Optimus
Prime (Battle Charger)
Optimus Prime's a red-and-blue
truck with a flame deco job on the front. You know the drill here, for
the most part. However, on the Battle Charger version, the red is oddly
a few shades too light. Even though it contrasts well with the dark blue
(which is an excellent shade, by the by), it just doesn't look right. Too...
flat, I guess would be the word for it. It doesn't have the slightest "metallic"
glittery quality or anything, it's a very prototypish type of plastic.
The flame deco for both red and blue look quite good against their respective
colors, however, and the metallic silvery blue is a standard --but nice--
shade for the truck windows. As you'd expect for a toy aimed at such young
kids as this line, Prime's detailing is relatively sparse, though on a
few parts it's quite detailed, like the front grill (with tons of little
"bolts" molded into it) and the rear part of the truck mode. However, I
have one major beef about this mode, and it should be obvious from looking
at the image of it above-- even considering the "kiddy" nature of the line,
the proportions are ridiculously squashed to give it roughly the same dimensions
as the other Battle Chargers. The roof is ridiculously low, the windows
too small, and there's practically no truck bed because of this. (Or, conversely,
the bottom two-thirds of the vehicle mode is way too big proportionally.)
It's very weird-looking.
The whole Battle Charger
gimmick has to do with pulling the toy back and letting it go-- it'll travel
forward for a while, and if it bumps into a wall (or if you just press
in on the front bumper), the upper part of the car will rotate around,
revealing the upper half of Optimus Prime's robot mode. In the interest
of kid-friendliness, though, the head and hands are bigger proportionally
(or the chest and upper arms smaller proportionally, take your pick). There's
prety good mold and paint detailing on the head-- though the larger eyes
on Prime looks... weird-- but compared to the other Battle Chargers, Prime's
upepr body and arms are somewhat bereft of mold detailing. His arms are
particularly simplistic in this regard, though making his right hand a
cannon helps to give the design a bit more originality in its look here.
As far as articulation goes, like other Battle Chargers, due to the transformation
Optimus can move his lower arms in a little and his head down a little,
but they immediately spring back to their default position once you let
go. Of course, given the target audience, this isn't much of a concern.
I understand that the
Battle Charger line is aimed at the youngest of Transfans, but even accepting
that, Optimus Prime is the worst mold of this small subline, mostly due
to his proportions in truck mode being squashed around so much that I wonder
if some kids would even be able to properly identify the vehicle! The shade
of red plastic is kinda blah, too.
Review by Beastbot