The Energon Pub

Just to plug my blog: http://foreignerdy.tumblr.com/post/86080346066/review-aoe-evasion-mode-optimus-prime

One of the more interesting figures to be revealed in the first wave of AoE toys is Evasion Mode Optimus Prime. The major gimmick of the figure is that though he has more or less his typical Movieverse robot mode he has a flat-nosed cab mode far more reminiscent of G1 Prime. Based on the trailers and the blurb on the box this figure represents a form he uses to stay hidden when relationships between humans and Autobots go sour.

Optimus comes packaged in robot mode together with a large shotgun-like weapon the size of his arm and a missile for said gun. He shares a quirk with some other AoE figures in that though he is packaged in robot mode his instructions show how to turn from truck to robot and not the reverse; so a certain amount of backwards thinking is needed.
The robot sculpt is slightly unusual. His head, calves and especially his chest seem oversized while his thighs and shoulders are tiny. His chest design is a little cleaner and less detailed than the normal movie design, looking more like his Prime incarnation. Oddly, even though his robot chest shows the windscreen, grill and headlights of the truck mode all of these parts are fake kibble and none end up being the actual truck mode parts.

His articulation is generally a little weaker than I would like to see on a Voyager. His legs are decent enough, with his thighs being able to move about 90 degrees from the vertical, forward, backward and to the side. His knees however are a 90 degree on-way joint and while his ankles have sufficient forward and backward motion their side to side motion is limited. His legs are totally lacking in rotation parallel to the horizontal. His neck is ball-jointed, which is fine, with light-piping that only works in one eye. His arms are weak though. Though his shoulders can rotate 360 they can only move less than 90 degrees away from the body. His arms are sadly in the gorilla style with the elbow flexing inwards rather than forwards, and though his arm rotates both above the elbow and at the wrist the shape of his gun prevents him from easily adopting a shoot-from-the-hip pose.

Transformation is legitimately interesting. The last figure that tried to adopt a flat-nose cab appearance that I know of was MP-10 and this figure takes a few cues from that. Though getting every piece into place is a bit of a balancing act at times it all clips together nicely.
The cab mode is very compact and nice. Since much of the robot mode folds up inside it it’s a little smaller than some other Voyager vehicle modes, though visibly larger than a Deluxe. In this mode he curiously has only one smokestack, presumably fitting his design in the movie. He has a peg hole on the roof, and two more on hit flatbed section. The shotgun itself has both a main peg and a peg on each side, giving you a few options on how to place it. It would have been nicer if they could have made it integrate or blend in more in this mode but it’s a nice looking weapon so I won’t complain.

What I will complain about is that on the back of the cab the two false windows that make up part of the robot mode chest are plainly visible. It’s a bit of a bugbear to me when a flaw like this is visible in the open as it feels like laziness on the part of the designers.
In the end, Evasion Mode Optimus Prime is an interesting concept for a figure and a genuinely novel Transformer but the flaws prevent it from being better than merely quite good. Since there are other representations of Movieverse Prime that are far better and since this is clearly a form that he adopts only temporarily in the film I can’t recommend it highly.