Optimus Prime's "Beast Hunters" upgrade takes him from your regular run-of-the-mill truck cab and makes him into a large, rectangular monster truck o' doom. In vehicle mode, the general silohuette of the vehicle mode isn't that bad; it's the details that are off. For one, in the middle section of this mode, Optimus' robot fists are very obvious, and the hollow nature of the lower arm pieces don't make that section of the body of the truck all that convincing. The back end is also just a "cage" of sorts that's also hollow and not at all what Optimus' model on the show looks like back there. His feet are also quite obvious on the backside, as are his upper legs on the bottom middle section if you're looking at the toy from a diagonal or side view. To top it all off, looking at him from a rear view, you can see the obvious split down the middle of the bottom of the back end of the truck mode, since they become his robot legs. That's a LOT of robot extras that are pretty hard to ignore. On the plus side, Optimus has two different weapons for this mode, which both plug into the sides of the rear "cage" in this mode; a push-missile launcher and a sword that's supposed to be the Star Saber, though it's a bit puny proportionally and-- being made of solid gray milky plastic like it is-- isn't colored like the Star Saber, either. The large monster truck wheels with silver on the hubs look great, and the front section of the truck is dead solid-- I love all the stylized mold detailing on the angular windows and "teeth" on the front bumper, they really make Optimus look like he means business this time around. All the little headlights and windows are painted gold and black, respectively, and look great next to the other colors and mold detailing, which even includes rivets on armor plating over his windows. (This bring the Prime aesthetic, though, there are places where there's relatively little mold detailing, such as the roof of this mode.) As for Optimus' overall color scheme, it's classic Optimus-- red, dark blue, black, and milky gray. There aren't any significant variations from Optimus' traditional colors even in the shade of said colors, so you probably know well by now how much you like/dislike Optimus' general color scheme. All of the paint apps are concentrated on the front-- the aforementioned windows and headlights and such-- with the wheel hubs being the only real paint on the back end of this vehicle, which leads to large unpainted sections of red and especially dark blue. I think this was a bit of an oversight, myself.
    Optimus' robot mode is definitely what the toy's primary design aim was. He's definitely "hulked out" in this form, with a relatively small head and a wide chest, lower arms, and lower legs. The truck front and bumper make for an excellent chest and waist, and the way the "cage" parts of the vehicle mode fold around the legs is fairly intuitive and a nice touch, as is the way his midsection swivels around the chest in what is otherwise a very conventional transformation. Optimus' arms are whare I end up not liking this mode-- his shoulders pieces aren't show-accurate with the large wheels on the top, and they're at an odd angle that makes you not quite sure whether they're supposed to be his upper arms or shoulders. His lower arms are also a bit overly bulky, what with the smokestack vehicle bits on the inside edge of them, which interferes with poseability a bit and just looks off. Plus, even though Optimus' head is admittedly supposed to be small proportionally, he's a bit TOO much of a pinhead here, and his head is relatively flat. Combine this with the oddly "slightly-off" look to his headsculpt mold detailing, and I end up just not liking the head, here. Optimus' articulation in this mode is quite decent, however; he can move at the neck (up and down only), and at the shoulders (at two points), elbows, hips, knees, and slightly at the toes. Most of these are on ball joints, and he's pretty stable and evenly balanced, so for a Commander-class figure you can get him into some pretty nice poses, odd lower arm width aside. (The waist-bumper can also move up and down a bit to accomodate his hip articulation.) Optimus can hold his weapons in either of his fist holes in this mode, or in other holes on the inside edge of his lower arms-- though if you plug his weapons into the latter, it's a bit of an odd placement and not all weapons can fit in there, due to the sculpting around those ports.
    Beast Hunters Optimus Prime is a nice design overall, but I think Hasbro largely dropped the ball on the small version of him. His truck mode has an unacceptable number of robot mode extras comprising almost the entire back two-thirds or so of that mode, and although Optimus looks considerably better in robot mode, his odd arms and pinhead are still notable downsides. Out of all the toys of the design, this is my least favorite mold in my least favorite color scheme out of the different releases of said mold (just being "vanilla" Optimus colors). If you absolutely can't budget in a voyager-class figure or larger, this is an okay substitute-- but otherwise, I'd definitely recommend picking up one of the voyager versions of this design instead.

Review by Beastbot

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