Series - Generations
Sub-line - Titans Return
Size/class - Leader
New/remould/redeco - Remold of CW Ultra Magnus
Wave - 1
Released here - July 2016


I had a knock off Powermaster Optimus in the early 90s so a modern version is a must-have for me, and he doesn't disappoint.

Him and CW Ultra Magnus are like the Combiner Wars figures; they share the same engineering but nearly every piece is new, so calling it a remold/retool is a bit an understatement really. It is a very clever re-use of the engineering as well.

TRAILER MODE:





An excellent alt mode. The new cab design with the square top, longer grill section looks suitably beefy and powerful. The trailer deco is done up in a very G1 way which brings back memories. I also like the fact that you mount the grey cannon with the hollowed out seat facing inside.

Interestingly, Hasbro chose the cartoon style Autobot symbol here.

TITAN MASTER:

The Titan Master dude looks exactly like how I remembered Hi-Q, which is a big plus for me.

BASE MODE:

It's basically the headless robot doing a split (just like the old toy), but with all the weapons attached and TMs populating the base, it actually looks half decent, and I had a lot of fun setting it up.


The TMs can ride inside his shoulder cannons, just like on the old G1 toy, which is again a plus for me.

TRANSFORMATION:
This is my first experience with this mold and it is quite a clever design. The added panels required for the fully enclosed trailer are distributed neatly on the limbs.

ROBOT MODE:

A beefy and powerful-looking robot mode, with all the right Optimus colors. All the red on the arms, shoulders and the chest panel are grey plastic painted red. It is a very nice rich saturated red and matches the red plastic perfectly. The knees and shins could use some accents to break up the blue though (all the sculpted details are there to mimic the stickers on the G1 toy).




Both the Optimus "helmet" and the Orion Pax head are nicely sculpted. The double-hinged mechanism on the helmet is quite clever to accommodate different shape of heads, but unless the head in there has big optics like Pax , the end result won't look as good.


Articulation is passable. He' got all the limitations from the Magnus mold and improved on none. The added panels on the inside of his legs make it hard to straighten the legs as they bump into each other.

The hollow forearms and the extra panels underneath have received a lot of criticism. Apparently all the savings from recycling old engineering went into the extra panels and the headmaster gimmick so Hasbro had to cut corner here and there.. The hollowness does look terrible, but I actually don't mind the extra panels under his forearms.


Finally Leader Megatron has a worthy opponent.

I do wish he had new weapons though, or even just two of the same of either. It is also unfortunate that he can't hold 5mm weapons all that well.


All in all, despite the flaws, he's still a very nice update of Powermaster Optimus. He's beefy and a nice display piece. I personally am not sold on the Japanese version; although it is much nicer with all the modification, it doesn't have the Powermaster feel for me, and the feet now look weird for the sake of combining. Happy with the TR version for the time being.