So .....
I dug the Classics Voyager Optimus Prime file out to make some notes for Magna Convoy. Once I got the file in front of me it became obvious that I was missing a few versions. So ....
Voyager Op, Magnus and SDCC Nemesis Prime are essentially the original reviews as written with the rest being new additions.
Classic Optimus Prime is a re-imagining of the
1984 original Optimus Prime Cab. The basic body shape is similar, but with an aerodynamic cab top, longer cab and slanted front windows. Other than that in looks very similar to original Op. The cab feels nice and chunky, and as an estimate is a similar size to the Powermaster Optimus cab.
To Transform start by folding back the blue panels under the back of the cab revealing the upper legs. Fold the legs down under the cab, fold the feet out and fold the knee caps up. Remove the smoke stacks. Pull the sides of the cabs out from the side of the front grill and fold out to the sides. Fold the sides of the back of the cab out forward. Straighten, fold and bend the arms out do the blue panels on the shoulders and the yellow strips on the forearms are facing forward. The cab side halves fold under the arms and along the outer edge of the arms. Pull the cab roof back and fold up the head. Fold the front wheels in under the grill and rotate the cab from the windows upward round 180 degrees. Fold the cab top onto his back. Take the smoke stacks, and fold the bits out within the smokestacks. Fold them together, and fold the handle out the back of the gun.
The resultant robot looks very similar to original Optimus Prime, the main difference being sloped windows. His neck can turn, shoulders move forward and back, swing to the sides, rotate at the bicep and bend at the elbow. He swivels at the waist, has universal joints on the hips, a swivel above the knee and bends at the knee. You can pose him well, he's comfortably kneeling on the table beside me. He does look a little small - more the size of an old Mega than the previous Cybertron Voyagers. He's a good inch or so taller than the Armada Optimus.
Op's forearms have the holes that take the smokestacks - these are just large enough to take the small posts from the Robotmaster missile launchers.
The cab roof - now on his back - can be swivelled so the flat edge is at the top. The hand gun can be opened up and clipped into the back pack, which then can fold forward to position twin cannons over the shoulders.
The cab roof can also TF into a hand gun: Fold the sides down till they lock together, fold the top back and fold out the gun barrel. It doesn't look like a typical TF gun but it works as an extra weapon.
Classics Optimus is a nice stylised toy. But for some reason I'm not feeling that it's as special as it could be for it's price point.
In addition to being available at the Voyage price point Optimus Prime was also released in a twin pack with his recolour Ultra Magnus - this set wasn't available in the UK or the US.
Both the toys in the Battle for Autobot City pack - exclusive to Target in the US and Woolworths in the UK - are much as you'd expect - Magnus is mainly white in both forms, Skywarp Black with Purple Highlights.
Magnus Truck mode is something of a departure featuring a pale blue truck base, which was white on all previous Ultra Magnus toys, especially the 1986 original. There's some further blue highlighting, as well as clear blue windows (and lightpipe eyes in robot mode). The exhaust pipes/gun are still black as - when you transform to robot mode - are his hands, both of which are rather odd looking and out of place, should both have been white. His face plate is Silver - blue would have been better - and the head is painted white which jars with the rest of the cast white. Of the Prime repainted white as Magnus figures - Original, Laser Rod, Armada Supercon and Masterpiece - this is probably sort of mid table (my fave's the Supercon version)
Seeing as the original versions of these would have set you back £30, the £20 Woolworths were asking for the set is a good deal.
In addition to being available in this exclusive two pack, Ultra Magnus was also released in a twin pack with Classics Voyager Optimus Prime - this set wasn't available in the UK or the US.
For the Shattered Glass set in Botcon 2008 the theme of alternate universe evil Autobots good Decepticons was taken. The bad Optimus Prime swaps red for purple, the blue & grey for a darker grey and the clear blue for a clear yellow orange. Lots of damage deco is added - like a cracked window transfer - and he includes inscribed on him the motto "Till All Are Gone", a play on words on the motto heard in the original & best Transformers Movie.
It's an interesting and different Prime repaint.
It took nearly a year and a half but Classics Voyager Optimus Prime was finally released as C-01 Henkei Convoy in Japan in March 2008. This release removes some of the white striping, darkens the red plastic, makes the grey more silver and chromes the front grill.
In the spirit of
2001's Crystal Rodimus, Crystal Convoy is the Classics Voyager rendered entirely in coloured clear plastic parts.
Looks absolutely gorgeous, I have a weakness for clear repaints so I want one!. Unfortunately the price is very much "HOW MUCH?????" so I suspect this will be an item I will just have to look at the pictures for!
Crystal Convoy was sold at Tokyo Toy Fair 2008 where 1000 units were available and then on the internet through e-Hobby.
I think you can guess what this involves ;-) Red becomes black, blue becomes a dark grey blue and the grey becomes a little darker. It's a classic evil Prime repaint which was an exclusive at San Diego Comic Con in July 2008 and later sold through HasbroToyShop.com.
Six years after the western Classic Voyager Ultra Magnus the Japanese version was issued in 2012. This takes the western toy and looses almost all of the blue, bar the face plate, crest and clear windows, resulting in a toy which is coloured much closer to the colour scheme used on the original 1986
Ultra Magnus.
Although a more monochrome looking toy I much prefer this over the Classics Voyager who'd blue lower legs I always found very distracting!
Very similar to
SDCC Nemesis Prime this Tokyo Toy Show 2012 Japanese exclusive now has red windows and mint green stripes.
Alfes shows the toy in blog entries 1567, 1568, 1579 & 1580.
Having seen the two compared I think this is the better Evil Optimus toy: the clear red plastic used on the windows brings the toy to life. A quick look on eBay reveals that while expensive this toy can be had for a relatively reasonable price still!
The summer of 2014 proved to be a very busy time for the Classics Voyager Optimus mould with it getting three uses in quick succession. It's first appearance was in Japan where it serves as the launch toy for the Autobot/Cybertron half of the
Transformers Cloud line of Generations Voyager repaints. The exclusive line led an odd split life: Optimus Prime and the other Autobots were exclusive to
Takara Tomy Mall while
Megatron and the Decepticons that followed were exclusive to
E-Hobby.
The deco here is dark blue lower legs/flatbed, white upper legs & waist and a dark red body & arms/cab. The cab top is now cast in black, reminiscent of Generation 2 Optimus Prime but is adorned with a white normal Autobot symbol. There's very little extra pant or detailing on the toy making it look simple but effective.
At the time this came out in late May 2014 I didn't own a Classics Voyager Optimus, having sold my original some years previously, and was tempted to pick it up but sadly the Takara Tomy Mall Autobot were harder to obtain overseas, where as the Decepticons were later sold through HLJ, so I missed out.
Now I get what this Botcon 2014 toys is about: it's the classic Voyager done in the
Fire Guts God Ginrai Japanese Exclusive colours. But Fire Guts God Ginrai has never really done it for me, I didn't like the colours and it always annoyed me that there was
a God Bomber included with that set and not with the black
Nucleon Quest Convoy! I've mellowed on the colours somewhat over time, thanks mainly to the arrival of
Sentinel Prime and I could conceive of this being repurposed as another version of the Titans Return character.
I won't be going out of my way to find one though.
Ginrai was sold as part of the Knight of Cybertron boxset at Botcon 2014 held from June 19 to June 22, 2014 in Pasadena, California,
The third third Classics Voyager Optimus Prime that year came in a TRU Exclusive Evolution 2 pack with a redeco of
Age Of Extinction Evasion Optimus Prime which has blue flames on the side.
This version of Optimus is broadly similar to the original Classics Voyager. The shoulders have lost their blue paint and many of the yellow highlights have gone. The clear blue plastic is now uncoloured clear plastic. Like the Henkei version the cab mode's radiator is now chromed but so are the upper legs and waist giving the toy an appearance close to the 1984 original.
First found in the USA in August 2014, I wasn't willing to pay £40 for the 2 pack when it came out here to get one toy I didn't want! But after the set had sat in my local Toys R Us for over a year through various price reductions I bought it when it was reduced down to £24.95. For that price I think I've got a pretty decently painted classics Voyager.
When
images of this toy first appeared on eBay in January 2016 I put this down as an unfinished prototype due to the large panels of clear plastic on the side of the vehicle. "Show it to me when it's finished" I thought "A blue windowed Prime would be nice". But no, the images showed the finished article that would appear in the
Platinum One Shall Stand, One Shall Fall set!
Seeing as this was the third western use of this mould as Optimus Prime, and the previous one released two years before was still shelf warming in it's movie two-pack this toy really needed a dynamite deco for it to sell. To tell you the truth it's not bad apart from those unpainted cab sides which just look horrendous! If they're meant to represent Prime's battle damage in the fight with Megatron then they're not doing a good job as we never see his vehicle mode after he's damaged and the robot mode looks OK still. In fact this is a more than passable Prime just left in robot mode.
Unfortunately the set does have other problems too namely a somewhat eccentric deco for Megatron to get him past the gun laws and an astonishing £100 price tag at TRU in the UK! The set has reached as low as £30 at certain online retailers but that still isn't low enough to get me to touch it!
