Transformers Masterpiece MP-32 Convoy (Beast Wars) / Optimus Primal
The beast mode is pretty accurate, except for the back of the legs, those are horrible, I wish they could’ve covered them up somehow.
Alternate face plates.
Angry
Happy
Ook! Ook! Ook!
It’s pretty cool you can swing his waist around a bit so he can lean forward and do an “ape walking” pose like this.
Unfortunately, that exposes the robot parts even more (lol, red buttcheeks?). I wish the designers came up with a fix for this, even parts swapping wouldn’t be so bad compared to this.
Robot mode
Ahhh, munkey Prime. I actually found Beast Wars ok, it wasn’t too bad and the eventual inclusion of the G1 saga into the plot made it even sweeter. It’s too bad it all went to poop when they got around to Beast Machines. They should’ve just called it quits after Beast Wars wrapped up.
The toy stands roughly 7 inches tall and has zero diecast parts. I’m fairly sure it’s smaller than the original vintage Optimus Primal toy (sorry, my unit is in storage and I couldn’t get to it over the weekend).
Optimus Primal also has several “expression faces” in robot mode too.
(L-R) Neutral, battle mode, happy, angry.
To change faceplates, just pick at this area here to get the faceplate off.
Primal comes with 2 Cyber blades
Blades can be stored on his back
Primal also features his shoulder “Mega Blasters”. In the original toy there was a spring pop-up gimmick for this, but it’s not present in the MP version.
He also has flip out thrusters on his back which enables flight mode in the cartoons.
Plasma cannons
To get the cannons to pop out, simply press on this notch to get the cannons to push outwards.
Last but not least, Optimus Primal features a light-up eye gimmick for his robot mode.
The battery compartment is located in the beast mode head.
It requires 2 LR44 batteries for the gimmick to work, unfortunately I didn’t have any with me at the time so I couldn’t take a picture of it. But I was surprised to find out there was such a gimmick for it.
The Asia release came with a freebie, a diecast mace based on the vintage toy’s weapon (never appeared in the series I think), but packaged in a crate of bananas for some reason (bananas not included).
Returning the chain is a bit tricky but here’s how it’s supposed to look like.
In the original toy, the mace was hidden inside Primal’s forearm. There’s no way to fit this one in the new toy though.
Takara has recently announced the upcoming release of MP-38 as another version of Optimus Primal, it will be a retool of this mold but based on Primal’s appearance in the Beast Wars II movie. It will feature an additional masked faceplate and will look closer to the original vintage toy. I will probably pass on it though, this one’s good enough.
Gold
