Dave's Transformers Legacy Rant: Voyager Wave 6 (Evolution wave 3)

Nemesis Leo Prime (Leo Prime redeco)

Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Legacy/VNemesisLeo

The other Voyager in the wave is a Legacy repackaging of Earthrise
Dirge.

https://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Legacy/VLeoPrime - Leo Prime review

CAPSULE

$35 price point.

Nemesis Leo Prime: Original mold recommended. This is more than a
simple black redeco, but it's mostly just a lot of slightly different dark
grays and light blacks, so some may find it a distinction without a
difference. Moderately worth picking up as a partner for Shadow Panther and
Ravage, I guess? It does come with a brand new weapon, too bad there's no
good way to store it in lion mode. Mildly recommended.

RANT

Packaging: Standard Legacy Voyager. It's notable that his nameplate has
a Maximal symbol with a scratch through it, rather than a Predacon symbol.
That's a little odd, given that the Maximal symbol is just printed on Leo
Prime and not molded. The QR code info says that he's a Renegade Maximal.

RENEGADE MAXIMAL: NEMESIS LEO PRIME
Assortment: F7210
Altmode: Lion
Transformation Difficulty: 35 steps
Previous Name Use: None
Previous Mold Use: Legacy
Function: Clone
Special Unit: None
Origin Universe: Beast Wars
Signature Weapon: Target-seeking missiles - Launches a series of missiles
from cannons inside his lion mane.
Evo-Fusion: None on the website, the call-out on the package is the same as
Leo Prime's claw weapon.

STR 10 INT 10 SPD 10 FRB 9

Nemesis Leo Prime has an intense arrogance that drives his goal to
replace the Maximals with duplicates that he can command.

Well, that justifies a whole pile of black and gray redecos, I guess.

Packaging: Four rattan strings hold the robot into the tray. The little
weapons are paired up with one string on each pair of weapons. There's tape
over all of the string ends, I guess they started getting complaints about
the strings working loose?
The package art shows a defiantly snarling lion, despite the fact that
the actual toy looks like inexpert taxidermy.

Color Swaps: White becomes dark gray, yellow becomes black. Red becomes
a very dark gray that's almost black, the gray plastic becomes black. The
lighest of the grays is dark enough that in a room with dim lighting the
whole thing looks black. UV reveals some batch variation, for instance the
right side of the torso front is a different very dark gray than the left
side, even though they look the same under normal light.

Paint Apps: This is almost like a Hagunennon ship that's been through
the wash a bit, with dark gray paint on darker gray plastic in several
places. I needed to recharge my flashlight and UV flashlight batteries to
analyze that part more carefully. The only paint that really stands out is
the metallic medium-light blue on the eyes, waist details, and claws.
Dark silver paint is on the faceplate, forehead tablet, the ring around
the chest Maximal symbol, the faux Matrix chamber (the 3mm stud inside is
metallic blue), the two belly button things, and the lion fangs. A slightly
lighter dark gray paint is on the abs (only the different UV response
convinces me it's not just a finish difference). There's dark gray paint on
the outer sides of the lower legs in the same places Leo Prime has gunmetal.
Most of the pelvis front is painted black, as are the kneecaps, the lion
nose, and the bits of the mane molded on the upper back of lion mode. The
lion eyes are white (kinda sloppy) with black rings (I guess going for
eyeshine with the white pupils?). A dark silver Maximal symbol is printed on
the left pec. It's not the defaced symbol seen on the package, but that'd be
easy enough to manage with a knife.
It's possible I missed some gray on gray, though.

Mold Changes: He has two more hand weapons that combine into a single
carbine, which TFWiki says is based on a weapon made for the Masterpiece Lio
Convoy toy, called the Maximal Buster. It also appeared on-screen in the
hands of a lot of Maximals in BWII, and got a Japanese-only roleplay toy. It
can be held as two small pistols or combined into a small carbine. Pretty
small compared to the Maximal Buster from the Masterpiece, but hey, they did
something more than just change the colors.
The rear pistol has a single 3mm stud barrel and a small energy clip
under the barrel, with a short 5mm peg grip. The clip means that some
figures can't hold the gun unless their fist is small enough to fit in the
gap, and it won't go in a lot of non-fist sockets. It's 1" (25mm) long.
The front one has three barrels but the bottom one in the triangle is
longer and is a 3mm stud. It has a rectangular socket in back that the
barrel and front end of the rear pistol snugly fits into. With no molded
clip, it can fit nearly flush against a surface for a forearm cannon or
vehicle gun. It is a little under an inch long at 22mm.
Combined, the fron gun's peg is almost touching the energy clip and is
basically unusable as a grip. The combined carbine is a little under 1.75"
long (41mm).

Other Notes: Of course, since the actual figure isn't retooled, there's
nowhere to hide the Buster pieces in lion mode. Basically, the instructions
just have them replacing the cannons that hide in the mane, with nowhere to
put the replaced guns. As is pretty standard of the beast mode Legacy
figures, there's no 5mm sockets messing up the fur. You can sort of stick
them in the 5mm sockets on the inner faces of the robot knees, but it's
awkward and really just an "avoid losing 'em" solution.
The finish of the fur panels does make it look like this is a lion of
dark steel and obsidian, which is an admittedly nice effect.

Overall: Okay, it's not just a black deco with some blue and gunmetal
paint as the pictures made it appear at first, but a lot of work went into
some pretty subtle shades of gray. Also, I wish they'd fixed the lion face,
it's kinda sad.

Dave Van Domelen, thinks eyebrows would help the lion face, never mind
that lions don't really have eyebrows colored differently from the rest of
their facial fur. Maybe I'll give mine some.