Dave's Transformers: Rise of the Beasts Rant

Awakening Optimus Primal (Takara Edition)

Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/RotB/TakaraPrimal

I initially passed on this, incorrectly thinking it was just a redeco of
the Studio Series #106 Optimus Primal, but I discovered I was wrong in time
for the restock to hit Pulse, so I grabbed it. I considered putting this in
my Japanese Reviews section, but since I'm unlikely to do any other
Japanese-version Rise of the Beasts toys, and since it was available in an
American "wrapper" on Pulse, I ultimately decided to put it in with the rest
of Rise of the Beasts. Better to end that movie's toys on something more
significant than a Beast Battle Master.

CAPSULE

$60 on Pulse.

Awakening Optimus Primal: Worth the money. In several places it seems
to be a scaled-up Deluxe design, but they added enough details and gimmicks
to make up for that. It doesn't come with accessories anyone else can use,
but is designed to work with Beast Battle Masters, so there's a balance. And
it's practically Commander size. Recommended.

RANT

Packaging: For what are likely either legal or inventory control
reasons, rather than slapping stickers over the Japanese UPC and legalese,
they simply put the Japanese box inside a black box with white lettering and
logos. The inner box has the Rise of the Beasts trade dress, but with a
somewhat text-packed style not seen on the U.S. release boxes (attempts at
translations below). It's a window box with plastic, 30cm tall, 25cm wide,
and 11cm deep. The outer box is not significantly larger, it's really just
strong enough to avoid damage in shipping.
The outer box just has a big movie-Maximal symbol on front (it's
slightly different from the original Maximal symbol) with the movie logo and
character name, plus a line at the bottom saying it's an "AUTHENTIC
TAKARATOMY PRODUCT AS SOLD IN JAPAN." The top, bottom, and sides are mostly
just logos and names, the back has a slightly smaller version of the front
that leaves room for UPC and legalese4, plus "INCLUDES: FIGURE, 4 PIECES, AND
INSTRUCTIONS." It has an 8+ advisory (interesting, given that the inner box
has ages 6+). It's made of fairly thin cardstock.
The robot mode is almost entirely visible through the front window of
the inner box. The left side has CG art of gorilla mode, while the right
side has the robot mode. The top has a render of the toy's robot mode and
the logos, while the bottom has the usual Japanese legalese block. The back
shows multiple renders of both modes and various gimmick callout insets. The
inner box is mostly corrugated cardboard where it isn't clear window.
Inside, the instructions are in a bag behind the inner tray, along with
a small catalog. The instructions are glossy stock, quite large, in black
and white with a brownish yellow accent color. In addition to the
transformation steps, it also has suggestions for mounting all of the Beast
Battle Masters (well, the six in the catalog) on both modes.

And now to use my translation app to figure out what the non-obvious
text is!

Front:

Upper right - Target age 6 years or older
Upper left insets of optional faces - Face Change, Mask On, Mask Off
Mid left weapon insets - Mega Blaster (missiles), Plasma Cannon (forearm
guns), Cyber Blade (combined swords)
Along the bottom - Awakening Optimus Primal, Transformers, Beast Wake Up
(yeah, almost definitely meant to translate as "Rise of the Beasts"). And
the usual disclaimer stuff about art and the product maybe differing from the
pictures.

Nothing on the top, left, or right. Bottom is the usual dense
legalese.

Back:

Several bits where there's English under or over the Japanese, so those
are obvious.
Top line: Awakening Optimus Primal
To the right of robot shoulder: Two Cybers, The blades merge!
Next to beast mode: Drumming poses are possible!

The lower left insets repeat the pictures and text of the left side
insets from the box front, adding: Built-in plasma cannons in both arms!
Mega blasters can be deployed on both shoulders! You can set the included
missiles and launch them!

There's an inset on right side of the back that shows both robot mode
and beast mode covered in Beast Battle Masters, which it identifies as
follows (keep in mind the app may diverge from the official names):

Awakening Weapon (Beast Battle Masters)
BW-01 Cheetah
BW-02 Rhinox
BW-03 Skull Cruncher
BW-04 Optimus Primal

Awakening Changeseton (Beast Weaponizers, I tried various zooms and
angles but the best I could get is "Changeseton")
BCS-01 Optimus Primal & Arrow Stripe
BCS-02 Optimus Prime & Chain Claw

Finally, the inset in the lower right shows the contents of the box:
Awakening Optimus Primal Body x1 (until I did a second shot, it said
this was Dragon Optimus Primal)
Cyber Blade A x1
Cyber Blade B x1
Missiles x2
Instruction Manual x1

MAXIMAL: AWAKENING OPTIMUS PRIMAL
Assortment: F7897
Altmode: Gorilla
Transformation Difficulty: Box doesn't say, instructions say 21 steps from
robot to beast, and...6 steps to deploy the missile launchers.
Previous Name Use: Yes, unless "Awakening" really is part of his name here
and then no.
Previous Mold Use: None

Packaging: Everything's held into a plastic blister tray the likes of
which we don't see much anymore here. Two pairs of double plastic ties
crisscross the chest, one single tie each on the arms and legs. The sword in
the blister above the robot head is held by one tie, the sword to the left is
just held by the blister, as are the two missiles.
The inner cardstock tray has the same faux Nazca lines seen in other
RotB packaging, but in a more reddish shade of terra cotta.

Robot Mode: Significantly larger and bulkier than #106, it's closer to
modern Commander class than Leader, although in some ways it feels like an
upscaled Deluxe. I suspect that's part of why the price was so reasonable,
because while there's bits here and there of Commander or at least Leader
complexity, there's a lot of simple parts that would be more at home on a
Deluxe design too. Like #106, it's mostly black and gray, in this case even
more black than #106, although it does have some notable accent colors
besides the eyes. There's a mix of molded fur and armor bits, and the chest
is all mechanical-armor looking but has none of the Beast Wars chest design
elements.
At 8.5" (22cm) tall, it's significantly taller than the 6.75" (17cm)
tall Studio Series #106 Optimus Primal, and as mentioned is a bit blacker.
The hands and feet are gunmetal plastic, light gray plastic is used for the
swords, the missile launchers, and the hidden-in-forearms plasma blasters.
Everything else is black plastic, although technically it's a very dark warm
gray if you shine a bright enough light on it. It's a weird look for the
missiles, which would have worked better in a clear plastic of something, I
guess that was another cost-cutting move.
There's gunmetal paint on the collarbone and sternum-flanking areas, the
borders of the shoulderpads, the borders of the furry-molded forearm bits, a
bit of the belt buckle area, the borders of the leathery thighs, and the
mechanical shins. Silver is used for the faceplates (the mouth is gunmetal
if you have that side out), some exposed conduits on the upper chest, round
things on the belt and on either side of each knee. A silver Maximal symbol
is printed on the top of the sternum. The eyes are painted a vibrant
slightly bluish green. If you deploy the launchers, the muzzles are painted
red, as are the wrist blasters once they pop out. The leading edges of the
swords and some internal details on the blades are painted orange.
The neck is on a ball joint with a decent amount of play, the waist is a
smooth swivel. The shoulders are hinge and swivel universal joints with
additional hinges on the shoulderpads. Swivels right above the hinge elbows,
bending the elbows does leave a big gap visible from the inner face but not
the outer. The wrists are swivels on a hinged plate that lets the fists fold
in and out a bit. The index finger has two hinged joints, and the other
three fingers together share two hinges. So, Primal can point, but can't
flip the bird. The hips have ratcheting swivels for forwards/backwards and
smooth hinges for lifting to the sides. Mostly concealed swivels just below
the hips with limited range of motion, but there's also full-range swivels
just above each ratcheting hinge knee. The ankle really just have "keep the
feet flat" inner edge hinges. The toes fold up on transformation joints, but
the hinges are loose enough they don't really do much for dynamic posing.
It does feel like despite having the movie design for the molding, they
tried to capture as much as they could of the functionality of the old Ultra
Class late 90s Optimus Primal. There's no mace hidden in the forearm, but
there's the swords, the missile launchers, the forearm blasters, and even an
improvement on the Mutant Head gimmick.
Starting with that last one, if you pull up on the chin, the core of the
head is on a swivel that lets you swap out the faceplates, to either have the
closed battle mask, or the "slit open to show the mouth" version.
They didn't try to make the launchers automatically pop out on springs,
instead you need to go through a six step process shown in the instructions
to pull them out or put them back away. Once things are reassembled, they
really only wiggle a little, not useful articulation. The missiles are of
the "marble shooter" press launch variety rather than using strings, and
they're molded with energy effects on the tip that look more like fur when
done in black plastic, oops.
If you press on rectangles on the inner face of each forearm, the big
fur-and-5mm-socket chunk pops out on a spring and a double barrelled wrist
blaster (Plasma Cannon) extends. Each barrel has a 3mm stud at the tip,
although they're very close together so mounting a Fire Blast on both studs
would be difficult. When you press the fur chunk back in, the barrels
automatically recede.
The hands cannot hold 5mm pegs very well, and don't really believe in
pegs anyway, it's purely about using the finger joints to clamp down. They
work best on a 7mm rod like the swords. There's a single 5mm socket in the
back of the pelvis, the butt plate is meant to peg into that to make the
beast mode belly. The other 5mm sockets are in the center of octagonal
(square with corners shaved off, not a regular octagon) posts, the tallest
posts being on the forearms and back. These are on the forearms, the
shoulderpads, and a single one in the center of the back. Basically, the
point seems to have been to give him a version of Armada hardpoints, but
taking advantage of the existing 5mm pegs of the Beast Battle Masters.
There's also rectangular slots on the sides of the back for sword storage.
The swords (scimitars, more or less) are identical except for the fact
that Sword A has the peg and Sword B has the socket that lets the two connect
into a blade staff or something. Each is 5.5" (14cm) long, with Sword A
being 3mm longer. The peg and socket are about 3.5mm in diameter, you can
force a flexible Fire Blast onto the end of Sword A but no 3mm peg will stay
in the socket on Sword B (nor are Lego rods wide enough). The hilts are 7mm
in diameter, and join the blade with cylindrical bits that have 3.5mm pegs
sticking up inside 8mm sockets. It's not even consistently scaled up from
5mm and 3mm. Atop the root of the blade is a rectangle that provides tabs on
either side for storage on the back. Annoyingly, mine doesn't have a good
fit between Swords A and B, but I should be able to fix that with a little
topcoat.