Who is your favourite Optimus Prime/Convoy (besides G1)?

[Ode to a Grasshopper]

You could probably add Shattered Glass Optimus in there too.

[dirge]

My favourite non-G1 Optimus Prime would have to be Fire Convoy (RID Optimus Prime).

If Fire Convoy counts (I didn't even think of him, since I really don't think of the Car Robots characters by their RiD names), then yes he's also my favourite.

[Trent]

My favourite non-G1 Optimus Prime would have to be Fire Convoy (RID Optimus Prime). Out of the other non-G1 Primes, only he and Movieverse Optimus Prime transform into licensed vehicles; the others are all fictitious alt modes. Which is fine, but I prefer real-life based alt modes as they really play on the "robots in disguise" element of Transformers to me. The other thing that appeals to me about Fire Convoy is his persona; I love how he's a hero even when he's not fighting 'Cons, as he actually works with human firefighters saving lives.

While Movieverse Prime does have licensed vehicle modes too, I find him to be lacking in the heroic department; he was fine in Bumblebee and the 2007 film, but in the Bayformer sequels I found that he basically just became a brute. Even as Chris McFeely's video points out, he became less like how Larry Cullen advised Peter Cullen to play Optimus Prime like; "Be strong enough to be gentle." I find that Fire Convoy is strong enough to be gentle. But yeah, it's the combination of those two main factors that make Fire Convoy my favourite non-G1 Optimus Prime - he's a realistic licensed fire engine and he saves lives beyond just bashing bots.

And to top things off, while Car Robot was a short-lived line it was the first line to give us post-Beast Wars TFs as transformable action figures with licensed vehicle modes. This directly inspired Takara to create Binaltech and Masterpiece, and has in turn come to influence many recent lines including some CHUG and many Movieverse toys (and to Movieverse's credit, that series has given us a lot of Transformers based on licensed vehicles). Next time you're playing with a fully articulated licensed vehicle Transformer toy, thank Car Robot.

That's still G1 Optimus Prime (reanimated & reprogrammed as a zombie by the Quintessons); you could argue that it's a proto-form of what we would come to call Nemesis Prime (although there was an even earlier version in "Attack of the Autobots"; see The Basics on Nemesis Prime for more). I personally thought that Zombie Starscream was scarier and more of a true zombie. Or even creepier were the Destroids; zombies created by the Decepticons using human corpses, and if that wasn't creepy enough, the Mark II Destroids were made by converting living humans! (and they were harder to "kill" too).

I’m curious about you calling him “Fire Convoy” as if you are referring to the Japanese version Car Robots over the US version RID. Because Fire Convoy is a different character to Optimus in Car Robots and as such is not valid in this discussion. Much in the same way you didn’t include Optimus Primal because he’s, you know, not Optimus Prime.