(NOTE: Because this is a repaint, this is not a full-blown review. This mainly covers any changes made to the mold and the color scheme, and merely compares it to the "Thrilling 30th" Generations Orion Pax toy. For a review on the mold itself, read the review of the "Thrilling 30th" Generations Orion Pax toy here.)

    Nova Prime was an imperialist/expansionist Prime from IDW's "ancient history" of Transformers, and has come back in the comics now and then. He's never had an official toy made, so this is Fun Pub's attempt, using the Orion Pax mold. Taken by itself, this is a fairly good color scheme-- white and black are definitely the main colors, but there's a fair amount of transparent blue (on the windows and axe) and gold paint apps here and there to vary up things from being a monochrome scheme. The best part of this paint job-- and the one that hearkens the most to Nova Prime's form in the IDW comics-- are the black-and-gold "feathers" behind the body of the truck/on the lower robot arms, as they look remarkably like IDW Nova's bird wings. The blue plastic also goes great with either the white or the black, and is a nice "in-between" color for the toy. The various gold paint apps- used in small amounts on the feathers, robot toes, robot waist, and a few other areas-- also work pretty nicely. As far as more minor, accent colors, there's some silver on the wheel hubs and inside the transparent chest (which looks quite good, with a nice blue paint in the center of the silver "engine bits" surrounding an Autobot symbol). There's also a titch of yellow on the lower arms and headlights that doesn't contrast against the white enough, but on the other hand there's a really nice shade of dark metallic blue on the front grill and robot waist that I wish was used more on the toy. All in all though, given that he's the same mold as the "freebie" exclusive for the year Lio Convoy and has a fairly similar color scheme, one can't help but see a bit too much of the former in Nova Prime. To be fair Fun Pub DOES do a fair bit of paint app differentation, with considerably more black on Nova Prime and the colors "varied up" from one toy compared to the other, and Nova Prime does have a pretty decent number of paint apps. But there just needed to be more feathers, given how big of a deal that was with Nova Prime's IDW aesthetic-- just a few bits on the back of the truck doesn't really cut it.
    Nova Prime has the same headsculpt as Lio Convoy, but painted to fit him better, with a black faceplate and antennae, yellow on his forehead vent, and some nice blue eyes. It works mighty well as Nova Prime's head, though like Lio Convoy, the side antennae are a bit too small because of space restrictions for the head in alt mode. Otherwise, no complaints.
    Nova Prime is a nice try from Fun Pub, but ultimately falls short of his fellow exclusive Lio Convoy-- who is also the "freebie" membership exclusive-- from the same year. The paint apps are nice, the color scheme isn't bad, and the mold is excellent, but without some big add-on to give the toy wings, it just doesn't feel enough like Nova Prime. I realize that this was likely beyond FunPub's capability to do, but in my opinion that means they shouldn't have bothered. It only works as a sort of "Nova before he was Prime" downgrade version, so I'd only recommend spending the exclusive $$ to get this guy if you particularly want that specific version of the character.

Review by Beastbot

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