Allegiances: Autobot
Size: Leader
Difficulty of Transformation to Base: Medium
Difficulty of Transformation to Robot: Hard
Color Scheme: Light pale grayish tan, light pale red, dark glittery blue, and some charcoal black, silver, very dark flat navy blue, white, moderately light blue, and very dark metallic blue
Rating: 7.9

    The original Powermaster Optimus Prime toy had "Apex Armor" in the form of the separate character "Godbomber", so this version of PM Prime's Titan Master is named Apex. In robot mode, sculpt-wise he's quite similar to Hi-Q, the little Powermaster partner from G1, in that he has relatively round, "human-in-armor" arms, a face with a visor and minor side antennae, some tiny asymmetric details on the chest, and relatively generic detailing on the legs, with the mold detailing being a bit more "human-like" than blocky. Unfortunately, Apex has no paint detailing whatsoever in this mode, and his color scheme isn't so hot-- the light pale red and rather ugly shade of grayish tan go together... alright, I guess, but neither are colors that should be unpainted. At LEAST paint the visor, Hasbro, c'mon... As with all Titan Masters, Apex can move at the neck, shoulders, hips, and knees, with the latter two points only moving as one for both legs, since they're pinned/molded together as one piece. In head mode, Apex gets a much better main color-- dark blue-- with a face that looks very much like Orion Pax's face before he became Optimus Prime, which is a pretty nice idea for the head underneath PM Optimus' helmet. The detailing is quite good here, with the center head crest and face painted silver and the eyes a nice moderately light shade of the color-- it all looks pretty good against the dark blue. However, the remnants of Apex's Titan Master mode-- namely the red and gray-tan-- stick out rather obviously from any angle that isn't front-on, and the abrupt odd color change doesn't look all that hot. Apex either should've been made mostly dark blue in Titan Master form as well or had some more paint added.

    If you think that Powermaster Optimus' vehicle mode looks a bit familiar beyond just the G1 toy, you'd be right-- it's actually an extremely extensive remold of the Combiner Wars Ultra Magnus toy, but it's substantial enough where this isn't merely a "redeco partial review"-- there's only the "skeleton" of the mold intact, with pretty much every mold piece beyond the wheels, most of the truck cab, the hips, and the front of the robot legs changed at least in sculpting. The trailer has essentially been "sealed up" with various panels, and he has the usual G1 blue-and-white angled stripe along most of the sides. The front of the truck cab has also been changed to be more "Optimus-y", though the front grill is still absurdly large. As with Magnus, the back end is pretty obviously the lower legs and feet, but the lower legs can open up for a deluxe-ish sized toy to roll on in there and for PM Optimus to haul around. The mold detailing can be sparse on some parts like the top, but there's incredibly-detailed certain areas like on the sides of the rear section of the trailer and the "beams" near the front sides of the trailer, with little circuitry and "industrial-like" details quite common. The cab can turn independently of the trailer like with Magnus, and the toy has the same two black guns as Magnus, but the missile packs have been replaced with two dual-gun stations that a Titan Master can fit into-- sorry, no combined hammer weapon here. The color scheme is partially classic Optimus Prime, with a slightly pale shade of red being used for the cab and a few other minor parts, dark blue on the sides, stripes, and part of the cab. By far the predominant color, though, is an UGLY pale grayish tan. Why in the heck did Hasbro pick this color? It's not G1-accurate, it looks awful, and a metallic-ish gray plastic would've been much more preferable. It looks old and dirty. As far as Titan Masters accomodation, beyond the aforementioned dual-blasters there's five pegs on the top roof, two on the roof of the cab, and six pegs on each side of the trailer. Unfortunately a Titan Master can't fit in a proper cockpit in the cab, but you can leave them in the helmet when you fold it back in. That said, from a transformational aspect when you transform Prime back to this mode, it can be rather annoying to get all the panels to click in just right, especially on the top, so keep that in mind.
    In general base modes for TFs are already pretty bad, but this mold was originally made to not have a base mode at all, so it'd be a pretty good guess if you'd suggest that this toy had an awful base mode. And unfortunately, you'd be right. It's a little more than halfway between the vehicle and robot modes-- the appendages have been separated out, but all the panels haven't been folded away and the cab portion hasn't been integrated into the chest yet. It's REALLY difficult to look at this and see a base and not just Optimus Prime doing some malformed splits. The plus side is there's plenty of little pegs for Titan Masters-- I already mentioned them from the vehicle mode-- and there's good mounting points for all of the weapons. The negative is... pretty much everything else. The guns on the rear towers are nice detailing, but other than that they don't really look like "towers". The cab just kinda sits there in the back, opened for no real reason. I'm not sure why the chest armor just sticks up in the center for no reason, and the feet and upper legs are bluntly obvious at the front. I guess the ramps on the front would make sense for a base-- if they didn't go pretty much right into the rear towers. Nothing much locks in specifically for this mode, and I keep having to refer to the instructions to get it right because it's all just so... random and fan-mode-y. There are clips on the ramps to connect this to other Titans Returns bases if you so desire, and a little fold-out stand below the cab to keep everything level, but those are really the only parts of this figure that seem added specifically for this mode. It's just best forgotten about.
    Given that, again, the "skeleton" of CW Magnus is intact, the transformation is pretty much the same, with only a few minor differences here and there-- mostly with a few extra panels folding around the arms and/or legs (I do quite like how the sides of the trailer curl around the lower legs, so you don't have huge panels hanging off those areas). Beyond the curling panels, his legs are largely the same as Magnus'. He's got the same exact articulation as Combiner Wars Magnus as well. The arms are a definite downgrade from Ultra Magnus, though-- the lower arms are unapologetically just molded onto panels from the sides of the trailer, which is okay for a Legends-class toy, but definitely NOT okay for a toy of this size. I'm not too picky about hollowness if it's generally out of the way or small areas, but the huge gaps in the sides of the arms also just look bad, especially since they're not painted red like most of the red of the arms. On the other hand, the main body is extremely impressive, with OODLES of mold detailing upon mold detailing, with a ton of silver armored-up "stripes" of metal over what looks like an engine (again, homaging his G1 Powermaster form) above the fake truck sides like the "headlights" and "windows" on the sides, above the ACTUAL truck windows below the head. The helmet is very well-sculpted and pretty much spot-on an update of the Powermaster Prime "Prime with curlers on the sides of his head" design, though only the eyes from the Titan Master show through said helmet. The mold detailing is also quite intricate with "circuitry" and the like on some parts of the lower arms and upper arms as well, even though it's unfortunately not brought out with paint-- most of his upper body is just painted over with pale red. Because of the arms merely being molded onto the tops of his side trailer panels, it's a bit more difficult for him to hold his guns-- any of them. For the black guns, there's a slot they have to fit into on the trailer flaps in addition to simply having him hold them in his hands, and it's not that snug of a fit, unfortunately, so they can fall out easily. The tan dual-barreled blasters only have pegs, not really handles, so they fall out even easier, and are best plugged into the shoulders instead.
    Powermaster Optimus Prime, design-wise, has a fairly strong vehicle mode and an okay robot mode, but it's a significant step down from the CW Ultra Magnus mold. The robot mode has really weak-looking and hollow arms, the base mode (like nearly all TF base modes) is barely more than an afterthought, and the vehicle mode-- while solid-- is annoying to transform back into, and he has sooo much of this incredibly ugly pale grayish tan plastic that just looks awful. Still, mildly recommended with the aforementioned caveats, as the "core" of the robot mode is nice, he does interact with a lot of TR figures pretty well, because of his alt mode and all his Titan Master attachment points.

Review by Beastbot

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