Optimus Prime; Earthrise leader review YEAH!

Good old Optimus Prime! What a champ, what an icon this red truck is.  Here I have the Earthrise version of Optimus, which I rather put off getting for some reason.  I heard that it was actually a pretty good figure with a rather nice transformation, but for whatever reason, I was never deeply compelled to hunt one down like I have with many, many other figures.

Were my initial feelings correct?  Or had I made a huge mistake and the part of my life without this toy in my possession was a huge waste of never to be claimed again biological energy?

The end result is a little bit of column A and a little bit of column B.  Let's check out his truck mode shall we?

Here we have Optimus sporting his solid square cab truck mode.  I do like this a lot.  Also, he has the ever requisite silver stripe, which I think is an important part to the design.  It looks all right and manages to do what it's supposed to do.  That is; look like Optimus Prime in vehicle mode.  I will say that the trailer bed area is very long and a bit chunky, but it's not too bad. 

There are a couple of 5mm ports on the side for slapping stuff if you are that way inclined.  One thing that does irritate me though, is the fuel tanks don't have any system to ensure they stay clipped out.  As a result, they will flip in and disappear at the slightest touch.  Another minor gripe is the difference in the wheels,  the front one is grey plastic, painted black, while the rear ones are black with painted rims.  The slight variance in the colour does bother me a bit.  

Yeah, I did say it was minor.

In a nice touch, you can "store" the gun on the back of the cab.  It folds in half.

If you really want to, you can shove an effect blast in the gun and make it look like a mortar.  Which I didn't take a shot of, so you'll have to believe me.  As you can see form the back it's a bit noticeable, bit from the front it isn't too bad.

In a rare change of pace, this Optimus also comes with a trailer! Goddam!

And goddam I don't like it!

It looks very G1-esque, but it's a very disappointing piece.  They grey plastic they used is super dup drab and a retun to the Hasblow grey days.

You can put the gun in the cab and attack the trailer, but it's a SUPER tight fit.

When not connected to Optimus, it does have a  couple of legs that help it stand.  In a nice little touch, Huffer can also haul the trailer, in a reference to that one episode!

Can you see the mid-line in the front on photo?  It doesn't match up very well and bugs me a lot!

That's a nice little touch!

The bottom has a few greebles and some 5mm ports for stashing stuff and from the back....  oooh, you can see the issues cropping up...  

You can see on the back some kind of future greebles.  That would be where the ramp goes and you can actually pull the ramp down.

However, to do so you have to crack the trailer open just a tad to release the tabs.  What a pain in the arse.  The ramp has the connector joints that are compatible with Siege etc. bases, but NOT Titans returns/Legends (of course) I'm sure they won't be compatible with whatever the next connectable bases line they serve up is either...

Then, once you do, you can see another problem...

There's a peg in the middle of the ramp!!  This is because that part of the ramp becomes a "shield" for the robot mode. 

Why?

Dunno!

The shield is too small and looks kinda crappy for Optimus anyway.  What was the reasoning behind this?  Who asked for this?  

No-one, that's who.  It inhibits play, as now little vehicles are unable to be rolled into the trailer.  Also the ramp is very short and at quite an extreme angle.  

Let's just skip over the fact that the trailer isn't all that big and only the tiniest of cars can fit.  Huffer can't.  Although that is realistic I guess.

I guess, old Optimus is a bit small, although perhaps comparing him with Runamuck is a tad unfair.  The trailer seems to fit reasonably well  but the back wheels annoy me somewhat, they are on a rather flimsy connector piece and have a pretty terrible grey plastic on them.  Underneath are a few ports, but they are too close to other things, making them somewhat hard to use as well.  ALSO there are some inside as well... once again in areas that are a bit tricky to use.  SOoo despite having a trailer, the gun can't be stashed in there...  The inside of the trailer will be covered soooon.

Inside the trailer is the little gun mounty thing.  Sadly, Roller is not included in this release. He was done as an accessory to some exclusive somewhere.  Anyway, the gun drone can be waggled about and used for vehicle mode, which is something I appreciate.  The modularity of this gun pod thing is actually pretty good.

So, to summ up the vehicle mode, it's OK and I do like the colour of the windows.  However the trailer feels a bit flimsy.  Optimus himself manages to do the trick quite nicely.  

Let's get this sucker to TRANSFORM!

Transformation is quite something.  Apparently it takes a few bits of inspiration from the Siege version of Optimus.   The cab rather cleverly manages to flip inside out in a relatively intuitive way!

KABLAAAAM!

And your end result is a very primey looking Prime!  Impressive, I must say!

While I will admit the chest transformation is quite amazing, which results in the retaining of butt-wheels as the only vehicle kibble, the legs lead something to be desired.  There are pins and stuff in the calves and you can plainly see the two types of plastic, but they do nothing aside from straightening out the feet.  I kind of wish they opened up a bit so that you could flip the wheels inside.  

It's a bit odd, since the Siege legs did something(I think).  So why have these ones which I believe are practically the same been hampered so much?

Anyway, proportions seem pretty good, aside from his legs, either the legs are too long, or the torso is too small. So proportions aren't all that good then.

The head sculpt is mighty fine and the chest looks appropriately heroic enough.

The legs and hips also manage to look relatively cartoony too.  

Having a look at the back of the legs, you can see why I think there should be more going on.  I do like the way the fuel tanks fold into the thighs. Shame they do it so easily for the vehicle mode too though.

His head sculpt, as I said before is pretty nice, but his eyes are blue and it kind of blends in with the blue of his head a little bit.

In a nice little inclusion, his truck windows are hiding a nice little Matrix compartment.  He can't reach in and get it out himself though.

He is also hiding some excellent articulation all over the place.  Some is because of transformation, whereas most is not.  For example, his ability to open his fists.  He also comes with quite a few 5mm ports for plugging stuff into and a few blast nipples here and there.

The gun can be held in his hand, or be mounted on his back.

As you can see, it's compatible with blast effects and can be used in a number of ways.  

Is this a dangerous jetpack or wot?

This is the kind of mortar config I was thinking of with the truck mode.

Now, let's check out some of the articulation shots I took.  Not only is it really great, the balance on the toys is pretty damn good too!

The question is though, does he scale well with other toys?  I dunno.  Height wise, he is the same height as Rodimus Prime, but he definitely is lacking in bulk.  However, I do like that he's quite a bit smaller than Sludge and smaller than Galvatron too.

There is also the trailer, which I will crack open now...

Inside are many greebles and things do not roll into it very well at all...

Also, even though there are many holes for pluggin things in, they are really close to the edge, pretty much making them all useless.

Man this thing feels flimsy.  The annoying part of the ramp can either join to other ER base figures, or become the unwanted shield for Optimus.  Or someone.

Blaaaah

The gun pod drone robot thing can also have effect blasts put into it.  On the G1 toy, this had missiles in there, but this one has a hole.  

I can't help seeing a face on that thing!!

Despite there being an official Sideswipe-esque jetpack from the same accessory set that has roller, this gunpod thing can also be plugged onto Prime's back.

Da da dadada daaaaaa!

You can also have it sit over his shoulder for some mean ass Decepticon blasting.

Or

As I prefer...

Shoulder massages!

So there we go, that's pretty much everything.  Optimus himself is really pretty good.  The trailer, is pretty bloody weak.  Literally and figuratively speaking.  It doesn't manage to match well with the truck mode and the open base mode is kinda small, crappy, hard to weapon-up and is lacking things (Roller, why????). The base mode even looks a little too small for Optimus in robot mode.  It really brings the whole package down somewhat.

So, I don't think I've managed to make a good point of how much I dislike the trailer, it seems fine enough, but everything you would expect the trailer to do, it kind of does, but manages to do it in such a shitty, poor, half arsed way that manages to disappoint in pretty much every way.  I really don't like it and have just left it in the cupboard, hiding in shame.

But Optimus is pretty frickking ace!

So my final Superfluous rating is:

The trailer really sucks balls, but Optimus is pretty good!