I'm so excited that this guy showed up in the mail today! For once, Hasbro Pulse beat my local retail stores. That doesn't happen every day. Between getting ready for inventory at work (didn't we just do this a year ago?) and packing up to move out of the condo (didn't I just do this 17 years ago?) there's a lot going on, so it's nice to take a break for a moment and play with some plastic robots.

The celebration of The Transformers: the Movie continues, and Perceptor did play a large role in the movie. (In fact, I suspect that the movie was the first story in which the Perceptor character was scripted to appear in, but that's neither here nor there.) I love that they're paying tribute to these great screen characters, and I will continue to enjoy it for as long as it lasts.

It feels like Perceptor comes in a tiny box. I think my brain is just playing tricks on me. The G1 toy is probably closer to Voyager-sized than Deluxe-sized, so I'm sure that's got something to do with it.

So, the last version of the character we got was from Titans Return in 2017.. That sure doesn't feel like five years ago, but here we are. While it was a good toy, and a worthy update for the character, the Headmaster gimmick was a little disingenuous, and the potential fragility of his shoulder cannon has always worried me. This is arguably a more straightforward, bare-bones version of the character, with an emphasis on cartoon accuracy (of course!) over gimmicks.

As a robot, he's 5 3/4" in height. Where the G1 toy was a dark red color accented with turquoise, the animation model was more of a bright red with sky blue as a secondary color, so that's the look this toy is going for. The vac-metal chrome pieces from G1 (the knobs on his wrists and cannon, the lens, his chest piece) which were represented as white in animation are a pearlescent color on the Studio Series toy. His chest is a clear window with the Autobot symbol tampo-printed on his body behind the window.

The G1 toy was incredibly well articulated for its day, and had functional hips and knees and elbows. Even the toes could move! It was all required for the transformation (except the elbows, I guess) but it still resulted in a great toy with a surprising range of movement. This version accomplishes most of the same things but in a different way. The new toy has a rotating waist, limited ball-and-socket head articulation, and ankle tilts, in addition to everything else. The side-to-side movement for the knees is actually in the middle of the upper legs, and the knee joints are a little weird. His shoulder cannon is permanently affixed to the left shoulder and does not swap sides like the G1 toy did. He comes with his red rifle, but not the black rocket launcher packaged with the 1985 toy.

To transform him, the head flips back and the microscope lens replaces it, locking in place using a flip-out piece hidden in the right shoulder area. The fists fold into the forearms, and there's a colored blue panel to hide them completely. Everything else is essentially the G1 toy. There is no flip-down mirror on this toy, even though he's sculpted with details that suggest its existence; the chest folds down to form the microscope stage.

His microscope mode is about three inches tall with the lens component extending to about 5 1/4" high. An online friend of mine (hi, Zanthalia!) asked if the microscope actually functioned, and while it's blurry, you can tell it was meant to work. The lenses being plastic instead of glass probably hurts its overall functionality. Also, unlike other versions of Perceptor, the knobs don't function at all and the lens focus is not adjustable.

The toy does include a third transformation, meant as an homage to the tank mode that the original Microchange toy had. (It was in the instructions for the G1 toy, too, where it was called a "mobile laboratory," but the G1 toy didn't come with a Microman figure to ride it.) His rifle can attach to the side of the tank.

This toy is so great. Perceptor is a character who doesn't get a lot of love, but this is the most authentic and accurate version of Perceptor to date, making this the new definitive neo-G1 edition of the character.

Zob (was going to write this review in Perceptorese, but I wanted people to actually be able to read it and understand it, so...)