Allegiance: Autobot
Size: Ultimate
Price: $100 (U.S.)
Difficulty of Transformation from Vehicle to Robot: Medium
Difficulty of Transformation from Robot to Super Robot: Hard
Color Scheme: Light milky gray, dark blue, light red, light brown, dark brownish maroon, metallic gold, and some dark metallic blue, transparent blue, black, clear plastic, silver, light electric blue, light brownish tan, pale light yellow, and metallic copper
Rating: 7.7

(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 original DotM Ultimate Optimus Prime toy. For a review on the mold itself, read the review of the original DotM Ultimate Optimus Prime toy here.)

    For this special "Year of the Dragon" release, the "core" robot of Optimus Prime has barely changed at all; in fact, the only change at all is that the front grill of the truck is now light red instead of light milky gray. In this instance I prefer the milky gray, myself, given that the light red front has no paint and without some silver or something on it, having the front be all red just looks weird. That's all small potatoes, though, compared to the trailer, which has gotten the REAL color overhaul, here. Most obviously, the trailer is almost entirely red in trailer mode now, with a rather decorative Chinese gold dragon symbol painted on each side. It looks mighty cool, and making the Autobot symbols on the side a duller maroon color works nicely with all the new red on the figure. In the combined "Super Robot" mode, Optimus obviously gains all that light red onto his trailer wings, though the dark blue plastic-- and many other colors and paint apps, like the black and dark blue/light red paint apps-- still remain in the same places on the super robot parts when compared to the mass release of Ultimate Optimus Prime. The main color differences here are two-fold: First, a lot of the light milky gray parts have been replaced with a rather nice-looking shade of dark brownish maroon, which really goes with the red (and particularly the blue) quite well, and considerably better than the light gray did. The darker gray plastic has largely been replaced with a light brownish tan that's a bit more metallic-looking than that found on some of the smaller connector pieces on the "core" Optimus Prime toy, and thus looks a bit better. Like the maroon, I prefer it over the gray plastic it's replacing quite a bit, and it helps make the overall scheme look a bit more "fiery" and ashen-- which, of course, fits the theme of this redeco.
    No mold changes have been made to Year of the Dragon Optimus Prime; he also has the same electronic sound effects and lights as the original Ultimate Optimus Prime toy, too.

    If you already have the original Ultimate Optimus Prime toy, then unless you're a Prime toy completist, the "Year of the Dragon" Edition is an easy pass. Given the noticeable markup and the fact that the "core" robot has so little changed, it just isn't worth it. However, if you're looking for which version to get, then if you can find this version at a comparable price to the original I'd recommend this one more, given the more interesting placement of the red, maroon, and light brown plastic compared to a bunch of milky gray. I really do wish that they had applied similar changes to the "core" toy that they applied to Prime's trailer, though, as that might have made this repaint a bit more worthy of pickup...

Review by Beastbot

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