The Energon Pub

Hey guys!

As I'm sure most of you know, Armada Optimus Prime is associated with Gold Plastic Syndrome. A couple days ago, the inevitable happened; his arm came right off!

However, I fixed him with a donor part from Powerlinx Optimus. His arm-part is cast in solid red plastic, so looks great on the regular Prime.

Instructions for doing so:

Take your donor:

1) Hold a soldering iron against the large, flat pin in the elbow. After about 20 seconds the pin will slide right out. It can be tricky, as you have to pull straight up on the arm, while keeping the iron on the shiny metal surface.

2) Using a hammer and something solid and pointy (a nail, say), tap the thin wire pin out of the lower elbow. Two short, hard taps should get the grippy part out, and you can pull it free with your fingers.

Do the same to your broken Prime, and then reverse the procedure. Make sure to do it in the right order, else you won't be able to get his 'cuff' back on. To re-insert the large elbow pin, I found that the pressure from holding the soldering iron against it was enough to firmly and permanently guide it back into place. The plastic inside the joint will melt, you see. Keep it straight, and you'll be fine.

Hope this helps anybody mourning their (fantastic) Armada Primes. The Powerlinx version was shelfwarming in the UK for a long time, and is fairly easy to come by (I ended up being given two). I'm sure junkers come up on eBay often, otherwise, I guess the investment will be worth it if you're the kind who plays with his toys! Like me.

Or if you are lucky, find yourself the Takara or Sonokong version which has the corrected shoulder design and the yellow elbow joint.

(Though technically, iirc, there's a 2nd version which corrected the shoulder problem due to the wiring concerns)

AdamPrime wrote:Hey guys!

As I'm sure most of you know, Armada Optimus Prime is associated with Gold Plastic Syndrome.

From my understanding, it's just a bad joint and not a GPS issue.

fenrir72 wrote:Or if you are lucky, find yourself the Takara or Sonokong version which has the corrected shoulder design and the yellow elbow joint.

(Though technically, iirc, there's a 2nd version which corrected the shoulder problem due to the wiring concerns)

Over here we got superpants Prime very late (along wave 3) and no collector or anyone else has reported GPS problems or even breaking at all. So I'm guessing it's only really an issue with the first batch or so.

I beg to differ about that elbow joint. I had to go through 2 Hasbro Superpants Prime. Both elbow(the gold colored plastic)broke for no apparent reason. No excessive force.........zilch! Just broke. Good thing I managed to acquire a Takara version. No elbow problems.