The Energon Pub

My sister-in-law just got back from a 3 day trip to Hong Kong and while she was unfortunately unable to procure the two last WST Dinobots for me, she did get me a couple of Movie Legends two-packs. Those would be Nightwatch Optimus Prime vs Stealth Starscream and Ironhide vs Desert Blackout. I thought I'd share my thoughts with everyone on these little guys.

First, just let me say I have very little experience with Legends classed figures. They always seemed like a waste of money to me. My collection included only a Legends of Cyberton Leo Prime that I bought because it was the only Legend that every managed to catch my eye and a Cybertron Galvatron that came with a hobby magazine I bought ages ago. However, after playing around with these guys a bit today, I have to say, they're not that shabby.

First up, Optimus

He comes in a slightly metallic looking dark blue for his chest, arms, waist and head, grey for his thighs and black with silver flames and a silver grill for this calves and feet. He has some silver highlights on his chest with a slighly different shade of blue used to represent the door/chest area. His mouthplate is silver and his eyes are almost sky blue. He has ball joints for his shoulders and hips and a joint in his waist that's primarily for the transformation, but can add some poseability to him.

After transforming, the metallicish blue carries over to his cab, with some silver highlights showing up on the roof. The hood and front tire wells are black with the afformentioned silver grill and flames. The grey thighs become the rear well assembly and trailer hitch area. There are four rotating tires and two molded ones, all in the same grey as the thighs. The vehicle mode does a pretty decent job of looking like his larger cousins' versions.

Overall, I'd say he's pretty decent for a Legend size. He lacks a fair amount of poseability thanks to only having shoulder and hip joints, but the colour scheme works quite well for him and makes him looks somewhat more menacing than the traditional red, silver and blue Prime scheme. One note is Primes hands are molded at about a 45 degree angle from his wrists, making constantly look like he's trying to imitate a monkey. Insert Monkey Truk joke here.

Ironhide

Ironhide is primarily black, with silver tips on his dual cannons, a light metallic grey/blue on his chest and groin, silver mouthplate and blue eyes. There is a dark shade of blue used for the windows on the doors and windshield. He has ball joints for his elbows and thighs with a pivot on each shoulder. He also has a pivot joint in his neck, allowing him to look up. He arms are somewhat kibbly as the exhaust pipes from his truck mode are clearly visible under his hands. His robot mode is probably the most accurate of the four, with fully molded hands that even have a hole in them.

Black remains the primary colour for alt mode, with a silver grill and silver running boards. His alt mode suffers from some design flaws, namely his cannons and hands being quite clearly visible in the bed of the truck. Also, the cabin and hood seem almost deformed as they slope quite drastically downwards. The tire wells are also much wider than the rest of the truck mode, giving it an odd appearance from the front.

Overall, I'd say Ironhide definitely does the best job of representing the bot mode, but suffers greatly in alt mode. His bot mode is also a fair bit beefier than Prime's, making him look like the rough and rugged warrior he's supposed to be.

Starscream

Starscream is by far the most colourful of the four, with black, silver and metallic brown/grey making up his chest and a yellow cockpit canopy peaking through his stomach. His arms are molded in a light grey colour, as are the horizontal and vertical stabilizers. His legs are mostly black with silver highlights. His head is black with red eyes, a silver jaw and yellow mouth. His arms are rather long for his body, coming almost down to his ankles. He has ball joints for his shoulders, elbows and hips. However, he is very front heavy as his hips are behind the torso, while the legs are molded so the the feet are almost flush with the torso. Putting his arms out in front of him almost guarantees he will fall, which is a shame because it makes his extra poseability a waste. The horizontal stabilizers are mounted to a pivot joint, allowing you to have them as high or low on the robot mode as you like.

His alt mode is primarily black with a yellow canopy that has a silver line running around it, silver nosecone, silver edges to the front of the wings and the ligher grey stabilizers. He also has the worst alt mode in terms of kibble. The head is clearly visible at the back of the jet and turning him over reveals all of the robot mode pieces. Plus, the ball joints that make his shoulders are clearly visible on the wingtips. It's really quite disappointing, but understandalbe given the size of him. I mean, if they couldn't pull off a decent alt mode with the Voyager size version, there's no way they could do it with a Legends size.

Overall, Starscream is a big disappointment. He has some of the best poseability of them, but it's wasted due to the badly designed legs. His alt mode is almost all kibble, especially with the official transformation of having his arms sticking straight out from the back of the jet. By far the worst of the four IMO.

Blackout

Blackout is primarily tan and brownish purple with purple and silver highlights on his legs and chest. His head is tan, with silver on the front, a black mouth and red eyes. He has ball joints for shoulders, hips and knees. He also has pivot joints for elbows. However, the knees are useless due to the shape of the calves. He has no actual arms below the elbow. The forearms consist of two bits of plastic that stand up from the surface of the helcopter cockpit and two blocks for hands. The hands are quite literally just blocks that stick up with a hole in the middle and some sloppily applied black paint to make them stand out. Aside from the lack of proper forearms and hands, he has a pretty good looking bot mode. Also, the rear rotor can flip up at a 90 degree angle from the rest of the fuselage. Doing this however gets in the way of the main rotors. A simple fix though is to seperate the main rotors into four blades as opposed to the official three.

Alt mode is almost completely tan with silver highlights on the engine parts and silver fuel tanks. He also has black windows on the cockpit. The rotors are molded in the same brownish purple that showed up in the bot mode. His alt mode is also probably the most accurate of the four, looking almost exactly like the real helicopter. Also the main rotors split to form six blades for alt mode.

Overall, I'd say Blackout would have been my favourite, but the lack of any real forearms and hands hurts the bot mode quite badly. His alt mode however, is by far the best out of the four.

So, overall, I'd say that Prime and Ironhide have the best bot modes, Blackout the best alt mode and Starscream is, sadly, pretty craptastic.

BOOOOOO!!!! Stealth Starscream is my favorite.
His colors are nice and I don't have the problem with him falling
over. The one thing he is lacking though is front landing gear.