I've already lost track of what wave this figure is from. He ships with "reformatting Megatron," a redeco of the previous Megatron in translucent purple plastic and grid lines painted on his body, meant to represent Megatron in mid-transformation as he's being recreated into Galvatron. I didn't buy that one. I just don't really have a strong desire to own it. Clearly, I'm not a True Fan.

Anyway, Primal is a new figure, so he was far more exciting to me. Given that he doesn't need to transform, surely this will be the more accurate possible figure of Optimus Primal as he appears in the Beast Wars cartoon, right? Right...?

Primal stands at around six and a half inches in height. In the 1996 series, Primal had flat monkey parts with a mapped texture to suggest fur, rather than an actual fur pattern on his body (realistic fur wasn't possible in CGI quite yet; Monsters, Inc. wasn't until 2001). For the R.E.D. figure, however, they created a fur texture anyway, which is in evidence on his arms and legs and body. It's probably what Primal would look like if they created his CG model today, but it's not authentic to how he originally appeared in media.

A cursory look at screen shots from the Beast Wars show demonstrates that he's missing lots of little color elements, like the red pistons on his ankles, the red parts on the circle in the center of his chest, and the blue spots on his pelvis. They got close, but he's still not perfect. Also, they used a dark gunmetal color for his mask and antennae, and his head is a very dark, undersaturated blue. His eyes are painted red, but they didn't use any sort of primer, so the red basically disappears when applied to the dark blue plastic. There's almost no color contrast to the head and face.

He comes with two extra fists, so you can swap the closed hands for open hands, and he has two swords. That's it for accessories. The swords have hooks on the ends so you can link them to each other and form a single double-bladed weapon. The swords are super hard to fit into the hands. Like, basically impossible unless you want to dip the hands in boiling hot water to soften them up.

Primal's backpack is plugged in with a peg, and is removable. There are two PrimeGuns mounted to the backpack that can swing up and around. They also borrowed an idea from the Kingdom toy, and included hidden forearm guns. You press the tiny square on the inside of his forearms, and it makes the section with the guns pop out on the other side of the arm.

His chest panel is also removable, revealing some weird tech musculature underneath. Removing the chest panel is about the only way you can take advantage of the ab crunch articulation. The articulation, in general, is kind of hard to appreciate since most of the joints are super tight. Everything's PVC but the joints use those awful soft-ratchet clicky joints.

This is similar to the Kingdom toy in a lot of ways... the size, the look of the sculpt, the colors. There are a few differences, but honestly there's not much of a reason for this figure to exist, considering it doesn't bring a lot to the table that Kingdom Primal doesn't already do. For ten dollars more, you can get a Primal that looks pretty much like this, plus the Kingdom version transforms. And actually holds his swords.

If they'd given this version more accessories it would have been one thing (a banana would be somewhere on the top of my list). They really should have double-checked the color mapping before they committed to this look, though. It's kind of awful. His head and face look so desaturated.

I still feel like R.E.D. needs to venture into more obscure characters. There arguably isn't much of a reason to do a lot of the more popular characters in this format (especially when Super7 is treading a lot of the same material). But there is, however, an opportunity to produce characters that the fans would gobble up—characters who have never really gotten toys before. There are already so many R.E.D. figures that are utterly inessential (reformatting Megatron, "Ultra Magnus" aka white Optimus, the characters they keep doing from Transformers: Prime) so I hope they make this shift before retailers decide the toy line isn't worth their time, and it ends up getting canceled.

Zob (we finally got the first snow of the season today, and I hate it)

On Thursday, December 9, 2021 at 2:58:34 PM UTC-5, Zobovor wrote:

I can't say I wasn't warned. Nearly every single review of RED Primal has been exceedingly negative, including reviews from folks who generally find something to like.

I wanted to give him a shot, both because I'm a mark for anything related to the character, and because R.E.D. Cheetor has slowly become one of the favorites from my BW collection (so expressive, so poseable, so unique).

In a world where Kingdom Primal exists, RED Primal comes up woefully short. I like his chest plate, and the lack of a chest gap. And that's it.

His backpack falls off.

His hands can't hold his swords unless you dip those hands in boiling water first to loosen them up.

His backpack falls off.

There are no other accessories - no mace, no alternate face, no shield, or alternate hands beyond the sword holding ones.

His ankle pistons aren't painted (Kingdom did it better).

His backpack falls off.

On my copy at least, the peg for swapping the right hand isn't a tight enough fit, so the wrist wobbles loosely, and it's a struggle to pose him with his sword in such a way that it doesn't droop down like he's low on robo-viagra.

Also, his backpack falls off.

I picked him up on sale for $12, and I feel like it was overpriced. What a missed opportunity, just like R.E.D. has been in general.

>
> Anyway, Primal is a new figure, so he was far more exciting to me. Given that he doesn't need to transform, surely this will be the more accurate possible figure of Optimus Primal as he appears in the Beast Wars cartoon, right? Right...?
>

(Cue the Natalie Portman Star Wars meme...)

>
> Primal's backpack is plugged in with a peg, and is removable.

Oh is it ever.

> I still feel like R.E.D. needs to venture into more obscure characters. There arguably isn't much of a reason to do a lot of the more popular characters in this format (especially when Super7 is treading a lot of the same material). But there is, however, an opportunity to produce characters that the fans would gobble up—characters who have never really gotten toys before. There are already so many R.E.D. figures that are utterly inessential (reformatting Megatron, "Ultra Magnus" aka white Optimus, the characters they keep doing from Transformers: Prime) so I hope they make this shift before retailers decide the toy line isn't worth their time, and it ends up getting canceled.
>

You're on the front lines - are R.E.D. figures popular with the casual consumer? Is there a pent-up demand for R.E.D. Knockout, Arcee, an oversized G1 Bumblebee, a white Optimus?

On 8/4/2022 12:01 PM, Codigo Postal wrote:

> Is there a pent-up demand for R.E.D. Knockout, Arcee,

All I can tell you is the former is a huge shelfwarmer now, and the
latter was a huge shelfwamer then.

On Thursday, August 4, 2022 at 1:01:34 PM UTC-6, Codigo Postal wrote:
> I can't say I wasn't warned. Nearly every single review of RED Primal has been exceedingly negative, including reviews from folks who generally find something to like.

Maybe I would have been more impressed with him if he had come out before the Kingdom toy. As it stands, his existence is just kind of largely redundant. But, I don't necessarily want them to give up on Beast Wars characters in R.E.D. I imagine there are fun things they could do with Dinobot or Rhinox or Blackarachnia.

> You're on the front lines - are R.E.D. figures popular with the casual consumer? Is there a pent-up demand for R.E.D. Knockout, Arcee, an oversized G1 Bumblebee, a white Optimus?

The popular characters sell. Bumblebee, Starscream, etc. never remain on shelves for very long. But, Arcee lingered around for a really long time, and my local store is still stuffed full of Knockouts and a handful of white Optimus (which I might break down and buy, eventually, because it could represent Optimus covered with the heat-resistant alloy from "The Return of Optimus Prime").

Zob (playing that waiting game, which is always a little dangerous)

On Thursday, August 4, 2022 at 5:52:19 PM UTC-4, Zobovor wrote:
> On Thursday, August 4, 2022 at 1:01:34 PM UTC-6, Codigo Postal wrote:
>
> > I can't say I wasn't warned. Nearly every single review of RED Primal has been exceedingly negative, including reviews from folks who generally find something to like.
> Maybe I would have been more impressed with him if he had come out before the Kingdom toy. As it stands, his existence is just kind of largely redundant. But, I don't necessarily want them to give up on Beast Wars characters in R.E.D. I imagine there are fun things they could do with Dinobot or Rhinox or Blackarachnia.
> > You're on the front lines - are R.E.D. figures popular with the casual consumer? Is there a pent-up demand for R.E.D. Knockout, Arcee, an oversized G1 Bumblebee, a white Optimus?
> The popular characters sell. Bumblebee, Starscream, etc. never remain on shelves for very long. But, Arcee lingered around for a really long time, and my local store is still stuffed full of Knockouts and a handful of white Optimus (which I might break down and buy, eventually, because it could represent Optimus covered with the heat-resistant alloy from "The Return of Optimus Prime").
>
>
> Zob (playing that waiting game, which is always a little dangerous)

Good things come to those who wait. Except for Transformers, when pre-orders are essential...