual-barreled missile launcher. On mines the spring is very strong which is a blessing since someone at Hasbro had the bright idea to suggest making non-firing launchers. On the show his arm didn’t split completely open. Only the top of his forearm opened up. The missiles can be stored behind his head when not in use.

Optimus’ right arm opens to reveal a very maniacal (and cool) looking morning star with a skull face. He never
uses this on the show, but his original boxart depicts him with it.

Pressing a small black button on his lower back will make his shoulder launcher pop up. This is something he used constantly in the show. Two small black buttons on top of the launchers fire the missiles. (and quite far I might add). If you knocked the swords loose during transformation, they should fall out. They can either be dual wielded or held in the same hand.

If you’re a fan of the show and remember the episode “Gorilla Warfare” this is the one time in the series that was a perfect opportunity for Primal to not only use his mace weapon, but also the mutant mask feature. With all of his weapons displayed (and the swords on stand-by) I like to call this “assault mode” because that’s exactly what he did in that episode.

If you see any version of this figure I highly suggest you grab it immediately! I’ve seen reviews of the Robot Masters version and even though it’s like half the size of this one, it’s still a nice figure. However, nothing can beat the original. This figure has been repainted several times with one or two “show accurate” retools so there’s bound to be a few lying around somewhere.