Animated Black Optimus Prime

Prelude: There must always be a black repaint of any given Optimus Prime figure, that’s one of the primary laws of the Transformers franchise. And on the few occasions where said repaint is not a bad guy, but rather just good guy Optimus rocking a black paintjob, we can rely on some obscure piece of fiction to fix that. So depending on your preference, we are either looking at Animated Optimus Prime in black or Animated Nemesis Prime, the evil clone. Here we go!

Remarks: Black Optimus Prime is a straight-up repaint of Animated Optimus Prime, so look there for the full review. Just a few words on the differences here. Black Optimus is, big surprise, mostly black with blue accents and red chest windows. And that’s pretty much it for differences. Same excellent figure with the same crappy axe that looks more like a protestor’s homemade sign proclaiming some wrong or other. Thankfully James, my buddy whom I bought this figure from, thought to include a much better-looking axe with Black Optimus, but out of the box you get the same one that normal Optimus had. It works good in vehicle mode as a kind of mini-trailer, but as a weapon it still sucks.

Black Optimus came in a monochrome version of the same packaging that the normal Optimus was sold in in Japan. He was available exclusively at the “Transformers Museum” event in the Japanese Seibu store chain. He was limited to 300 pieces, making him one of the more obscure Transformers figures. His repurposing as Nemesis Prime hails from Botcon 2011, where he is briefly mentioned in the bio of Toxitron and the Botcon Decepticon Bio Poster. Not exactly a vast media presence, but more than Black Optimus Prime had.

Botton line for this figure: it’s the same excellent mold as Animated Voyager-class Optimus and if you find a better axe for him, he’s great. Just be aware that, as a Japanese limited edition store exclusive, he’s probably not going to be all that cheap.

Rating: A-

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