Toy Bender

I finally got him. After weeks of waiting in quiet desperation for Hasbro.com to free him from the hell of back orders, my 20th Anniversary DVD edition Optimus Prime is now all mine.

To start with, I really liked the packaging for my pal Optimus. I say liked, because it was obliterated in my fervor to get to him. Jesus, can they have more twist ties? I really enjoy untwisting stupid ties, so this figure was the nirvana I’ve been looking for my whole life.

For the uninitiated, the 20th Anniversary DVD Edition of Optimus is actually a re-release. The first edition was a huge success, it was even voted by Toy Fare as the Best Toy of All Time in 2004. That’s some street cred right there, especially considering it beat out ancient Roman Rock ‘em Sock ‘em Gladiators. I had been an idiot an didn’t purchase him at the time, so the 20th Anniversary DVD Edition is your chance to pick one up if you missed out like me. Is this one worth the cash? Was he worth the pain of waiting? Should you buy one too? Does he stack up to the original? Well, hopefully I can shed some light on you questions so you’ll just shut up already.

The best parts about Optimus are his enormous size and all his great details. He stands at twelve inches tall and that’s an impressive size that beats his rather small G1 version. As for details, his chest lights up with a removable Matrix of Leadership! That’s not all though, he’s got little opening vents on his legs and on each arm he has a communicator with a picture of either Grimlock or Megatron (The first edition my roomie has actually has Bumblebee and Starscream). One of my favorite features is a small button on the back of his head that… get this… moves Optimus’s mouth plate up and down. That’s so friggen awesome; I can now have conversations with Optimus Prime just like in my dreams.

I’m not a huge Transformers geek (I’ve never been to a Botcon), so I’m not really hip as to how hard it is to actually transform them nowdays. I can tell you that it’s tough to do and impossible without the rather vague directions for a casual fan like myself. There were several times where I yelled in frustration at the pictures of arrows pointing to god knows where. Even my roomie, who’s much more Transformers savvy than me, can’t do it without these nearly useless directions.

When I finally did get Optimus Prime transformed into truck mode, I was a little disappointed. He doesn’t really look like a real semi-truck. He resembles a futuristic/old semi-truck made out of Legos. The real point of it though is that he’s such an awesome robot that even if he couldn’t turn into truck mode he’d be a great toy. The fact that they made the effort of making him transformable is icing on the cake.

It’s insane how great the accessories are that Optimus gets. He comes with his signature cannon along with an Energon battleaxe that’s pretty much seen in only one episode (Transformer fans feel free to correct me.). He also comes with Megatron in gun form so he can perform some odd Freudian shooting using his arch-nemesis. This 20th Anniversary DVD Edition Optimus also comes with a base for him to stand on. It also has some playable phrases from the film and two transforming sound effects. The base is cool at first until you realize that the voice on the base does not sound like THE Optimus Prime, Peter Cullen. This is pretty much a sacrilege. Cullen is Optimus. The end.

Now for the really bad part. This 20th Anniversary DVD Edition Optimus Prime is severely disappointing for the simple fact that he can’t really compare to the original release of this figure. It has to do with the paint job. The original Optimus is a much deeper red. More importantly, the original has all kinds of chrome. His wheel rims, smokestacks, “hydraulics”, and front grill look great on the original. On this version? Not so much, they are all painted a dull grey. I can’t describe how lame this looks in comparison to the first edition. Hasbro.com says that he matches the way he looks in the movie… whatever. It’s not as good. Unfortunately, I was unable to capture it to its fullest extent on film. However, I present the picture below for comparison. Old Optimus is on the left and the newer version is on the right:

Overall though, Optimus Prime the 20th Anniversary Edition is still a great toy despite my issues with the chrome and overall color. If you can’t get the original version of this awesome figure, then this one is a worthy substitute.

Score: 4 “Transform and Roll Outs” out of 5

Bonus: Here’s a tasteless pic guaranteed to offend someone, but I couldn’t help it.

Transformers, Optimus Prime, toys, toy collecting, Hasbro