OPTIMUS
PRIME
PROJECT #185
CLASSIFICATION: REPAINT
MATERIALS USED: ENAMEL PAINTS
FIRST APPEARANCE: "MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE" PART 1
"Optimus is as good as the day he rolled off the
mechanical line. Better, even."
Preamble: My original Optimus Prime
toy probably should have been thrown away a long time ago. Twenty years
is a very long time in plastic toy years, and Hasbro's merchandise was never
designed to last forever. Before I decided to work on this project,
he was broken in nine or ten different places (both legs, one arm, a smokestack,
and more) and for years, he was relegated to the bottom of my toy box along
with the rest of my Transformers junkers. Eventually, I started trying
to restore some of my older Transformers, so I tried my hand at putting Prime
back together. The restoration was a success, and I started thinking
about painting the toy into colors that more closely matched his cartoon
appearance.
The original Prime toy had legs and fists that
were this dark purple color, a far cry from the more vibrant blue he has
in his animated form. Also, while
Roller was grey
in the show, only very early Prime toys came with a grey Roller module; mine,
like most people's, was also purple. Finally, the Prime toy had yellow
eyes and orange-tinted windows, which clashed with the unspoken rule from
the cartoon that all Autobots had blue-tinted windows and blue eyes. This
toy needed to be painted. (Besides, what else was I going to
do with him?)
Construction: This was a pretty
straightforward project, really. The toughest part was figuring out
how to completely disassemble Prime, since he's got these lug nuts holding
his front wheels in place. I had to yank them off with a pair of pliers
and pop his wheels off before I could fully disassemble his body. After
stripping off his few remaining stickers (most of them were already long
gone), I gave him a new coat of bright red paint to replace the slightly
orangey color of the original toy. I even painted the metal joints
inside his elbows, since it was visible through the elbow joint and I wanted
everything to match. Then I mixed up a batch of blue paint to cover
the purple color of his head, fists, and legs. Vacuum metalized parts
on the Hasbro toys were almost always depicted as white in color on the show,
and Prime was no exception, so all of his chrome parts became white, including
his wheels. I painted his face mask, toes, and the stripes on his chest
a dark grey, and his windows and eyes became light blue. I also added
a touch of yellow to his fog lights and directional signals.
Of course, if I was painting the cab module, I
also had to paint the trailer. I didn't paint the entire thing,
but I did paint over the stickers on either side (I didn't peel them off
because they're hiding some unsightly screw holes). The
artillery robot inside
the trailer also got a makeover, with a new coat of blue paint and a blue
windshield to match Prime. I also gave Roller a new coat of paint,
yanking off the wheels so I could paint the entire piece. I started
with grey, but added a little green and swished some silver around into the
mix to give it that swirly plastic effect. I used the same paint on
parts of the inside of the trailer as well, most notably to cover the
large stickers on either side (they were made of paper and I didn't think
I could peel them off successfully).
Prime doesn't need very many stickers to complete
his appearance. I stuck an Autobot symbol on his left shoulder, two
more on his trailer, and I also made some little red triangle stickers for
his forearms.
Comments: When my son was a toddler,
he had accidentally broken the axe off one of his Fisher-Price knight action
figures. I later discovered that the axe could fit inside Optimus Prime's
wrist socket perfectly, enabling the toy to re-enact the
classic battle from "More
Than Meets the Eye" when he fights Megatron on top of Sherman Dam. (I
don't really remember whether I got this idea before or after Takara did
the same thing with the Super Collection Figure PVC figures. I
do know that I was working on this project long before Takara came
up with their New Years Convoy toy, a repaint of the original Optimus Prime
toy designed to match the cartoon. What a concept!) |
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