Masterpiece Optimus Primal

[Paulbot]

This is going to be the death of the Masterpiece line. Masterpiece toys should be licensed vehicles not animals. Or in other words.... Truck not monkey

[MayzaPrime]

This is going to be the death of the Masterpiece line. Masterpiece toys should be licensed vehicles not animals. Or in other words.... Truck not monkey

No way... This is a start of a beautiful Beast Wars MP sub line, which will have no impact on your Truck line

I am happy to have both, love my truck and monkey

[spiderken17]

I don't mind MP's coming out that I do not want as it gives my wallet a break. I am happy for the Beast Wars fans who get an MP Primal. I imagine an MP Rhinox would sell well also.

[ampoldj]

I read it's going to be an MP released next year. What they showed us was what beast mode they will be going for. It's just a non-transforming render at this stage.

Yes the beast mode is just a reference the designer is using as explained in the video of the presentation.

[GoktimusPrime]

The original toy is so good, they'll have their work cut out for them topping it!

Don't expect as big a leap in engineering for this toy as we see in G1 MPs. As you've rightly pointed out,t he engineering/design of the original Optimus Primal toy is so good, that there isn't really as big a margin for improvement as there are with G1 MPs. No doubt that this toy will be a big improvement over the original, but it just won't be as much of a leap forward. The original already features a well articulated robot mode. They could add wrist and maybe additional beast mode articulation, but otherwise there's not a whole lot they can do to make it that much more articulated than the original figure.

Some features I'm anticipating include:
* Face change feature between standard mouthed face and toy-accurate battle mask
* Prime jets (similar to what RM Beast Convoy has, but improved)
* Swords w/ chrome blades and blue hilts
* Chest will open up to reveal Energon Matrix chamber (which would also mean a limited exclusive Burning Convoy repaint of this toy down the track ).
* Battle mace (which the original toy has but never used in the show)

It'll be interesting to see how they approach the missile launchers. The original toy managed to stow them away with a covered up back on the beast mode, but leaving floppy beast kibble in robot mode. The Robot Masters toy did away with the kibble (looking more show-accurate in robot mode), but leaves two holes on the beast mode back. I suspect that the kibble will fold away first, allowing space for the launchers to swing out. The original toy couldn't do this because it was a spring activated gimmick, which I think they'll omit on the MP toy for the sake of better looks on both robot and beast modes.

[Lord_Zed]

There are many aesthetic changes they could make to Primal, all this gimmicks on the original toy give the gorilla mode a rather angular appearance for a beast. I imagine they will give the beast mode rounded arms. Also If they can figure out how to give the beast mode an articulated head (and on an MP budget why not?), that would be a big plus. The wrist guns could be made show accurate so the arm does not flip backwards. I imagine/hope they ditch the lame mace in favour of wrist guns in both arms like in the show.

[GoktimusPrime]

They could still include the mace, but simply do away with the stowage gimmick. After all, other MPs come w/ accessories that don't necessarily stow away. RM Beast Convoy already has forearm guns that pop up without the hands flipping back, albeit with forearm panels flipped up. But of course, that's a 1480JPY (≈AU$15) toy. I would imagine that on an MP budget, they should be able to pull off that gimmick with far more minimalised kibble. Might also be neat to have an interchangeable mouth between neutral and angry. They could possibly even do the same for the beast mode face too.

[Verno]

Hey Gok, if you've got nothing on today...

... a transcript of this video from the Tokyo Toy Fair would be greatly appreciated by all I would think

How's it coming, Gok?

[UltraMarginal]

I guess you could say I'm a beast wars agnostic, I liked the show but can't bring myself to give two hoots about the toys. I guess I'm a vehicle to robot kind of guy.
I hope this turns out as good as people are expecting as a first in the line that's not a vehicle.

[GoktimusPrime]

How's it coming, Gok?

I'm insanely busy this week, man, and I've got a backlog of translation stuff to do. You'll have to ask someone else to translate that.