Yeah, this. It's not as good as silver-painted, but it is one hell of a lot better than the light gray plastic of previous releases of the DotM and RotF Leader Prime. The darker gray looks less cheap and waxy. Still... what could have been...
If it shows up in the US in the "Movie Trilogy" line (and I suspect we might with Hasbro's Optimus Adiction, and the fact that we have not gotten a leader class Optimus in DOTM because of Ultimate Prime) I'd buy it for the $40-50 going rate for a Leader. What it costs to import it makes me have no interest at all, though the "Attack Mode" is cool as hell.
But I hate to think what Hasbro would do to this toy to bring it in at the $50 price point. Wouldn't be pretty.
Hey BraveMax! That's one nice looking Prime release. Excellent pictorial and overall review on this toy. I'm getting mine in 3 weeks time. Arigato! Now I feel Im getting my money's worth purchasing him.
Yeah, I don't understand this either. I've seen other photos that show that the new clips on the bottom of the forearms are present so Striker can hold the JetWing BFGs. So Striker isn't a straight retool of Jetwing... Here is a stab at an evolutionary tree from the ROTF Optimus Mold:
I dont think the Striker Prime came from the Buster Prime I think it came from the original ROTF Optimus Prime how can it be from Buster when it doesnt have the gas-tank guns
Well, Jetwing is a modified Buster with new abs. It looks like Striker has many of the modifications including the abs, just not the gas-tank guns. So it's an unfortunate hybrid. Point taken.
If I had to guess, actually, I'd say Striker is a remolded Jetwing Optimus Prime. He has the modded chest piece, the new forearms, is missing the deploying swords... Basically, all of the modifications made to the "Buster" version of the mold, with the exception of the gas tanks/smokestacks. For those, I'd guess they just swapped the tooling with the original gas tanks/smokestacks and made some new holes in them for the mechtech guns. Then they added some more mechtech ports and BAM! new release. It sounds like the ROTF mold was altered first to "Buster" Prime (Faceplate-less head, new gas tanks/smokestacks), then altered again for HFTD Prime (hooks instead of blades, new voice chip, used the original gas tanks/smokestacks), and once more for Jetwing Prime (New forearms, removing the blades and adding clips on the underside; new chest parts; went back to the face-plated head). The Striker version seems to be the Jetwing Prime version with the original gas tanks/smokestacks, the HFTD voice chip, and a couple of new mechtech ports. It may be, at this point, that they have the molds for all of these little alterations (Original and new voice chip, original - possibly modified with mechtech slots - and Buster gas tanks/smoke stacks, sword and hook versions of the original arms, new arms, original or new chest, faceplate or mouth head, mechtech port-less or added mechtech port backpack - though they may have simply modified this permanently) attached to the ROTF Prime mold, and can pretty much swap in and out what they want willy-nilly for future versions...
...what's unfortunate about it? Seems to me that Striker is essentially Jetwing + new pieces. Among the new pieces, the tanks may use tooling from the original mold (probably just to make sure they fit and looked properly) but they have the new tooling added.
I can't believe that even with the new colors, they are still hanging on to that red toe. Who at Takara is standing up for red toes? Such a weird thing to keep when they are already changing so much else. It is a lot less annoying next to the darker gray, though.
Wow... Put the accessories of Jetwing and this together and you really do get an Ultimate Optimus Prime. I'd say I can't wait to get a hold of this and put a super-realistic paint job on it, but I'll probably have seen that done a few times before I even get my hands on it. I mostly just want to see how that would look.
Great job with the pics!! Thanks!! I gotta say, why is Optimus' skill level ALWAYS a 9 when he takes out every big bad Con on the planet???
