I’ve cried twice in my life, and both of those moments involved Optimus Prime. The first time I leaked ocular lubricant was when the brave Autobot leader perished in the Transformers animated film so that he could make way for a brand new line of toys to succeed him, and the second time was a few nights ago when I took on the task of assembling the Bayformers version of the icon into his Jetfire-enhanced form from Transformers 2: I Am Directly Below the Enemy Scrotum.
First, some background. Toy manufacturer ThreeZero landed a Transformers license a few years ago, and when it began rolling out figures based on the Cybertronian natives, there was one that caught my eye. It was Optimus Prime from the first Transformers sequel, recreated in scale glory as a collection of sharp-edged plates and plastic components. Most people scoff at this design–scoff to the max even–especially when compared to the more faithful recreation of Optimus as seen in the Bumblebee solo movie, but I adore it.
The 2007 Transformers movie is still a perfect summer blockbuster with special effects and Linkin Park ending credits that holds up surprisingly well, and when your retinas aren’t being seared by a casual $50 million worth of pixels colliding on the big screen, you can actually appreciate the pure artistry of the Bayverse Transformers. This Optimus figure nails my nostalgia for the film, with an absurd amount of detail, some terrific accessories, and a shelf presence that is eye-catching.
Then there’s Jetfire, a more recent release and a terrific figure in his own right. He may have been a walking collection of senility cliches in Revenge of the Fallen, but in ThreeZero toy form, he’s another superb recreation that captures all the major and minor details of the character. He’s absolutely gigantic, requires some assembly out of the box, and is prone to having parts fall off if you get too handsy with him. That said, I cannot state how much I adore this former Decepticon and elderly bot who valiantly sacrificed his life to give Optimus Prime a power-up.
Right, time to rip his legs and other assorted parts off then.
The big draw of having both the ThreeZero Optimus Prime and Jetfire figures is that these two can be combined to form Jetpower Optimus Prime. Transformers purists will likely double-spit at the idea of Transformers toys without vehicle modes being combined using the heretical art of parts-forming, but those complaints can get jettisoned out of an airlock when you see the end result. Jetpower Optimus Prime is a work of art, a celebration of Transformers on the silver screen that has quickly become the focal point of my collection with a shelf presence that puts everything else I have to shame.
And it almost broke me, to get to this point.
Financially? I’m going to be getting used to the taste of cardboard this month. Mentally? This is the reason why my neighbors heard me screaming at 10 PM on a Friday night. To get Optimus Prime into a mode where he’s ready to rip the face off of ancient Cybertronian threats, you need to reduce Jetfire to scrap plastic and transplant those parts onto the valiant Autobot hero. That’s pretty easy, and once you have that scrapyard worth of plastic and diecast parts, you can start the transformation process.
You’ll need to remove a few parts from Optimus as well, and I highly recommend you skip a few pages from the instruction manual and start with the feet first so that you have a stable base to build on. Because some of this build process can be downright torturous. It’s absolutely amazing to see the level of engineering that allows for this transformation, but some of these parts are added on with a fragile grip. If you’re not careful, the entire figure can fall apart quicker than Flat Earth theory.
Some of these tricky parts had me sweating and swearing, as some pieces had a few fractions of looseness that made them fall off easily. This was the equivalent of building a ship in a bottle, except I was putting together a gigantic automated war machine based on a character voiced by Hagar the Horrible. You can even admire him in the dark, as his head and jet turbines feature LEDs that can be switched on for an added effect. I’ll have to get back to you on that though, as ludicrously tiny batteries weren’t included with either figure.
When I was finally done though? I was in awe at what I had assembled. This is Optimus Prime at his most toyetic, a towering collection of plastic and diecast parts that’ll grab the attention of anyone who walks into the room. He’s imposing, magnificent to behold, and I pray that a gentle breeze doesn’t blow through my room lest he crumble into scrap. Once he’s in this form, you sacrifice a ton of poseability, but when he looks this good just by standing in a standard museum pose, it’s a fair price to pay for this Transformers masterpiece.