Hello everyone!
I just received my order... and among other things, in that order there was a TF I've been waiting for some time... it's the
FJ Cruiser Optimus Prime
Video review covering the Box, Assembly, and transformation:
http://youtu.be/rfHdYhoCxws
Alright First up let's talk about the elephant in the room: that figure is TINY!!!!!!! Smaller than the recent line of IDW Generations... and those were already tiny...
But... let's not judge our toys by their size... its not the size that matter, it's how much fun they are... right?
If you want to see
FJ Cruiser Optimus Prime naked without his armor, and see more detailed view of the armor, I strongly suggest clicking the video link above.
FJ Cruiser Optimus Prime's robot mode looks BADASS... huge shoulder, fit like a muscle man, abs of steel... literally... he looks awesome... he's got a lot of good articulation, ratchet-y joints, tight ball joints... he is a quality toy. The only thing I don't love so much of this robot mode: he suffers from somewhat hollow legs... its nothing major... but I hate hollow parts on my robots.
I love how the head looks, its more square but looks good, this
FJ Cruiser Optimus Prime is built to kick some serious @$$!
The armor assembly is not for everyone. I consider myself a somewhat Advanced know-how with gundam models... I made loads of those years back so it was pretty easy for me to assemble the armor... but someone that doesn't have much experience with assembling gundam models will most likely break pieces... Like explained in the video, some of the pieces are super tiny, yet the pegs holding the piece on the plastic frame are big and hard to cut. I have tools, and I HIGHLY recommend people to use some for this figure. Albeit the assembling of the armor pieces onto
FJ Cruiser Optimus Prime was nice... the pieces fits perfectly together (be sure to sand the parts a tiny bit where the frames were attached to the pieces otherwise they wont fit perfectly).
My first complaint though came from the colors.. this set came with 2 different armor color... White... which is ok and is the color I decided to put on him... white can pass as Ultra Magnus... its ok... but Yellow?? it's not
Optimus Bee... I know this toy will come in several colors... most are ugly... i wanted red... but if I remember correctly, most colors were for different exclusivity, some sites had exclusive colors of their own... I bought this figure from Robotkingdom, and they only had the yellow/white set.
Transformation is... wow... this is one of the more complicated transformers I have. Y'know on each packages there's a scale from 1 to 5 on how difficult a figure is to transforms... most are 2s or 3s...
MP-05 Megatron is a 10...
Mastermind Creation KM-03 Cyclops is a 9... and
ROTF Optimus Prime is an 8... I'd say
FJ Cruiser Optimus Prime is a 6 or 7... His transformation is quite unique, and he is Compacted... everything has a place inside the tiny vehicle.
The fact that the instructions were wrong at some point baffled me for 20min trying to do EXACTLY like the instructions... until I skipped the instruction and simply played with the toy all by myself until I figured how things needed to go. (See Video)
Funny thing, midway in transformation, you get a Walker mode Robot... which looks rather cute! hehe
The truck mode is incredibly tiny...about the same size as
IDW's Orion Pax. But everything is Sooooooo compacted inside this tiny truck... the engineering of this toy is stellar! Truck rolls nice, nothing gets in the way and drags underneath.
My problem with the truck mode is the panel lining... its all over the place... it bugs me. At first I thought maybe it was because I placed the panel wrong... but nope... they are all good... so it must've been made like so.
Underneath the truck, I love this, no robot kibbles... maybe the feet, but it's good... they don't look like feet.
Overall
FJ Cruiser Optimus Prime is a great toy, the transformation wins me over, it's complicated as hell, and I love this. The plastic quality though, could be much better, the plastic feels like it will break before it will stress mark. Same for the Shield/panels on the frame, you need to be EXTRA careful cutting them off the frame and sanding them.
Do I recommend this figure? HELL YES! BUT be warned about the plastic quality, be sure you are up to the challenge to assembly the panels... its not much of a challenge but I believe that if you never made Gundam models... maybe you will make rookie mistakes and break the tiny pieces. The Challenge comes from the transformation. Personally I LOVE the transformation... others might be put off by it... I know a lof or people Hate
MP-05 Megatron because he's so complicated... personally he's one of my favorite for the same reason.
Pros:
-Badassery of the robot mode
-Complicated transformation
-Head sculpt
-Great articulation
-Great looking truck mode
-No underneath robot kibble
-That axe!
Cons:
-Plastic Quality
-Choice of colors for the armor
-The plastic frames which holds the armor pieces has the pegs way too big/large for such tiny pieces... rookies will most likely break pieces.
-So tiny
-Bad instructions that one steps ask you to bend the robot in a way that he does not bend and you will break the toy for sure!
For a retail price of 40$ imported, I still highly recommend this toy,
FJ Cruiser Optimus Prime is unique and even tho I still haven't figure where I'm going to put it in my collection, I am happy to have gotten him. If you are up to the challenge of assembling him, and transforming him... By all mean get this figure!
