My wife was shopping at Target last night, and called me at home and told me about some of the NECA Ninja Turtles stuff they had on the shelf, because she knows it's traditionally been very hard for me to find. I didn't need any of the toys they had, but then I asked her to check the Transformers section for Buzzworthy Cliffjumper, and they also had G2 Laser Prime and Legacy Galvatron. She got them all for me. Yay! (I already had Laser Prime pre-ordered through Hasbro Pulse, but he's not scheduled to ship until July.. It's been a rough few weeks, so I'm more than happy to get new toys now instead of later!)

LASER OPTIMUS PRIME

So, the Transformers: Generation 2 toy line started out as reissues of G1 toys, sometimes with different colors or stickers or weapons, before selling us some toys previously available only in Europe, and then finally coming into its own with all-new designs. Arguably one of the best toys from that line was Laser Optimus Prime in 1995, named so because he was a spin-off of the existing Laser Rods and Laser Cycles, which had light-up weapons.

They've done tributes to this toy a couple of times already. We got the cab section only during the Reveal the Shield toy line in 2010, and then we got a very small version, with a trailer, during Titans Return in 2016 (a Triple Changer pre-deco of Octane, sold to us twice, a standalone in G1 colors and the version in the Chaos on Velocitron set sold in G2 colors). However, no reimagined version of this toy has ever successfully recaptured the magic of the original G2 toy, which was chock-full of gimmicks.

As a Leader-class toy, this new version is a bit larger, though still not quite reaching the size of the 1995 version. In tractor trailer mode, the new toy is about 11.25" in length, with the trailer comprising about 6.5" of that length. The cab by itself is nearly 7.5" long. As with Earthrise Prime, the trailer seems small for the cab. On the G2 toy, the trailer was by far the largest of the two components, but not here.

The fandom has always taken delight in pointing out that the original deco featured stickers of Optimus Prime burning down a forest with his flamethrower. There are no such stickers this time. (You just know Toyhax or somebody will supply them eventually as a third-party option.)

Prime comes with a sword and a weird disc-shaped weapon with handle that could be generously described as an axe. The sword stores under the cab module, just like the G2 toy, and you can also store the folded-up axe on the trailer hitch if you don't want Prime to tow his trailer around.

The trailer module unfolds into a battle station, just like the G2 toy. The basic idea is the same—the sides swing open to form side platforms, while the center becomes a tower. It's executed a little differently than the first version, of course, and lacks the disc-launcher weapon or the air bellows launcher and missile borrowed from the Combat Hero version of Prime. It's got a little dual cannon on a turret that can rotate, and there's a manipulator claw on the front that seems to suggest the transformed trailer is capable of some level of semi-automomous operation. There are eight unassigned peg-holes that will accept any random weapons you choose to attach, and there are also dedicated storage ports to connect Prime's sword and axe-thingy.

The cab is a long-nosed design, mostly black with a red flame pattern on the hood. Remember how indignant fans were when Prime was made this style of truck for the live-action Michael Bay movies, and insisted he absolutely had to be a flat-nosed cabover engine style? Funny how nobody balked when he was released 12 years earlier looking just like this. (The original G2 toy had a red-to-black gradient on the hood; the flames are new, and are a clear tribute to the movie design.)

One of the great things about the original G2 Laser Prime toy was how the transformation was clean and simple, but still resulted in a really good-looking Prime toy that captured his cartoon aesthetic nicely, during an era when a lot of transforming toys were still saddled with tiny heads, stubby arms, and legs that were permanently fused together. Now that twenty-plus points of articulation and cartoon proportions are pretty much standard for the toy line, merely possessing these attributes is less impressive than it was 27 years ago.

This toy has a much more complex and elaborate transformation, and it almost doesn't seem necessary. It's a lot of extra steps just to get a truck cab to stand up on its rear bumper. It makes me wonder, since we've gotten a new Leader-class version of Astrotrain and Blitzwing, if they're going to try to sell this toy to us again as Octane. If they resculpted the robot face and shoulders and chest, and found a good way to make the shoulder towers disappear, it might work pretty well.

As a robot, Prime is about 6.75" at the head, with his shoulder towers bringing him up to about 7.25" tall. So, bigger than the Reveal the Shield toy, certainly, but still not quite as big and imposing as the original G2 toy.. The color mapping is totally wrong for a G1 version of Prime—dark grey for the body and pelvis and upper legs, black boots with blue toes, and a blue abdomen. It will look wrong to some people. But, it's totally authentic to the colors used by the G2 toy, so I wholeheartedly approve of it.

On this edition of the toy, the shoulder towers are static, mounted to the upper body, and don't move when you pose the arms. (The front shoulder panels with the yellow painted deco can swing out of the way to give you more room to move the arms.) He's got some fun new features, like the ability for the panels on the shoulder towers to flip up to reveal a set of laser batteries, and an opening chest that reveals the Matrix of Leadership. (It's not the same Matrix mold that we've been getting during Earthrise and Kingdom and Studio Series, though, but a smaller Matrix made especially for G2 Prime. This means you can't play mix-and-match, alas.)

There's some interactive compatibility with the robot and the battle station, though I can't help but feel like the gunner station seems laughably small compared to the G2 version. The robot can, of course, wield the sword and axe, and the dual-barreled gun also pops off for use as a handheld gun, or can plug into the side of his leg, can go on his back, etc. The axe and sword can also combine together to build an even bigger weapon.

I am absolutely certain Hasbro will sell this toy again as Scourge from Robots in Disguise. It just doesn't make any sense not to.

Considering the price point and what was able to fit into a Leader-class box, this is a really good homage. I'm the biggest fan of G2 that I know of, and we just don't get many tribute toys to this era of Transformers history. I absolutely love G2 and I would love to get new versions of Firecracker and Skram and Hooligan and all the rest. That probably won't ever happen.. But, this is honestly great.

GALVATRON

This toy comes close to being a mere package refresh, but it is technically a redeco. When we first heard rumors that Kingdom Galvatron was going to be sold again during Legacy, the images of him that had surfaced showed him without the ugly battle damage paint on his chest and weapon that the original version had. I don't think I can think of a single time when the battle damage actually improved the look of the toy. I understand it was part of the planned Siege aesthetic, but most of the time it just uglies up the toy.

So, this is a clean version of Galvatron, with no paint on the barrel to his arm cannon, and no purple splotches on his upper torso. Aside from that, it's the same toy. Whether it's worth fifty bucks to you to get a slightly better Galvatron is entirely up to the individual. I happen to love Galvatron (I think he's like my third-favorite Transformers character ever, and only my immense fondness for Soundwave and Cyclonus prevent him from reaching the coveted number one spot) and so it was worth it to me to own a cleaner, better-looking version of this already great toy. Aaaaaand that's how Hasbro gets you, dontcha know.

What I absolutely do not endorse, but which I suspect is going to happen in alarming abundance in the coming months, is people purchasing Legacy Galvatron and then stuffing their old Kingdom Galvatron into the box and returning it to Target or wherever. If you can't afford to collect toys, then stop collecting toys. But don't try to rip off retailers, and ultimately Hasbro themselves, by playing the toy-swap game. If you do this, then you're an awful human being. When you're swapping toys, you're not being clever. You're just acting entitled, and being an asshole. The closed-face design of the Legacy packaging is only going to make this easier to do.

I would presume that they've also worked out whatever assembly problems they were having at the factory during the Kingdom production run. For the record, the shoulders weren't backwards on my Legacy Galvatron, though I suspect we'll have to wait until this toy hits market saturation before we know for sure whether this problem was eliminated entirely.

CLIFFJUMPER

I've also been greatly looking forward to Cliffworthy Cliffjumper, whose cartoon-based deco pleases me, being more accurate to his screen appearance than the Earthrise edition we got in 2020. He tends to go for $40 or more on eBay, as of this writing, and I was nearly about to bite the bullet when my wife happened to find him at Target for me. I've been hunting for him for weeks now. Evidently I'm not the only one who finds this toy highly desirable!

Specifically, the windows are now an opaque light blue instead of translucent (the entire window assembly was made from light blue plastic and the roof then painted red), his arms and legs are a light grey, and his shoulders and fists are black. It's not a huge change, but it's different enough to make me want to buy the toy a second time.

His bazooka, which we've seen many times at this point, is now painted almost entirely a metallic silvery-blue color. I imagine I have enough of these toys now to build a Really Long Bazooka, if I could find all the boxes my toys are in!

Zob (doesn't need more toys, but I do need more toy shelves)