Transformers Power of the Primes Primal Prime Artwork Found in 'Transformers - A Visual History'

Aw man I would have loved to see Primal Prime but, then again, I'm a total sucker for Optimus Primal and repaint potential (and Beast-era Botcon). It would have been nice to see it retooled to have a full mouthplate on the super mode and a Transmetal 1 Optimus Primal retool for the smaller bot in Apelinq colors.

I have a different theory about this art, in that it may have been less of a proposed redeco and more Hasbro's original idea for the normal retail figure's deco to make Optimal Optimus look more like what a "real Prime" would look like (as in, being colored like Optimus Prime) instead of using the 1998 figure's primarily orange deco that the retail POTP toy ultimately went with.

Sabrblade wrote:I have a different theory about this art, in that it may have been less of a proposed redeco and more Hasbro's original idea for the normal retail figure's deco to make Optimal Optimus look more like what a "real Prime" would look like (as in, being colored like Optimus Prime) instead of using the 1998 figure's primarily orange deco that the retail POTP toy ultimately went with.

I disagree. While we love to mock Warden's team for their anti-BW stance generally toys in the Prime Wars trilogy always used something approximating the original deco for their mass release, meaning odds are POTP Optimal Optimus likely was always intended to be orange. It would make no sense to release a single figure in that entire trilogy with a non toy/show-based color scheme.

Skritz wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:I have a different theory about this art, in that it may have been less of a proposed redeco and more Hasbro's original idea for the normal retail figure's deco to make Optimal Optimus look more like what a "real Prime" would look like (as in, being colored like Optimus Prime) instead of using the 1998 figure's primarily orange deco that the retail POTP toy ultimately went with.

I disagree. While we love to mock Warden's team for their anti-BW stance generally toys in the Prime Wars trilogy always used something approximating the original deco for their mass release, meaning odds are POTP Optimal Optimus likely was always intended to be orange. It would make no sense to release a single figure in that entire trilogy with a non toy/show-based color scheme.

Unless it was a special unique figure voted into the line from the outside.

Sabrblade wrote:

Skritz wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:I have a different theory about this art, in that it may have been less of a proposed redeco and more Hasbro's original idea for the normal retail figure's deco to make Optimal Optimus look more like what a "real Prime" would look like (as in, being colored like Optimus Prime) instead of using the 1998 figure's primarily orange deco that the retail POTP toy ultimately went with.

I disagree. While we love to mock Warden's team for their anti-BW stance generally toys in the Prime Wars trilogy always used something approximating the original deco for their mass release, meaning odds are POTP Optimal Optimus likely was always intended to be orange. It would make no sense to release a single figure in that entire trilogy with a non toy/show-based color scheme.

Unless it was a special unique figure voted into the line from the outside.

We have no way to prove or disprove your theory so I'll stick with my gut feeling that there isn't really any sense for this to have been the original, intended color scheme. Too much attention to detail went into POTP Optimal Optimus that I simply have no reason to believe it. If the figure had been such a 'hackjob' due to Warden's dislike of BW it could have gone wrong in so many ways. Instead the team went by the vote and produced a shockingly BW-accurate sculpt which retained most of the key elements and the original color scheme.

Its more logical to assume this was a scrapped exclusive.

Shame we didn't get this guy. I don't know if I would have picked him up or not, but it would have been cool to see him, and I appreciate knowing that they even thought of him.

To me this art presents four possible options of what happened:
-Primal Prime was going to be the SDCC exclusive instead of a weird repaint of a Season 3 design in Season 1 colors, but they decided to make the exclusive still the same character so they could fully theme it after the vote instead.
-Primal Prime was intended to be in the main line had it not been shortened to 4 waves, along with the Prime Masters that were SDCC-exclusive and possibly Snaptrap (at least), the other two Orthia limbs (the heavy mentions of Solus Prime in the Orthia lore from Pulse to me screams that it was meant to be for PotP), and a Battleslash/Roadtrap-styled tooling of Flywheels that was then altered before release in Siege to remove the bot modes.
-This art is from the early phase of planning Selects, and the figure wasn't made because they thought it safer to test the line with Deluxe figures first rather than release a Leader repaint right out the gate (remember that we got a few Deluxes and a Voyager in Selects first before they went in on Shackwave).
-This art is nothing but a concept of a possible repaint that never made it further than that concept stage, and no figure was planned of this deco to begin with.

Interesting, it would still have been a pass for me with the orig toy having all its alt modes and it could still turn up at some point.

Skritz wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:It would make no sense to release a single figure in that entire trilogy with a non toy/show-based color scheme.

Maybe that doesn't but retail FOC Bruticus apparently did