this is going to be a little of a retrospective review. Now I've had the guy for almost half a year now, I'm liking him more and more. I did go the Reprolabels route as I suggested I would earlier, but even without them, I'm still quite happy.

He's big, beefy, and stands a full head taller than Classics OP (Classics OP's head just reaches the top of CW OP's shoulders) - who says our figures are getting smaller?
Simpler, yes, but since the FOC/T30 lines we seem to have a reversion in figure sizes, trading complexity for something a little bigger. I'm OK with that.

I'll admit, he's not exactly "Geewun" - but Classics Prime has that covered pretty well - this is a new facet, and while he's not exactly IDW in design (unless that changes after the recent happenings) he does give off an air of being someone you don't want to mess with. and is much more imposing vs other Classics-verse voyager and deluxe figures, much more so then the Classics version. And while not quite tall enough to look Leader Megs in the face, seems like he'd have a much better chance of it than the Classics version to come out on top.

His main draw-back is the combiner bits, that cod piece and backpack enclosing the combiner head (which looks amusing in place of the normal head in bot mode) but as they only really affect his silhouette if looking from the front, I can deal.

To summarise, this might not be the be all and end all G1 version of Optimus Prime (that title belongs to MP10) he's a great evolution of the almost immortal Autobot leader and may just take Prime position (hehe) in my Classics-verse collection if I don't end up getting his combiner limbs.

P.S. I currently have in front of me all in a row, Gen. Orion Pax, Evolutions "1984" OP and CW OP - looks like a timeline/evolution progression.