Welcome to Robot Revolt, a website where I will review, post photo-comics, and type things I find funny about Transformers.
Why?
Shits and giggles mostly.
Anyway, I’m Lothar, aka Garry. Some may know me as one of the writers of the webcomic www.exterminatusnow.co.uk. If any of you figure out if this is a step up or down, let me know.
My review style will be very casual. I’m not going to go into great detail on some stuff, because hones7tly while I care how a toy looks, I don’t feel the need to exclaim how every little panel line accentuates the detailing or whatever. Plus, unlike some people who buy the toys and stick them on a shelf, never to be touched again, I like to transform my guys constantly. Sometimes I do plane and car noises.
How the hell am I still married?
I also won’t be giving numerical scores or lettered grades because I feel like I should be able to express in words if I like a figure or not, and not have people simply look at a subjective number. So, without further ado. I present my first review. Presenting Power of the Primes Edgelord Prime.
This guy was touted as an Amazon Prime exclusive for Prime Day 2018 (geddit?). He became available for pre-order in the UK in April. He came out on the US store for all of three seconds on Prime day. Then nothing. He literally became available on 24th October 2018 in the UK store, six months after I had initially pre-ordered him, cancelled it. By that point I had used the vouchers I had put aside for him towards a Studio Series Blackout. Still, I know several people who ended up paying up to twice his eventual £37.10 price I got him for from third-party sites. Guess patience and constantly checking the TFW2005 UK Sightings forum pays off.
Anyway, Edgelord Prime is a recolour and slight retool of the very nice Power of the Primes Optimus Prime. Following a grand tradition of taking an Optimus Prime toy, painting it the colours of Shadow the Hedgehog, and adding an extra few quid on the price. And we TF fans lap that stuff right up.
If you own the POTP Prime mould you already know that it’s a pretty good toy, but there’s something about this paint scheme that works for me. Of course, that might be because I’m the most unoriginal person who ever lived, but there you go. I think my favourite part of the mode is that head. While most Nemeses have Prime’s head in a different colour, this gives him a head that has some cues from the actual Decepticon logo. My least favourite part is the stickers because Hasbro has been replacing the tampographed detail and logos with stickers on it’s bigger toys and they’re all horrible and usually not set properly. The stickers on mine seem OK for the most part.
The Prime silhouette and design is iconic, and seeing it turned Decepticon has a certain cool factor to it. Essentially, Optimus Prime is your dad, while Edgelord Prime is your cool uncle who doesn’t have his own kids. Probably for good reasons.
So, this brings us to Nemesis Prime’s accessories. This guy comes loaded with stuff, most of it referencing other versions of the character. In addition to his “Dark Matrix of Leadership” which is compatible with the line’s Prime Masters (if you care about that sort of thing), he has his dual-arm cannons and the Dark Starsaber from Armada, the latter of which is coloured like Scourge’s sword from Robots in Disguise 2001. He also comes with a mini-con, Giza, which is from the Japanese Arms Micron version of the character. Giza turns from a sword to some sort of cyber hawk that has a wingspan that is a smidge ridiculous.
He also comes with Prime’s gun, which can be split into two smaller guns. It seems a bit of overkill considering the original toy came with the gun or nothing else. I prefer to stick it in his back and use it as a shoulder cannon, so he can hold both swords.
His articulation is functional, but due to his transformation, there’s no waist swivel or wrist articulation. But there is a nice ankle tilt which lets you gets him into a decent set of generic action poses.
So, like Prime, this guy has three modes. His main robot mode you see here, his alt mode, and his SMALLER robot mode. Say hello to Nemesis Pax!
No, I don’t know either.
Essentially you take the central torso out of the main bot and move some stuff around to get this guy. Again, he’s essentially the same as the Optimus Prime/Orion Pax versions of the toy, but with a new head.
Jokes aside, the Nemesis Pax bot is fun. Decently articulated and simple transformation, He probably won’t spend much time in this mode, but it’s a fun little extra and I do like his new head as well. He can also hold most of the weapons Nemesis has except the arm cannons.
And now the weakest mode, the alt-mode.
The transformation to this involves turning the rest of the robot mode that isn’t Nemesis pax into the cab. Again, like the original prime, this is fun, but I feel this is both better and worse. The Prime trailer is more colourful, but the truck mode definitely feels like the weakest mode as you can see very clearly see where sacrifices had to be made for the sake of the gimmick. Here, the darker colours make it harder to see the imperfections.
For one thing you can tool this up to a murder truck that wouldn’t look out of place in Mad Max.
The transformation between the three modes is fun, the figure looks great in both bot modes, and while the vehicle mode isn’t the best it’s functional and fun to change back and forth to. I prefer this one over the original Power of the Primes Optimus Prime, but I’d say either of the toys are good fun, but this one edges it. Is it a must-have? If you like Nemesis Prime and can get it easily, I’d say yes. He was worth the £37.10 I paid for him, but I wouldn’t have paid more than £50 for him.
Altogether a fun toy with a good paint scheme and transformation and I’m glad to have him as part of my collection. Now to get him integrated…
ROBOT REVOLT 