Cybertronian Optimus Prime

Cybertronian Optimus Prime is one of the nicest looking figures from the War for Cybertron series.

I like how his armor design bulks him up and the headsculpt is terrific.

Here he was, imprisoned in his plastic cell, but he is not Magneto... A mere plastic prison will not hold him!

Free from his captivity, Optimus Prime strikes out a few cool poses for his fans.

The cybertronian vehicle mode looks out of this world, a worthy alternate form for Optimus.

Seen from the rear, most of his robot mode parts are well concealed.

I find that the front of the vehicle looks pretty much like a face.

Autobots rally!

Optimus vs Soundwave!

Takara AM-26 Smokescreen

Team Prime is now at full strength with the latest member: Smokescreen!

Only the Takara version is available currently and Hasbro seems to have no plans to release an American version of this toy.

Fortunately, the Deluxe-class Takara Transformers Prime figures are available at pretty decent prices in Singapore. I got this guy for SGD$30.

Straight out of the box, Smokescreen comes in his vehicle form. He is a plain boring white. I was pretty disappointed that the white parts are not painted.

In my opinion, the plastic seems to be of a pretty low quality as compared to the Takara United line of figures.

Smokescreen is based on the mold used for Knockout. I do think that the mold is more suitable for Smokescreen in terms of cartoon accuracy.

This is primarily due to the shoulder area. In the cartoon, Knockout has multiple layers of shoulder plating, whereas Smokescreen has a simpler shoulder design, which is similar to the structure of this particular mold.

However, this mold is not without its problems. The back is hollow like how it was with Knockout.

I could fit the arms micron into the back socket to give Smokescreen some bulk but it would have been good to have some sort of plating as part of the design to cover the back.

I went ahead to sticker up Smokescreen and his arms micron but decidedly dislike the process.

Took me an hour or so to assemble the arms micron from the sprue it came on, and to sticker both the arms micro and Smokescreen.

I still prefer how Takara did it with the United line where the figures were nicely prepainted.

The sticker on the side doors were especially challenging to align correctly. This is because the stickers for each door are 2 separate pieces in order to accommodate the indentation on the door.

Fortunately, I managed to get the stickers right with the minimal number of re-attempts.

Frankly, I had expected the rims to be painted, being a Takara figure, but they weren't.

I am pretty sure that he has silver rims in the cartoon.

The sticker alignment from the front looks great. Glad I got this part spot on.

Once stickered up, the once plain vehicle looks so much cooler!

Smokscreen in his robot form, holding his arms micron, which looks like some sort of bird. (I think that's weird...)

Someone please give the dude a sandwich.
 
Well, at least no one can accuse Smokescreen of not having a backbone...

Despite the flaws, I still like this figure for what it represents. Always felt that Smokescreen is a pretty interesting character in the cartoon series.

I will likely display him in his vehicle mode as I have a thing for transformers toys with sporty looking car forms.

Smokescreen signs off.

Til the next post!