Dave's Transformers Kingdom Rant: Rodimus Prime

[Dave Van Domelen]

Dave's Transformers Kingdom Rant: Commander Class

Rodimus Prime (sports car/truck)

Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Gen/CommanderK1


CAPSULE

$80 price point.

Rodimus Prime: A good update of the G1 concept with modern designs, but
it suffers from widespread assembly issues and some dubious design choices
that make it too much hassle to feel like good value. Recommended, but could
have been higher if not for some design issues.


RANT

So, Hot Rod is in Studio Series, but Rodimus is in Kingdom. Another
split like the Cyclonus/Scourge bit.

Important Note: the trailer doesn't like to stay all the way closed, and
I've confirmed this with several people. In one case (Ben Yee), more careful
positioning of the cannon inside fixed it, but mine wouldn't close all the
way even with the cannon removed entirely. My guess is that the very long
metal pins on either side need to be placed with way more precision than
Hasbro's factories can manage, resulting in a tiny amount of torque. The
tabs on top aren't strong enough to hold, but I was able to make it work by
adding a couple layers of Future polish. If you want to live dangerously,
you can use superglue instead, but make sure it's dry before you leave the
trailer closed for any amount of time!

Packaging: Like previous Commanders, it comes in a non-window box due to
the high odds that such a large window would get easily damaged in-store or
even before reaching the store. A regular rectangular solid 13" (33cm) tall,
11" (27.5cm) wide, and 3.5" (9cm) deep. The front art wraps around to the
left side, and has robot mode Rodimus wielding a sword and running through
the lava fields at the base of the Ark's volcano, with his truck mode to the
left. The remaining sides stick to the trade dress style of other boxes.
The back shows robot mode, separate car mode, truck mode, and call outs
showing some of the accessories and the robot manning the battle platform
(which clearly has AIRport connectors). There is no glyph, that space is
taken up by a call out box.
The instructions and Fate card are loose behind the inner cardboard
tray. I got the Autobot Ark with the Fate "Autobots awaken in 1984" (they
don't bother using the more obscure Cybertronian numerals, just regular
"1984" digits).


AUTOBOT: RODIMUS PRIME
Assortment: WFC-K29
Altmodes: Sportscar, Truck
Transformation Difficulty: 34 steps (robot to car), 8 steps (car to truck)
Previous Name Use: G1, Titanium, MP (others are just Rodimus, or the more
recent Evolution Rodimus Prime)
Previous Mold Use: None

Packaging: Five pairs of ties hold the trailer in the cardboard tray,
two double ties on the trailer's cannon rig, two pairs on the car, and one
pair around the baggie holding the rest of the accessories. Two long rubber
bands keep the car from popping apart. The accessories bag has the sword,
rifle, a clear blue version of Omega Supreme's Fire Blast set, and rigid
clear blue plastic smokestack smoke and Matrix flash. The Matrix itself is
stored inside the car. (Why a sword? It's likely a reference to the Sword
of Primus from the ReGeneration One comic.)
The package renders show the smoke pieces as light clear gray, but the
actual toy has them painted almost entirely black. The trailer is packaged
in a flattened mode that's not quite what the instructions want for battle
station mode.
Note, while packaged in the car mode, it either shakes apart a bit in
transit or was never quite transformed properly in the factory. I couldn't
get all the seams flush or all the tabs to stay in just messing with it right
out of the box, but when I transformed to robot mode and back to car mode, it
was a lot more solid.

Robot Mode: Fairly stable once you figure out all the tricks of
transformation, although the back of the right boot won't stay locked down on
mine. Still, it's a pretty good representation of the character. The
backpack is a bit bulkier than the "Romita-ized" animation design, and the
exhaust cannons on the arms aren't quite the right shape, but those are minor
quibbles. They get the colors almost completely right, although they have to
use a LOT of paint to manage it. The main missing color is on the wheel
hubs, which are unpainted rather than being silver as in the animation model
(and yeah, the trailer also lacks painted hubs). A minor difference is found
in the pelvis, which is unpainted and doesn't try to manage the two-tone
effect the animation did, although the lines are molded for it. Oh wait...
they DID paint those parts, it's just not apparent under normal light levels,
because the paint is so close to the shade of the plastic. Finally, while
the animation model was a bit inconsistent on the "grown up Hot Rod" face
design, sometimes making him look as old as Kup, this toy strikes a nice
balance. He does have a touch of "bags under the eyes," but leadership was
always a real drag for him.
6.5" (17cm) tall at the head, 7" (18cm) at the tops of the wing piece,
in the classic red, orange, yellow, black, and some silver. Thing is,
there's no yellow plastic in this toy. And while there's some orange plastic
in the trailer, there's none in the robot. LOTS of paint. Dark red plastic
is used for the torso (absent a few internal hinges), upper arms, head,
forearms, pelvis, thighs, and vehicle bits mostly hidden inside the boots. A
slightly lighter and more giving red plastic is used for the elbow joints,
shoulder joints, some panels near the elbows and a few bits inside the torso.
Light silvery gray plastic on the hands, wrists, neck, some struts inside the
torso, hip joints, and the knee joints. Black is used on the wheels, the
boots, the socket inside each forearm from the elbows, a hinge in the forearm
panels, and the weapons other than the sword's 5mm peg. The entire wing on
the back and the roof part of the backpack are made of clear medium blue
plastic. It took a little careful paint scraping on a section that's only
visible during transformation, but the arm pipes are black plastic. (I
didn't have to scrape the thighs, removing a screw showed the underlying
plastic well enough.)
So much orange and yellow paint. Almost the entire wing is painted
yellow, and it's fairly thick. There's also yellow (more likely printed than
painted) on the chest flames, and yellow painted on the headlights on the
abdomen and the details on the tops of the forearms. Orange paint is found
on the chest and outer collar, completely covering the thighs, and down the
centerline of the wing. Silver paint covers the arm pipes, the face, the
helmet tablet, and the headlight-like details on the tops of the shoulders.
The blade of the sword is also painted silver. The eyes are painted metallic
blue, a red Autobot symbol is printed on the sternum, and a black line is
printed between the yellow and orange on the chest. And then there's the red
paint. The almost invisible, slightly warmer red paint that's on much of the
abdomen and the helmet front. It's only really visible under really bright
light ("tactical flashlight" levels or sunlight) or under UV. They really
should've dropped the red paint apps and used the budget to make the wheel
hubs silver. Ah well, painting the hubs shouldn't be too hard for any
reasonably crafty owner. Inside the torso, the Matrix holder area is painted
silver.
Loads of articulation. The head is connected to the top of the neck by
a ball joint, and the neck itself is on a hinge that can rock forwards and
backwards. The waist is a smooth swivel. The shoulders are universal joints
plus the roots inside the torso are on transformation swivels that do not
seem intended to be locked in place. Double hinge elbows with a swivel in
between the two hinges, which gives a better range of motion than the usual
bicep swivel. The wrists are universal joints that can rotate freely around
swivels and also bend inwards about 45 degrees on hinges. The index fingers
have two hinges each (one hinge is kinda in the middle of the finger rather
than at either regular joint), and the rest of fingers share those two
hinges. Thus, the hand can go from flat to a "closed but with the trigger
finger poking out a bit" configuration. (The thumbs do not move, and the 5mm
sockets on the hands depend on the thumbs not moving.) The hips are
universal joints, using the common trick of having part of the pelvis move
with the upper leg, plus flaps on the sides that get out of the way if the
legs kick up to the sides. There's swivels where the orange thigh pieces
connect to the pelvis-as-hip pieces. The knees are double hinges (they don't
bend 180 degrees for car mode, rather you get a collapsing action similar to
a lot of Combiner Wars limbs), the ankles have dual hinges (side to side at
the instep, forwards and backwards at the front of the shin), plus the toes
can fold down for that Don Martin look.
The chestplate folds down on a hinge, and there's a hinge near the
sternum so that the chestplate can bend in a bit to solidly press into slots
on the inner torso. The Matrix itself is held in pretty firmly. It's not
the same as the Studio Series Hot Rod Matrix, although it's similar in size
and the fact that it's made of clear blue plastic with a lot of silver paint
for the handles and gold paint for the housing. The openings are pretty
small, the figure has to hold the Matrix by its thumbs, and that's tricky if
you have the custom energy effect attached. The Matrix is an inch (2.5cm)
across, and unlike Hot Rod's version the back side hole is smaller than 5mm
so it can't attach to any pegs.
The hands can hold 5mm posts. There's a 5mm socket on either side of
the backpack and one in the center of the back-wing. There's one on the back
of each boot, and on the underside of each heel. There's a pair of 3mm studs
at the front of each arm-pipe section, but they're too close together to fit
any single 3mm socket, they only work on the smoke blasts that come with the
toy. No usable regular 3mm studs on the robot.
The main rifle is based on G1 Rodimus Prime's Photon Eliminator, but
with a hinge so it can fold in half for storage. Unfolded it's 4.75" (12cm)
long and all black plastic, with two 5mm peg grips (the figure's flexible
enough to hold it by both at once, but it's awkward), and a 3mm stud at the
muzzle. It folds roughly in half, with both pegs on the back half. It
stores decently on the side of the backpack.
As noted earlier, the sword is based on the Sword of Primus from
Transformers ReGeneration One, a rather forgettable Furman-written coda to
his G1 run albeit with all the Marvel-owned bits scraped out. Just over 4"
(10cm) long, with the blade part painted silver. The hilt is 5mm, but with a
pommel at the end, so only figures with partially open hands can snap it into
place. There's a 5mm peg inside the crosspiece and the root of the blade
that can be folded out either direction to let the sword store on the robot's
back. There's also two slots in the middle of the blade that go onto tabs on
the underside of the car mode.
While the toy comes with a lot of energy effects, most of them are just
unpainted clear medium blue versions of Omega Supreme's energy effects.
Unfortunately, the tolerances on these are iffy, several of mine have pegs
that are too narrow so they sit loosely in a 5mm socket...particularly the
biggest base unit of the combined blast, which is too small to stay in a
socket. At best, it sags noticeably. There's a more rigid clear blue
plastic burst of light that clips onto the Matrix, and some clear blue
plastic smokestack effects that were for some reason painted almost entirely
black rather than being done in gray like on the packaging. The smoke pieces
can go onto the arm-pipe blasters, or onto the exhaust pipes of the trailer.
The non-Omega energy effects have specific places to be
stored inside a drawer on the underside of the trailer/battle station, and
you can cram a few of the Omega pieces into that drawer too. The rest can
store in the overhead compartment in the trailer, or in the many sockets
inside the battle station. The toy really only has a use for Omega Supreme's
tip pieces, to go into the battle station cannons and onto the rifle. I
suppose some of them can be used as "squibs" to represent others shooting at
the vehicle mode.

And now, some pictures of Rodimus having his mid-life crisis already and
getting himself a Harley. (It transforms into a robot, but not a very good
one.)
http://www.dvandom.com/images/RodimusHarley1.JPG
http://www.dvandom.com/images/RodimusHarley2.JPG

Battle Station: Okay, so this is more of a general class of ways to open
up the trailer than a single mode. The instructions mostly focus on a
version that looks most like the G1 trailer, but the designers clearly
planned for some variations on the theme. All versions of this have the roof
and sides of the trailer split open to reveal a ramp down the middle and a
cannon with small blast shields mounted inside. The ramp at the front end
(the back of the trailer) slopes up slightly because of how the various bits
are positioned, and ends in an AIR Port connector. The rear of the station
(the front of the trailer) is just sort of there, with minimal play value.
However, you can fold the back end open to reveal an extra area for
Micromasters and other small figures to stand, or to mount weapons. The rear
trailer door can also be left vertical to act as a gateway into the battle
station.
In the G1-style configuration, it is 7.25" (18.5cm) wide, 11.5" (29cm)
long, and with the cannon raised it's a total of 7" (18cm) tall not counting
the handles being raised or the barrels being elevated. If you fold out the
rear deck, the length increases to 13.75" (35cm). It's in mostly the same
colors as the robot, but without any blue (unless you count the Fire
Blasts). There's actual orange plastic for the underbody and part of the
rear deck, silvery gray on the ramp down the middle and some bits at the back
ends of the side walls. The rest of the side walls, the front "gate" and the
cap of the rear deck are dark red plastic. Dark red plastic is also used for
a storage drawer on the underside (mainly meant to hold the Matrix energy
effect and the smoke effects, but you can cram some of the Omega Supreme Fire
Blasts into it too). Black plastic is used on the wheels, AIR Port tabs, and
almost the entire cannon (the peg on the bottom and a tripod leg are silvery
gray plastic).
While there's paints visible here, they're all meant for trailer mode,
or are on the cannon (see below). There are a LOT of 5mm sockets, really
more than you could hope to use. There's one on the ramp meant for the
cannon, with four more around it in a "5 on a six-sided die" pattern, and
seven more behind it in two lines of three with a single one in the middle up
against the rear deck (too close to the deck to let the cannon mount in that
spot). Each of the side panels has 11 deep 5mm sockets and two very shallow
ones scattered throughout on the upwards-facing side, and then there's
trailer mode roof sockets accessible on the side walls (two on the driver's
side, one on the passenger side). If you open up the rear deck, there's four
more 5mm sockets inside that on the red plastic part. There's a bunch more
that are meant for trailer mode and they're mostly or fully blocked in this
mode.
Note, the ramp is the perfect width for the car to drive on once you
remove the cannon.

Cannon: There's enough details here to merit giving it its own section.
Rather than just have it be a plug-in accessory with no independent existence
(the G1 version is screwed in place), this is removable and designed with
treads on the bottom and even a little kickstand of sorts so that it can rest
stably on a flat surface independent of the trailer. Other than the treaded
base, it's a fairly faithful update of the G1 cannon, with the main
differences being the black plastic used on the main support, and the cannons
being painted silver instead of being gray plastic. The blast shields are on
pinned hinges, so they can't get lost like the G1 cannon's often were.
Folded down with the kickstand down, it looks almost like a trailer for
a Micromaster cab to pull...and there's a 5mm peg in the right place to
connect to a tiny tractor. (I tried using the Powertrain truck, but it's a
little too short horizontally to work even if I added a 5mm hole in back.
The cannon can rest on the heel spurs, though, as seen in this picture:
http://www.dvandom.com/images/RodimusCannon1.JPG )
On the other hand, the tab that lets you pull the kickstand down is just
the right size and distance from the 5mm peg that it fits onto Rodimus's
wing, http://www.dvandom.com/images/RodimusCannon2.JPG so who can say? Well,
the designers, but I don't have access to them.
As a trailer it's 5.25" (13cm) long, and standing up as a cannon tower
it's 5.75" (14.5cm) tall including the handles with the barrels horizontal.
Other than the kickstand and the fold down peg on the underside of the
treads, it's all black plastic. The only paint is silver on the barrels, and
the muzzles are left unpainted with an airbrush-like fade to make it look
like they're carbon-scored from firing.
The lower hinge between the tread unit and the main shaft is a
ratcheting hinge that goes from 90 degrees backwards (flat) to 45 degrees
forwards. The top hinge is smooth, and can go from straight down (flat mode)
to about 75 degrees up...and it swivels. That's important, because all the
fiddling around I've been doing trying to figure out the purpose of that peg
on the underside of trailer mode? I think it's supposed to let the robot
mode wear it as a backpack! It fits perfectly.

http://www.dvandom.com/images/RodimusCannon3.JPG

Anyway, the handles are on swivels, and the blast shields are pinned
hinges. The barrels end in 5mm sockets for the blue Fire Blasts, there's a
5mm peg on the back of the main shaft just below the cannon, and the
fold-down peg on the underside for attachment to the battle station. The
handles are only about 4.5mm in diameter, they're meant to be a bit loose so
that fists can be slid on and off. There's a bunch of other holes, including
screw holes, but none of them are 5mm or 3mm in diameter.
While it looks like it should need the peg on the underside to stay
upright, the tread base is heavier than the cannon top, so it's not too hard
to get it to stand on its own.

Transformations: UGH, the little panels that fold out from inside the
chestplate to fill out the front end really needed pins, but I guess they
used up the pin budget on the hands. They basically pop off at the slightest
provocation, regardless of whether you're transforming to vehicle mode or to
robot mode. Easily the most annoying aspect of the toy. Since all they do
is cover up the tops of the shoulders, I'm tempted to just remove them, stick
'em in a baggie, and stuff 'em in the battle station's storage drawer.
One not automatically apparent thing you need to do is curl in the index
finger all the way, but leave the rest of the palm flat, to fit around some
other bits. It is not easy to get the fingertip in all the way. Another
inobvious bit is that there's a joint that lets the arms and shoulder struts
rotate 180 degrees without the legs or upper body rotating (the waist does
still need to rotate, but independently of the arms, there's a short chunk in
the abdomen that stays unrotated).
When going to robot mode, doing everything about the chest in the right
order is important, because a lot of stuff won't snap into place if you wait
too late in the process...some joints can be just a hair out of alignment if
you transform out of order, and no amount of force will make the chest snap
down all the way in that case. On the fourth transformation I think I
finally found the trick of it. There's a detail on the underside of the hood
that has to be pushed into a gap in the black strut HARD before trying to do
anything else, if you wait until later in the process it won't go in at all.
http://www.dvandom.com/images/RodimusTransform.JPG might be helpful.
There's a similar forearm exhaust pipe rotation trick to Studio Series
Hot Rod, which might mean some communication between the teams, or maybe just
convergent evolution. Similarly, the paint on the forearm part of the oval
detail is not matched by paint on the folded around part.
Folding the rear wheels to go inside the boots requires excessive force,
and getting them back out again for vehicle mode isn't exactly a picnic
either. The front wheels actually split open to push up into the upper arms,
so they have to be rotated the right way first.

Transforming the battle station into a trailer is comparatively
straightforwards, but as mentioned earlier suffers from some manufacturing
issues. For some people, it's the cannon blocking the roof from closing, for
others the pins in the hinges are slightly mis-driven, I suppose some people
have both problems and others. If your problem is the cannon, pushing hard
on its peg to seat it all the way might help, or you might need to fold the
peg in and have the cannon a bit loose inside. If removing the cannon
entirely still doesn't fix the problem, increasing the friction of the tabs
and slots along the top of the roof might work for you as it did for me.
Some have had success heating it up while held closed, then letting it cool
off while tied shut with string or velcro cable ties.

Car Mode: So...credit for trying to make it work independently and not
just as the cab of the truck. That's more than G1 managed to pull off, IMO.
Still, it's really only meant to be looked at from certain angles, and it has
a lot of bloat and "middle-aged sag". It looks less like a sportscar and
more like a weird SUV that tries to look cool in front but just gives up and
has two rows of seats in the back and lots of head room for the kids.
Basically, it's a bunch of compromise made to hide the big boots. Also, to
allow clearance for the black strut that gave me so much hassle in going to
robot mode, the wheels are rather higher up than looks strictly good.
The main body of the car is 6" (15cm) long, with the wings sticking out
back another 3/4" (2cm). Same basic colors as robot mode, but the only black
is on the wheels, the rear "bumper" (which is just the folded up feet), and
the hinge between the canopy and the rear roof. The canopy itself is clear
blue plastic with some red paint on the back bit around the hinge and the
lower edge. Note, the hinge holds the back part on, not the canopy, and the
canopy can't be opened.
There's two 5mm sockets on either side under the wing, spaced so that
both pegs on the rifle can go into them for storage (one folds over the other
in robot mode). There's the one socket on the top of the wing, along with
the rectangular slot that the cannon tab used. That slot is part of
connecting the trailer. There's parallel tabs on the underside of each leg
for storing the sword, and if you flip the robot toes up you can access the
5mm sockets to put Fire Blasts in as exhaust flames.

Truck Mode: Once the trailer is folded closed, in principle just slide
the car back into it, with the wings going through slots above the side pipe
hinges, until it snaps in place. In practice, it might be a little hard to
get snapped, and the car could pop apart slightly. Most of the flaws of the
car mode are either hidden or look okay in the context of the truck. And the
alignment of the front wheels of the trailer slightly behind the car's rear
wheels looks plausibly like there's a three-axle tractor pulling a trailer
with only one rear axle. Oh, and the side pipes have hinged parts so that
when the sides fold down for battle station mode, they don't snap off, since
otherwise they'd be forced inwards against the front end.
The entire thing, not counting Fire Blasts used as exhaust flames, is
12.5" (32cm) long. There's a bit of orange plastic visible under the front
end of the trailer, and the bottom bit holding the wheels is also orange
plastic. The foldable parts of the pipes are light gray plastic, while the
rest of the pipes are just part of the red side walls. The lift gate in the
rear is red plastic with clever fake hydraulics made of black plastic hinges
and metal pins on sliding slots. The ramp inside is light gray plastic with
a dark red plastic reinforcing bit (that also provides a gripping location to
open the ramp) and a black plastic AIR Port. While the ramp is wide enough
for the car in battle station mode, it will not store the car in trailer
mode. The interior is 2.5" (6cm) wide by a little under 2" (5cm) tall, if
you remove the cannon there's enough room for a narrow enough Deluxe car.
Five to six inches (12-15cm) long, depending on how it deals with the front
and back shapes. Studio Series Hot Rod won't fit due to the back wing, but
the Earthrise and Siege "Not-Suns" like Prowl do fit. (Siege Ironhide almost
does, you could probably make it work by closing the trailer halves around
him, but he won't fit all the way in the proper way.) Kup would probably
fit, but I really don't want to transform him again, it's not worth the
bother.
There's big orange and yellow flames with black borders between colors
painted along the sides, although the car's wing bits poking out in the
middle of the orange part of the flames does spoil (no pun intended) the
effect a bit. The roof has chunks of orange and yellow paint in a blocky 80s
sort of deal, with a red Autobot symbol printed on the driver's side of the
orange block, chin pointed forwards. The pipes are painted silver, and on
the hinged parts the paint gradually goes away so it's not super obvious that
the back sides aren't painted. There's dark red trapezoids painted on the
sides between the axles.
Interestingly, there's a compartment over the "cab" that folds open and
can hold some small stuff (like the rifle if you're careful, or some of the
extra Fire Blasts), and there's no mention of it in the instructions. The
drawer under the trailer is in the instructions, but even if you take out the
smoke blasts and attach them to the pipes, there's not enough space for the
biggest chunks of the Omega Surpreme Fire Blast. (It really feels like they
were tossed in as an afterthought, because they put so much effort into
finding places to store the new pieces, and none for the redeco blasts.
The storage drawer can be removed, and has two 5mm sockets inside that
don't seem to be used for anything in particular, I guess you could call it
an attack boat and mount some guns on those sockets. They're side-by-side
rather than on the centerline, so just mounting one gun looks off-kilter.
There isn't enough clearance to mount the cannon in either of the sockets.
The two 5mm sockets on the back are meant to be used for Fire Blasts as
thrusters.
Other than the drawer, there's a lot of connection points, but
annoyingly none of the 5mm sockets are properly spaced to let you mount the
rifle solidly. The rear peg is longer than the front, so it can still sit
fine on a single hole, but it's still frustrating that there's several paired
sockets that are not quite the right separation to accept both. (Two sockets
on the inside in battle station mode are the right separation, but you can't
close up the trailer with the rifle there.) One 5mm socket on the centerline
of the roof near the back, a pair side by side near the front of the roof,
one on each side near the back of the red wall, three on each side of the
orange part (two behind the red trapezoid and close together, one ahead), two
on the back of the drawer as mentioned. None on the actual ramp, so they
missed an opportunity to have a smaller figure manning a gun that sticks out
the back of the trailer. The front pair of 5mm sockets on the car's sides
are sort of accessible, but there isn't enough clearance to put the rifle on
one. There's a single 3mm stud on the center pipe on each side for attaching
the smoke effects (which are so black that it looks like Rodimus is one of
those jerks who deliberately burns oil in order to belch black smoke). No
other 3mm studs for impact effects.

Overall: It's kind of frustrating when an expensive toy does a lot of
things right, but then drops the ball on a few little things and it sucks so
much of the fun out of the toy. The lack of paint on the wheel hubs is minor
and easily fixed. The trailer issues are bigger, and something people
shouldn't have to repair after spending $80 on a toy. And those stupid flaps
that go over the shoulder tops should have been pinned or just omitted,
they're virtually guaranteed to get lost. This would be a strongly
recommended toy if not for these issues, especially given some of the nifty
undocumented features. But the flaws are too endemic to discount.


Dave Van Domelen, started this review as the last significant thing in
the review pile, now the pile is overflowing again, yay.