Surprisingly, FAB Optimus Prime is NOT a repaint or slightly remold of the original movie FAB, but a brand-new mold! In vehicle mode, as you'd expect, he's the same flaming movie truck you've come to expect, with the traditional blue/red/silver/gray color scheme that is quintessentially Prime. He has quite a good number of paint apps on the front half of this mode-- some nice metallic blue-silver windows, painted flames, all the parts that need to be silver are painted that color-- but he really needs a few more paint apps on his back end-- particularly the smokestacks and part of the back end. A couple of tiny flame paint apps just ain't enough. As far as proportions go, they're better here than on the first FAB-- he looks much more like an actual realistic truck, but there's still a few irregularities. Namely, the middle part is elongated a bit for the same of the transformation, with rear bit a little short. As far as visible robot mode kibble, for the most part this is a pretty solid mode, but his upper robot legs can be seen below the mid-section of this mode when seen from a side profile, and part of the robot feet stick out the back end.
    Optimus Prime's robot mode looks quite good, particularly for a FAB. There's some definite vehicle mode kibble behind his shoulders, but for the most part they stay out of the way so they're not that big of a deal. It certainly doesn't look as bad as the original FAB's back end of the truck right up against his head. Parts of the side panels are hanging on the INSIDE of Optimus' arms, though, which is really awkward and hinders articulation. (Speaking of articulation, he can move at the neck, shoulders, knees, hips, knees, and ankles, though only the hips and shoulders are on ball joints-- the elbows in particular are rather limited.) One thing that is really noticeably is that Prime's detailing is considerably less "kiddy"-looking and more defined, with some pretty good detailing on the head and chest, in particular. No soft-looking head, here. The paint detailing on the chest and head is also quite good as well, though as far as the robot parts go he definitely could use some more on his arms and legs. Prime also has some pretty cool gimmicks-- swords can flip out on not just one but BOTH arms, AND you can also flip out a spring-loaded missile launcher on his right arm (though it can't be deployed at the same time as the sword). The buttons to flip forward the swords are far too easy to press though, being right on top of the lower arms and rather sensitive, so that's pretty annoying.
    The new FAB Prime is a definite improvement over the original, with a fairly good alt mode and and a very nice robot mode, minus the back kibble. His gimmicks are also quite cool for the size, particularly the missile launcher. The only area that he loses in comparison to the original FAB Prime is in articulation (particularly in the arms). Mildly recommended if you don't want a complicated Movie Prime toy-- one of the best FAB molds there is.

Review by Beastbot

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