The Energon Pub

I went to the dollar store today and saw a "Transport Transformer," aka. "Cheap Imitation Optimus Prime". I picked him up on a whim.



From what I can tell, this is not a knock-off of an pre-existing Transformer mold, but rather a new mold in close imitation to the look of G1 Optimus Prime, right down to the gun. He even comes with a G1- cartoon/movie style axe.



This guy "transforms" in the sense that you have to remove his head and arms, put them aside, and then you snap his legs together, turn them 180 degrees at the pelvis, push in his feet, and fold him at a hinge in his waist. I love how bizarre this figure is, as is often the case with knock-offs and imitations. Why is he grey except for his gold cab? Who knows! Also, he has a light up feature - kind of. Press a button on his chest and a red light in the passenger-side window turns on. Just the passenger-side. Why? Inexplicable!



I'm surprised that some company would go through the effort of sculpting a cheapy toy in such a close likeness to G1 Optimus prime instead of just recasting a pre-existing figure.

Imitation Optimus Prime, transform and roll out and go give some kid lead poisoning!

Pimpimus Prime? I'd buy him. Looks like they might have used a Robot Masters Prime as the basis for the legs, head and gun. Like you, I can't understand why they've done new molding instead of just ripping off RM Prime.

If they did use the Robot Masters Prime sculpt, which seems likely, changes were made. Eyes and mouth plate are not the same, and the gun has an added peg to fit into the toy's hand. Also, on his legs, he's missing that silver cannister thing about the wheel wells.

How come the KO companies can give this piece of **** a blue mouth plate but Hasbro is unable to give us a White Prime Ultra Magnus with a blue mouth plate?

That being said the KO is kind of cute, the grey limbs looks kind of nice, the gold however...

Who cares, BIG PIMP"N...

If I see this, I'm gonna get it and stage a drive by

I do not condone KOs as collectables, but for comic relief and carnage...


hell, I nearly bought a full web print Spayder(spiderman) Cosmic Warrior with an assault riffle for those very reasons

I bought 2 like that from a board member, here or one of the other boards. They're metallic red instead of gold, and one of them is a long-nose cab. They're actually pretty neat, and the head molds are a very nice G1-type.



EDIT- just noticed, yours has different legs than mine, nicer too. The LED chest thing is just sad, tho- you can see the bare LED hanging off its wires in there, with no attempt at hiding it or even centering it in the chest cavity. Still, neat little OP rip-offs to have around.

Hip-Hoptimus Rime wrote:I bought 2 like that from a board member, here or one of the other boards. They're metallic red instead of gold, and one of them is a long-nose cab.

Now that you mention it, I remember that some of the other figures on the pegs came in a long-nose cab version as well.

Heheheheheheh...that's absolutely horrid.

But it's so horrid it's good, ya know? lol

Does the axe fit into Classic Primes hand? If so, I'd buy it just for the axe and paint it orange and toss the rest.

magnimus

you RULE!!!

Look carefully at the arms, then look at Inferno / Grapple / Hauler.

Not bad. He's all shiny too.

There are also a white and a black version out there.
I found these a while back on ebay and posted the links.

UltraPrimal wrote:Does the axe fit into Classic Primes hand? If so, I'd buy it just for the axe and paint it orange and toss the rest.

It sure does (see picture below) but it is small - more like a hatchet than an axe.

Valandar wrote:Look carefully at the arms, then look at Inferno / Grapple / Hauler.

Good eye!

Big time fail on all the parts that must be removed to 'transform' it.

My impression with KOs is that the usual reason for altering the original is to simplify production.