Optimus
Prime (Activator; DotM)
Optimus Prime's vehicle
mode is a bit "kiddie-fied" for his Activators version-- which is appropriate,
given the age that this subline is targeted at-- but it's actually not
done to such a huge extent that it REALLY looks overly chubby-- the main
differences are that the difference in height from the front hood to the
roof is much less, and the truck bed is much higher and shorter than on
a more movie-accurate rendition of this mode. Optimus Prime's colors are
represented quite well on this toy, though, with the shades of dark blue
and red in particular being rather pleasing to the eye, and contrasting
well with each other. There's also plenty of paint apps, including a lot
of silver and a nice shade of light sky blue that works well as an accent
color on the windows and the rear transformation button piece. The mold
detailing-- as befits the subline-- is a bit on the scarce side, though
there's rivets still molded everywhere, which is a surprising (and appreciated)
little detail.
As with all Dark of
the Moon Activators, Optimus Prime is simply transformed by pushing in
on the big button (in this case light blue) on the rear side of his vehicle
mode and standing him up. The front halves of his truck mode separate out
to become his arms, his head pushes up a bit, and part of his roof folds
back to become mold detailing of his legs on the front of the "stump" you
stand him up on. The actual core of the body here looks pretty good-- there's
a lot of nice detailing there, both in terms of mold and paint, and his
eyes are made a bit larger on this version to make him a TAD more "cutesy",
but without going so far as to make him look ridiculously so. Definitely
the weakest parts of this mode are that his hands are merely molded onto
the inside of the huge truck-halves-- in the vast majority of poses you
can't even easily see them, really. His shoulders can only move back-and-forth
as well, in terms of articulation-- standard for the subline, but still
awful regardless. Having his feet merely molded into the bottom front of
his main body stump-- and not QUITE at the bottom, mind you, as you can
still see a bit of the back end of the vehicle mode beneath them-- also
looks pretty bad. The leg molding could've used some paint detailing to
make it more obvious, at the very least.
Activators Optimus Prime
is one of the weaker molds of the subline, primarily because his vehicle
mode leads to his shoulders being really overly bulky, and his truck mode
doesn't match the deformed look of the subline as well as, say, a sportscar
does. That said, his color scheme is pretty well-done, and he's got plenty
of paint apps, but that does not a good toy make. If you want to get a
little kid a version of Optimus Prime that's fun to play with, I'd go with
the DotM Go-Bot version instead.
Review by Beastbot