I agree 100%. The problem with impressions is that people will always be holding them up to the original. And in this case Cullen has had decades of experience, so there's no chance of an Optimus impression being as good (or better) than his. In a way it's a bit unfair to the person doing the impression. I actually think the Cyberverse guy and Jon Bailey are decent Optimus impressionists, but they just can't capture the nuance and emotion that Cullen brings. I doubt any impressionist could, without years of practice.

 

None of you understand what happens on the production side of things. I don’t get hired to do my own version of Optimus. I get hired to sound like Cullen because that’s what most fans are used to hearing. Cyberverse sounds like what most people that do an “impression” of Optimus do. Same thing as SMOOV did back in the day. It’s a man/hero/robot voice but it doesn’t sound like Cullen nor should it. If they wanted Cullen, they would hire him. If they don’t hire him, it’s for a reason. He’s unavailable, budget is too low, it’s non-union, it’s not the voice they want to use or he just doesn’t want to do it. They replaced all the Rescue Bots in Academy with non-union voices. Cyberverse - same. Combiner Wars had a low budget. Once they got a bigger budget, they hired Cullen for Titans Return & Power Of The Primes. It has nothing to do with anyone looking for a replacement for him or only hiring people who can sound like him. They guy who voices him in the toy co-runs his own full-blown studio where they do all the music, sound FX and editing for the commercials and the toys. They offer a better rate so they do the voices in house. No Optimus will ever be BETTER than Peter Cullen. A few come close to being “as good as.” And some have done great jobs as their own Optimus like Chalk.