Dark Of The Moon Ultimate Optimus Prime: AKA Butterfly Prime

First off, I'm going to apologize in advance for the uneven picture quality, some of these were taken with my cell phone, and I didn't bother to retake the shots with the nicer camera either because I didn't have the packaging anymore, or because I was lazy.

So, this was my celebration gift for completing my first quarter of college, not only did I pass all of my classes, but I managed to pull off two 4.0s and a 3.9 (in philosophy, so not too shabby). My wife said that once I took all of my finals, I could get a toy, isn't she the greatest? Not only does she indulge me, but she knows how to encourage me as well, she promised me a corgi once I become a physical therapist!

We went to Toys R Us, and I saw this sitting on the shelf, but it was $80, and while the wife did sign off on spending that much, I just didn't feel right, but then I also didn't want any of the other Transformers that they had after seeing it. The next day, we went to Walmart, and they had it for $65, so I jumped on that in a heartbeat.

I still haven't actually seen Dark of the Moon, but I know that Optimus Prime finally has a trailer again, I'm not sure if he combines with it in the movie, as the toy does, but I could care less! It's the first Optimus Prime toy with an actual trailer since the Energon toyline in 2004! On top of that, the box is just stupidly large, I'd say it's a little more than a foot tall, and wider than that.

As you can see, this is the "Biggest Optimus Prime Toy!" I can't confirm the validity of that statement 100%, but it's certainly the largest one that I have, and that's just going from toes to head, not trying to cheese the wings to maximize the height (the box says they extend to 22 inches), he's just big.

So, here we have the complete cab and trailer combination, not a lot surprising here, the trailer design looks like what I've seen in the stills from the movie. I didn't bust out a tape measure or anything, but I'd estimate that the trailer is a bit under a foot long.

And the obligatory GI Joe size comparison.

And here we have some comparisons to other Movie Primes, on the left is the Leader (MSRP $40) class Prime from the Revenge of the Fallen toy line, and to the right the Voyager (MSRP $20) class from Dark of the Moon, I was surprised to discover that the voyager class Prime doesn't have the right sized hitch peg to toy the trailer. Not that it's important, but it seems that they always try to make things like that interchangeable. Anyway, as you can see, the cab itself sizes up at about a halfway point between the two.

And so begins the transformation from cab to robot.

It's not a particularly involved or complicated transformation, but it's interesting. It seems like the Dark of the Moon toyline for the most part has featured simpler transformations than the toys from the first two movies. I think Hasbro realized that the complicated transformations made for too many breakable parts, and less play value to the kiddies (Okay, Optimus drove over to Megatron, wait 5 minutes while I transform him, so they can fight!), I don't really have a preference either way, as long as it's not the same transformation I've seen a dozen times before. He does seem to have some proportion issues, with the hulking arms, and the skinny legs, but it's a lot less noticeable in person. The only other criticism I have is that he doesn't have any kind of gun or weapon in this mode, not even a fold out sword or forearm mounted gun.

But, there's a reason for that, the main gimmick of the toy line for Dark of the Moon has been the "Mech Tech" weapons. For most of the toys, these are ridiculously large weapons that just mount onto the vehicles, and typically have some sort of lever activated transformation, the gun in Prime's right hand in this picture belongs to sideswipe, and turns into a sword when you press the switch on the butt of the gun. The gun in his left hand is actually an entire transformer that turns into a trike, a robot, or a gun for other figures to use. Because of this gimmick, every figure in the line has a standardized peg hole to hold weapons, and Prime is designed to maximize on this gimmick. Not only can he hold the weapons in his hands, but they can be mounted to his shoulders, or the sides of his arms.

Both of this points can also be used when he's a truck cab, as well as an additional peg in his gas tanks, making a total of six weapon mounting points as a cab.

The trailer also gets in on the action, with two holes on each side, and eight on the top, for a total of twelve weapon points, adding the six from the cab, and you have eighteen points where you can mount guns on him and turn him into a rolling battle wagon.

Scale reference for the robot mode.

Okay, now it's time to transform the trailer, unfortunately, the trailer doesn't turn into anything on it's own, no base mode, or arsenal as I've heard it's used as in the movie at one point, and while there are a lot of moving parts, it's a pretty straightforward transformation.

First you pop off the ridiculously large gun.

Then you peel it like a banana.

The front of the trailer extends out and then snaps onto the back/top.

Pull apart the legs, and move the arms a bit, and you're almost done.

All that's left is to attach the gun.

It mounts to the center here, and then folds back for storage.

To put Prime in, you first have to open it up, there's a chest piece that flips down, the arms rotate out to the sides, and then the shins fold down.

The only modification Prime needs is to have his toes folded down. And then he solidly snaps into place at a couple of points on his torso.

Each of his feet have a hole on the bottom of them that lines up with a peg in the suit legs.

And then of course the shins fold back up.

The arms just fit over the smaller arms, with a peg that is held in the smaller fist.

And then the chest piece is folded back up and snapped into place.

I like that it adds a little more of the red section to his torso, which keeps him from looking really skinny in his super mode.

And that's the basic transformation.

Scale reference.

I like that this is actually a full exoskeleton, not just a backpack and a pair of boots, or a collection of pieces that snaps onto the apendages and torso. This exoskeleton stands on it's own, and his arms are just about as poseable in super mode as in his normal mode, through a clever joint duplication in the exo-suit.

The legs are not as poseable, lacking knees, and only having the barest hip motion. But, he's got solid ratcheting ankle joints that can be angled out to the side to give him a more natural pose.

The big gun folds over and first has a targeting helmet that's colored the same as Prime's head, with a transparent visor with a reticule on it.

Then there are two handles from him to grip to hold it. The gun sticks out really far it's a pretty intimidating gun that looks like it would knock him on his ass whenever he fired it.

The gun has three switches that activate different lights and sounds, two buttons on the top, and then the red switch can be pulled back to also extend out to pieces to the sides of the barrel.

The batteries came out of it rather quickly.

And then of course, here's the full on butterfly effect of the wings, that I've been saving for a big reveal!

More weapons points! The gun itself has one on each of the panels that pop out from the sides of the barrel, as well as two on the top a little further back.

The shoulder mounting points are still useable, as well as the 12 points on the trailer, which are now on the backs of the wings.

In addition, there are three newly revealed points on each of the upper wings that face forward more.

Here's some overkill on the main gun.

And me using as many of the mounting points as I could, I couldn't find anymore guns that would fit, and still needed to fill at least another eight points (Unfortunately, weapon peg sizes haven't been very consistent over the 27 years that Transformers have been made).

And lastly, while I don't have another Optimus Prime toy that comes close in size to this one, I do have a Brave Maximus, which still towers over him, even if you can cheese the wings to say that Prime is taller.

I don't know what the general consensus is on this figure, I know when it was first revealed that a lot of people were down on the "butterfly" wings, but I'm a sucker for any Prime toy that has a trailer, especially if he can combine with it. I do have some esthetic issues with the basic robot mode, but those vanish in the ultimate form, which makes sense since it was probably designed with that in mind, first and foremost. An actual full exoskeletal suit really has never been done before in a Transformer (Pretenders don't count), especially not on prime. So all in all, I'm pretty happy with it.