Not sure how many of you here frequent the Seibertron.com website, but I am sure many of you have come across the Seibertron Galleries at one stage or another.
Ryan, the owner of Seibertron, (and who is responsible for all those galleries) has just taken pictures of the upcoming 25th Anniversary Re-issue of G1 Optimus Prime, and the reports are not all that good:
Short revised review.
For those who do not want to click the link:
This reissue of Optimus Prime is, without a doubt, THE worst official reissue ever as far as authenticity and quality goes.
If you want to buy this figure to keep in the package, I would highly recommend it. If you're looking to buy your first G1 Optimus Prime figure, you should stay as far away from this figure as possible. I'll write more once the gallery has been posted tomorrow.
This should sum up my thoughts: I've seen knock offs of Optimus Prime that are of higher quality than this version. I feel kind of guilty that I'm going to write such a negative review of a figure since I know so many people at Hasbro (which is a big part of the reason why I don't write reviews), but something has to be said so that my fellow Seibertronians don't waste their money on this figure.
I was really looking forward to Hasbro's 25th Anniversary Optimus Prime. I'm an owner of 5 Optimus Prime reissues, the G2 version and my original G1 version from my childhood. This is my 7th version of the original Optimus Prime mold and this is by far THE worst version of this mold. You're better off spending your money on an Encore reissue or one of the other reissues. Shame on Hasbro for passing this poor representation off as the 25th anniversary version of the legendary Optimus Prime toy!!!
"Big Deal" you might be thinking to yourself, well it kind of is, Ryan, is a well know Hasbro sympathiser, often siding with Hasbro and standing up for them when users of Seibertron.com go on a rage against them. In the same thread, he goes on to do just that (for un-related issues mind you).
You can see his gallery of 25th Prime here. He has comparison images with the Encore release on Convoy, which has it's own gallery here.
I originally wanted the Encore version, but left it to get this version, since it would be available in local markets, but with the pics and Ryan's report I'll be leaving the figure on the shelf when it gets released.