Dave's TF Collaborative Rant: Volvo VNR Optimus Prime

[Dave Van Domelen]

Dave's Transformers Rant

VNR Optimus Prime (Volvo VNR 300)

Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Collab/VolvoPrime

Okay, so this has a weird history, and TFWiki is kinda skimpy on
information. The trailer is just a redeco of the trailer from Earthrise
Leader Class Optimus Prime, but the cab/robot appears to be a "new" mold
based on the Volvo VNR 300 semitractor. I put new in quotes because this
came out in late 2022 in Christmas colors as a Pulse exclusive, but I passed
on it on the assumption it'd come out in normal colors eventually.
And come out it did...in Asian markets, without fanfare or even
acknowledgement. But it finally appeared on Pulse, and I got it. Yeah, I
dropped it in the Artifacts directory where other oddball stuff goes,
although it's at least partially Earthrise. It's sort of a Collaborative in
that it has a special one-off license deal, but not quite.

https://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Gen/LOptimusE - "Combat Deck" trailer
is part of this review.


CAPSULE

$55 at Hasbro Pulse.

VNR Optimus Prime: Accurate vehicle mode, complex but tolerably involved
transformation, decent robot mode. Comes with a redeco of the Earthrise
trailer in slightly better colors. Recommended.


RANT

Packaging: This is in a much smaller box than the typical Leader class
toy, since it's not really meant to dominate retail shelves, it's probably
intended for specialty stores so it's not just a brown Selects box.
The box is 9.75" (25cm) wide, 5" (12.5cm) tall and 4" (10cm) deep,
mostly blue with a "blueprints" motif going on. Some images are purely white
lines, others fade from full color into white lines. The front has vehicle
mode with the cab mostly full color and the trailer mostly white lines, with
the Transformers logo along the right edge being in blueprint sketchy style
as well. The "VNR OPTIMUS PRIME" tag is not sketchy, nor is the Volvo logo
in the lower left. The top of the box is mostly the same as the front, but
with blueprint insets of the head, fist, and foot along the right edge
instead of the TF logo, and the Volvo logo moved to the lower right. The
right side is a blueprint front view of vehicle mode, while the left side is
a blueprint view of Optimus's head and upper chest. As usual, the bottom is
just legalese, while the back has renders of both modes and some call-outs of
features (Matrix in the robot chest, trailer unfolding into Combat Deck).
Inside, the vehicle mode is bound to a brown corrugated cardboard tray
in two pieces, so that the whole thing can be a little shorter than the
combined vehicle mode would otherwise be. The instructions are behind the
inner tray, along with the usual multilingual safety sheet.
And looking at the instructions, what do you know, they use the
Collaborative logo, despite it being nowhere on the box. The instructions
use bluescale instead of grayscale, with red accents, reminding me of cheap
two-color manga.


AUTOBOT: VNR OPTIMUS PRIME
Assortment: F7144
Altmode: Volvo VNR 300
Transformation Difficulty: 37 steps (cab to robot...trailer is 4 more)
Previous Name Use: None with the VNR part
Previous Mold Use: Trailer and rifle from Earthrise, cab is entirely new.

Packaging: The trailer is held in by three rattan strings, the cab by
four strings, and a single string wrapped around twice holds the folded over
rifle to the tray. Oddly, some of the strings are tied while others are
twisted.

Vehicle Mode: The proportions feel weird here...the VNL has the sort of
proportions we're used to from longnose-style Optimus vehicles, with the full
sleeper section behind the driver's seat. The R stands for Regional, which I
guess means it's not meant for long-haul trucking and therefore has no need
for the sleeper compartment. (This has a single smokestack, so it's not the
VNR Electric.) https://www.volvotrucks.us/trucks/vnr/ shows the VNR in
profile, and other than the smokestack this toy lines up perfectly with the
VNR 300. In addition to the usual side mirrors on the doors, the VNR has
additional blind spot mirrors sticking out of the corners of the front. The
rear wheels are molded as double tires, a feature that doesn't always make it
into an Optimus Prime vehicle mode. There's even molded mudflaps with the
Volvo name on them. I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised that a licensed
figure will go to significant lengths to get the licensed part right.
6.25" (16cm) long, approximately 1:48 scale, with a red cab, mostly
black back end, and some dark blue along the side fuel tanks. Some of the
colors are a bit weird specifically to make the robot mode work better,
especially the blue on the sides which is usually heavy with either chromed
or unpainted metal on the real thing. Most of the cab is red plastic, with
clear smoky plastic for the windows, headlights, and the back wall (it's
mostly painted except for the rear window). Weirdly, the places where the
front wheels connect are also smoky clear plastic. The side mirrors, blind
spot mirrors, wheels, and the rest of the visible toy are made of black
plastic. The smokestack is entirely covered in silver paint and I'm
reluctant to scrape any off the check the underlying plastic (I suspect
black, simply because part of the hinge area is painted red to match the cab,
but it wouldn't be the first time they found it cheaper to totally cover a
piece and then repaint part of it in the same color as the underlying
plastic).
In addition to the smokestack, there's silver on the wheel hubs, some
vents on the lower rear corners of the back of the cab, the foglamps, the
trim around the grille, and the Volvo logo in the center of the grille.
There's matte black paint on the bumper's air scoop, the main grille, some
side grille bits under the blind spot mirrors, but not on the windshield
wipers. Most of the cab back is painted gloss red, a tolerable match for the
plastic. There's yellow paint for the roof lights and the turn signals.
There is notably no silver on the mirror surfaces. The headlights probably
could have benefitted from backpainting with silver too, since the smoky
plastic makes them look almost black at first look. The taillights are
painted red.
It rolls quite well on the six (ten) wheels, although you do need to be
a little careful since the hitch area has several transformation hinges in it
and can buckle. The trailer hitch has a 5mm socket at the center which lets
it pull any trailer of the right height that uses a 5mm peg, but it's a lot
farther back than usual.
The trailer has an adapter to let it connect farther back, but it can be
removed so that Earthrise Optimus can tow this if you'd rather he have the
more show-accurate paint job. It's otherwise the same mold as the Earthrise
Optimus's trailer, but cast in slightly different colors. This does make the
wheels stand out as being less detailed and narrower than the wheels on the
tractor, but tractors often pull trailers that don't quite match. The floor,
"kickstand," middle strut and arms of the repair drone are the same medium
warm gray as on the original. The box sides are a slightly darker light
gray. The sprue that has the rear door and rear wheel suspension was done in
black, mostly so that the repair drone core could also be black (as is the
root strut). The wheels are also black, and so is the trailer hitch adapter.
I guess making these parts all black is preferable to making them all blue
just so that the drone core could be blue. Oh, and in a sign that the rifle
was on the trailer sprues, the rifle is identical to the one that came with
Earthrise Optimus Prime, but it's made of black plastic instead of light
gray. While it can be stored on the robot's back, it can't be stored on the
vehicle mode of the tractor half, only on the underside of the trailer.
The wheel hubs are painted silver, and the stripe along each side is
printed in white and light blue with red Autobot symbols, unlike the original
which just used light blue and red.
Note, if you still have the Accessory Pack stuff kicking around, you can
store all of it here, they didn't remove any functionality from the mold,
they merely added the adapter. (I had to look up my original review to make
sure this wasn't missing anything, since I've added so much from the
Accessory Pack and other places to trick out the Earthrise trailer.)

Transformation: In rough form, this reminds me of Hero Optimus Prime
from late G2. The nose end becomes the boots, the head is up between the
rear wheels, etc. There's more to it, though, especially the clever way that
the robot chest is actually the back of the cab but folds down against the
rear wheels section (I do not know the technical truck part term for this).
Of course, it's a LOT more complex than Hero OP's. For instance,
there's several folding panels that make sure that there's no unsightly gaps
in the nose end of the cab in vehicle mode OR in the boots that they become.
The back end folds up significantly to form pretty much all of the torso
except the previously mentioned chest front.
Going back to vehicle mode, I needed to use a knife to open up the
abdomen panels. It was otherwise pretty tricky, especially getting all of
the leg bits inside the boots not just to be able to close them up, but also
shoved in far enough in just the right way to let the robot chest fold in AND
the rear section go level with the front. I never quite needed to recheck
the instructions for any "order of operations" stuff, but it was pretty
challenging. Oh, and the head has to be turned backwards, as there's a notch
in the framework specifically for the front of the helmet to fit.

Robot Mode: A somewhat slimmer and leggier Optimus than usual, in large
part because so much of the nose end of vehicle mode is in the boots. Unlike
the roughly-similar Hero Optimus Prime from G2, though, the roof of the cab
is on the back of each boot, for more of the sort of boot flare you might see
on some designs in Gundam (thinking of the Dom, mostly). As noted in the
transformation notes, there's a fake truck grille on the abdomen (those
painted "vents" I mentioned earlier are actually the abdomen halves), and the
entire torso front is basically fake, being the other side of the panel that
made up the back of the cab. Still, a lot subtler of a fake vehicle mode
chest than one often sees. The chest windows clearly show the Matrix in his
chest. Other notable details include all eight rear wheels folded up on his
back, and the actual grille split across his kneecaps like the raised tops of
riding boots. The lower shins are the fuel tank details, which is why they
had to be dark blue instead of silver and black.
It's worth noting that no part of this figure is recycled from a
previous Optimus, at least as far as I can tell. The rifle was taken from
Earthrise, but that suggests to me that it was on one of the trailer sprues.
The Matrix looks almost the same, but it's significantly slimmer from front
to back (it could have been a modification of the Earthrise render file, I
suppose). That slimness does make it hard to get out of the chest, I ended
up needing to use a knife to pry it out to compare it to the Earthrise
version.
A respectable (for the 2020s) 6.75" (17cm) tall in the usual Optimus
Prime colors, although amusingly there's no red plastic above the boots.
Just lots and lots of red paint, probably where part of the trailer-reuse
cost savings got spent. Most of the torso core is the black plastic of the
hitch area, as is the backpack, the rifle, and the lower shin fronts. The
torso front plate, abdomen, and Matrix are smoky clear plastic with a lot of
paint, and the back of the head is also smoky clear plastic...but there's so
much paint that the lightpiping is basically blocked. Light silvery gray
plastic is used for the collar, shouder roots, shoulders, upper arms,
forearms, pelvis front, hips, and thighs. Dark blue plastic is used for the
front of the head, the fists, the upper shins, and the feet. The cab parts
of the boots are bright red plastic with smoky clear plastic windows and
black plastic accessories as before.
Loads of red paint, on the non-window parts of the torso front, the
outer faces of the shoulderpads, all but the underside of each forearm (the
undersides are separate pieces of plastic, and I expect the paint budget was
strained as it was). Silver paint on the face and forehead tablet, on the
fake grille of the abdomen, the borders of the chest windows, all the cab
parts previously covered, and on the upper shin pieces in what I suppose is
meant to be a reference to the usual shin vents. The Matrix has silver
handles, gold housing, and light gloss blue crystal. Optimus's eyes are
painted the same light gloss blue. Yellow paint is used for the fake roof
lights on the chest, the ||> patterns on the forearms, and some painted
details on the hips that are inspired by the pelvis designs on most Optimi.
There's a white outline Autobot symbol on the front of the left shoulderpad.
The neck is a restricted ball joint, the waist is a smooth swivel. The
shoulderpads connect to the torso on swivels, while the upper arms are hinged
inside the shoulderpads. There's bicep swivels, hinge elbows, swivel
wrists. The hips work the same way as the shoulders, with the pelvis sides
being basically shells that are on swivels, with the inner parts being on
hinges out to the sides, and swivels right below that. Hinge knees, the
ankles have sideways rockers and transformation hinges that go backwards but
not forwards. The toes and heels are hinged for transformation.
The fists can hold 5mm pegs, and there's additional 5mm sockets on the
tops of the shoulders, the undersids of the forearms, the center of the back
(it's the trailer hitch), under each toe and heel, and oddly two on the back
of each thigh. The usual 3mm socket is in the back of the pelvis, although
it's partially blocked by backpack stuff.
The only weapon he comes with is a black recast of the Earthrise Optimus
Prime's rifle, so naturally if you have the Accessory Pack you might be
curious what from it works for VNR Prime. Going through some of the
Accessory Pack stuff, the axe blade kinda fits but on the non-thumb side, and
it's a bit difficult to get it back off. The figure can hold the big rifle,
but it's a very snug fit to the fist. And, of course, the trailer is still
compatible with storing all the bits and Roller. The T30 Mini-Con version of
Roller still has nowhere stable to go, and is actually held a little loosely
by the robot in gun mode. If you fiddle with the adapter piece though, you
can kinda get the T30 Roller pulling the trailer. (As long as they keep
selling new trailer-using Primes, my T30 Roller is probably never going in
storage.)

Overall: Impressively detailed vehicle mode (at least the new part),
interesting transformation that stays just on the right side of frustrating,
decent robot mode. And while the trailer is an old mold, the colors are a
little better this time.


Dave Van Domelen, normally would shift lines between reviews, but gonna
jump Frankentron to the top of the queue so he can take pictures of him with
Minerva Wollstonecraft Shelley.