As I began to watch the extraordinary Transformers: Prime for the second time in as many months, I decided to update my collection with toys inspired by the Hub’s Emmy-award-winning series. Originally released between 2011 and 2013, when the show was being broadcast, the Prime Transformers are markedly different from the rebranded Takara models that I’ve horded for nearly thirty years. Their basic premise is the same, of course, but almost everything else about them is different.
Comprised of two rebranded Japanese toy lines, inevitably Hasbro’s first generation of Transformers came in all sorts of shapes and sizes – and prices. Hasbro’s Prime toy line, in contrast, is built around two principal price points, each of which directly relates to a toy’s size: “Deluxe Class” toys, which, inexplicably, are the cheaper of the two; and “Voyager Class” toys, which generally comprise the larger characters. As well as making the lives of toy designers and retailers much easier, this regimented division gives the overall toy line a much better sense of scale than the Generation One (“G1”) toys had. To look at the Autobots, for instance, only Optimus Prime; Ultra Magnus; and Bulkhead are afforded a Voyager classification, meaning that, just like on television, they tower over their smaller Autobot comrades in something approaching realistic scale.
Pleasingly, the pricing of Deluxe Class toys ($13.00 or thereabouts) also makes them a lot more affordable than many Transformers were in the 1980s, allowing children’s parents – and nostalgic thirty-something men – to amass quite an armada without incurring too much expense. But for those on a very limited budget, there are also tiny, almost Seaspray-sized “Legion Class” and “Commander Class” toys available for as little as $5.00 each, though obviously these don’t sit well next to the larger Deluxe and Voyager ’bots.
In another departure from G1, the Prime toys that I’ve acquired all seem to be made entirely of plastic, which on the face of it is a step down in quality from the early G1 toys. My surviving ’80s Ultra Magnus truck cab tells a different story, though – decades of decay have left it in as sorry a state as the Optimus Prime cab seen on screen in Age of Extinction. And so, whilst plastic might offer a less appealing finish in some respects, it’s an eminently more practical one – especially when you look at the toys’ articulation.
Beast Wars: Transformers rewrote the book on the franchise in just about every sense, but perhaps most notably in its extensive implementation of ball joints in its toy line. Ever since, Transformers have been expected to be as poseable as their Beast Era forerunners. I’m not talking about Optimus Prime being able to bend his arms a bit; I’m talking about full, action-figure articulation. As I found a few years ago when I picked up a mean-looking Revenge of the Fallen tie-in Optimus Prime toy, the results can be absolutely breathtaking to look at – if a bugger to achieve.
Indeed, my main gripe with the Prime toys is that transforming them invariably involves sitting at the table with the instructions and carefully following – and, more often than not, failing – each of the many requisite steps. While there’s got to be a price to pay for finesse, for me these involved transformations take away the magic of being able to transform a toy in as long as it takes to make the appropriate noise. My G1 Hot Rod can go from nought to robot in about five seconds. If these are Level 2 or “Intermediate” difficulty Transformers, I shudder to think what Level 3s must be like! There are simpler toys available, though; “One-Step Changers” and the like, but the decline in overall quality is grossly disproportionate to the simplification. We’ve got better bath toys.
Another minor criticism of the Prime toys is their packaging. It’s undoubtedly much greener, and the numbering on the boxes naturally appeals to the collector in me, but it still lacks the unique and arresting appearance of the G1 packaging (see picture, above). While tech specs (of a decidedly lower tech nature) and (now very) short character summaries are still present and correct, you won’t find a “Robots Points” token in sight anywhere in sight, and you certainly won’t find your imagination being ignited by a sprawling, outer-space battle vista on a package’s rear.
The Prime Autobots are commanded, as they should be, by the eponymous Optimus Prime. Of all the Autobot toys, he’s the only one that feels a little on the small side – it would have been nice for Hasbro to have put out a slightly larger and more detailed “Leader Class” toy to really do him justice as, in my eyes, the Prime Prime really is the prime Prime. He combines the most successful elements of the Optimus Prime depicted in The Transformers and the live-action movies, fusing the mighty long-nosed Peterbilt 379 truck cab of the silver screen with the predominantly red G1 colour scheme. The level of detail is very impressive for the “Robots in Disguise” sub-range’s $22.00 price point, with the cab boasting frosted blue windows and a very detailed, Autobot badge-emblazoned grill, and the robot offering up a similarly-detailed torso and headpiece. Best of all, there isn’t a cost-cutting sticker in sight – all of the detail is achieved through paintwork. I would have liked to have seen a removable mouth plate, as Optimus only tends to wear it on screen as he goes into battle, but for the price it’s an excellent offering, and even backwards-compatible with the Powermaster trailer (though sadly not the original – and much more Prime-accurate - trailer, which only can only rest on the back on the truck instead of pegging in, as pictured below).
The “Beast Hunters” Ultra Magnus figure is more impressive, in many ways. I prefer the look of the G1 Ultra Magnus in both his modes, but there is no question that this is the better all-round toy. As he’s largely a redeco of Optimus’s mould – in Transformers: Prime the two characters are similar in both their forms (until Optimus undergoes his “regeneration”, at least) - I get the impression that Hasbro could afford to include more features, such as the character’s defining shoulder missiles and his depleted, but nonetheless fearsome, Forge of Solus Prime. Also included – albeit a little incongruously - is a winged backpack that can be mounted on the truck’s rear when in alt-form. The only thing missing – or, rather, unnecessarily present – is Magnus’s hand that was lost in battle. I would have loved to have seen the figure with Ratchet’s botched “claw” replacement hand in situ instead of the figure’s standard-issue mechanical hand. 
My favourite Prime toy is also, happily, my favourite Prime Autobot: Bulkhead. The Autobots’ final “Robots in Disguise” Voyager is not only the absolute spit of his CG self in both his forms, but his transformation is one of the range’s most straightforward. His fellow Wrecker, the Deluxe Class Wheeljack, is another favourite of mine too, and for exactly the same reasons.
Ratchet is probably the most disappointing Autobot toy in the Prime range; partly because he has too many superfluous vehicle parts on show in his proto-form (see picture, right), and partly because he should probably have been classified as a Voyager – which would have probably cured the vehicle-parts problem. This is a shame as I love the character, but unless you’re looking at him directly from the front, there’s just too much ambulance knocking about his back and sides to make for a convincing likeness of his on-screen self. His fellow Prime stalwarts, Bumblebee and Smokescreen, are each better done, thankfully. The “Robots in Disguise” Bee is perhaps a little lacking in detail when compared to the “Beast Hunters” Smokescreen, but that’s more of a reflection on the quality of the Smokescreen toy than it is the shortcomings of the Bumbleebee one.
Finally, we have the ill-fated partnership of Arcee and Cliffjumper. The latter is a near-miss; as a robot, Cliff looks great from the front, but as a Dodge Challenger his transparent windows betray his tucked-away limbs, and I can’t for the life of me get the two halves of his bumper to click into place. Though she’s less substantial, Arcee is a much more exciting prospect all round – in her alt-form she’s a convincing Kawasaki Ninja, and as a robot she’s a wonderful approximation of her on-screen self. In fact, save for maybe Bulkhead’s, her face is the most convincing of all the Autobots’.
Overall, there’s no question that my 21-century contingent of Autobots put their G1 predecessors to shame - they are far more detailed and infinitely more expressive. Yet somewhere on the way they’ve lost an important element of magic - their boxes don’t conjure quite the same sense of interstellar adventure, and their transformations can’t be shown off quickly and eagerly to the wonder of grown-ups, or even easily folded into play. In the next instalment, we’ll see how their Decepticon cousins fare, but, particularly as they’re mainly heavyweight Voyagers, I suspect that my findings will be similar.
