Age of the Primes Onyx Prime

Prelude: Two legs, four legs, six legs, boom! Sorry, the boom was Shockwave blowing him to pieces in order to take his place. We are talking about Onyx Prime, the Prime of Beasts, who has received his first Leader Class toy in the Age of the Primes line. So before we get a purple colored repaint of this guy with a Shockwave head, let’s see what number of legs suit him best. Let’s say go!

Robot Mode: Onyx Prime is the Prime of Beasts and that is very much mirrored in his design. Barely a straight line to be found on his entire body, he has wings, hooves, a tail, a beaked helmet, and several other elements that look almost organic instead of robotic, such as the “furry” parts on his wings. Probably one of the most original designs in recent years and looking properly massive for a Leader class bot, too.

Onyx Prime is mostly bronze colored with silver and brown accents. Which is also my one point of contention on this figure, really. The paint job is a bit boring. I’d have liked a bit more variance here, to be honest. 

The robot’s articulation, on the other hand, leaves little room for complaint. Which also brings us to one of the most exciting features of this figure: you can configure it either as a normal biped robot or you can turn him into a sort of centaur, a humanoid torso on a quadruped lower body. Personally I prefer the centaur variant, simply because we haven’t really seen a Transformers figure with such a design before, but it’s your choice. Whether you give him two or four legs, however, he is very nicely articulated. With one limitation, however: if you wish to twist his hip (in biped mode), you have to flip his loincloth all the way up. The wings on his back are articulated, too, and can be flipped back and forward and folded in or out. Very nice.

Onyx Prime has a humanoid face inside a bird-themed helmet and he can fold in his face, so he is left with a fierce-looking battle mask. His main weapon is a spear, the front portion of which resembles the Triptych Mask, one of the McGuffin’s … eh … artefacts of the Primes. The spear can become an arrow, with Onyx Prime’s tail folding up into a bow. The spear/arrow can tab into the bow and the bow tabs into Onyx’ hands, so everything is pretty stable to be held. 

Bottom line for the robot mode: whether you want him with two or four legs, Onyx Prime is a highly original design that is a pleasure to look at. A bit more color would have been nice, too.

Alternate Mode: Onyx Prime transforms into a hard-to-define beast, kind of a mixture between a dragon, a griffin, and Odin’s horse Sleipnir. And much like you can either have his robot mode with two or four legs, you can have his beast mode with four or six legs. Personally I prefer the six-legged mode, but that is entirely subjective, of course. The transformation is not terribly complicated, Onyx basically goes down on all fours (or sixes) and flips the dragon head from his back over his robot head. The robot arms become the front pair of legs. 

Just like in robot mode, the design is highly original and kind of refuses to be easily defined. All three pairs of legs look different, the wings could be bird or bat wings, the head could be a dragon or some kind of ram. I love it. All legs retain their articulation. If you want to use the four-legged variant, the middle pair of legs with the hooves wraps around the shoulders like in (biped) robot mode, making the beast a bit broader in the chest area.

Overall I like this mode a lot, the only thing that I think could have been improved is the view from above. The area between the wings, now the beast’s back, looks a bit plain. Also, the spear becomes a sort of second tail where it’s stored and doesn’t really look like it belongs, standing out straight while everything else is curved and organic. 

So bottom line: a fitting beast mode for the Prime of Beasts. There are multiple variants you can create with the variable number of legs and positioning of the wings. Again, somewhat boring in color, but otherwise very nice. 

Remarks: So far Onyx Prime, the Prime of Beasts, has not had an easy time of it in media. In the IDW comics he was the leader of an early tribe of Cybertronians, only to be blown apart by a time-travelling Shockwave who then took his place. In Transformers One he and his fellow Primes were slaughtered by the Quintessons and the traitor Sentinel Prime. He hasn’t really had much of an impact in other Transformers media so far and his only previous toy was as a Prime Master included with Power of the Primes Predaking. 

Side note: the original look of Onyx Prime hails from the Covenant of Primus book, which depicted him as a quadruped (though it was a bit hard to tell, as he was drawn rearing up). In the IDW comics he was then shown as a standard biped bot, but that was a bit of foreshadowing, seeing as that Onyx Prime was revealed to be Shockwave, impersonating the original Onyx, who was then shown to be quadruped in a flashback. His subsequent appearances in Earthspark and Transformers One however have once again shown him to be a biped. With this toy here, you can pick and choose, of course.

Onyx Prime very nicely lives his theme. He is all curves, organic look, pieces of various animals mixed together. The design is probably not everyone’s cup of tea, far removed from the nice straight lines of a car or fighter jet. If you like beast formers, however, this figure here is pretty much the ultimate beast former. Again, I would have preferred a bit more color on the figure, but otherwise: very cool.

Rating: A-