From Newsgroup: alt.toys.transformers

Dave's Transformers Timelines Rant: Age of Samurai wave 1

Optimus Prime (ox cart)
Starscream (eagle/falcon, sort of)

Permalink: https://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Artifacts/AoS1

The new Timelines line continues, but rather than more designs from the Hearts of Steel comic or going with the WWII-themed designs from one of the GIJoe/TF crossovers, they've gone with mythic Feudal Japan. I guess with no more BotCons they don't need to leave the Timelines subline for convention exclusives.


CAPSULES

Set is $67.99 (13% price hike over 2025). And this is for two Deluxes, with no licensing fees. Yes, the fancy packaging adds some, but I suspect
this is how they price out molds when there's zero chance of reusing them to spread out development costs over multiple toys. (So, a Seeker Tengu pack is unlikely, not that I'd buy one.)

Optimus Prime: As often happens, the design requires better
manufacturing tolerances than Hasbro will pay for, but it's more a matter of some unsightly gapping rather than not working at all. Samurai armor robot mode is pretty good, and ox cart altmode is...well, it manages to actually work, which is surprising. Recommended.

Starscream: Pretty nice robot mode with some good visual motifs, but
while getting to it is okay, the actual bird mode falls into most of the pitfalls of bird modes. Huge legs, boxy torso, basically looks like a robot went up the cloaca of a giant bird. Mildly recommended, purely for the robot mode.

Set Overall: If this wasn't a two-pack, I'd suggest skipping Starscream entirely, but that's not an option. If you want Oxtimus, you're basically paying $45 for him and $23 for an Actionmaster Starscream. I'm definitely re-evaluating my decision to get the Megatron/Bumblebee set at this price, that's for sure. I mean, I'll probably get it, but it's gonna have a hard
time impressing me. This set was kinda disappointing.


RANTS

Packaging: The same sort of book-fold in a sleeve packaging as the
Hearts of Steel sets, but now with a Feudal Japan visual theme. The front of the sleeve has art of samurai-style Optimus Prime holding a naginata while tengu-style Starscream attacks him from above and behind (TFWiki says he also has elements of a mountain hermit, or Yamabushi). The art is black ink in a somewhat "brushed ink" style although it doesn't go all the way to looking traditional the way the background does. A brushed red circle is behind the two, and the scenery behind that is grayscale, on a faux scroll with tattered edges.
The rest of the sleeve's art is shades of brown-yellow against a black backdrop, with more photorealistic styling. Starscream's falcon or eagle
mode is alighting on a flowering branch (cherry tree, most likely) on the
right side, while the back and left side show a bridge across a stream with a mountain in the background as the ox cart Optimus Prime trudges across rocky ground on the left side. The back also has a scroll bit with renders of the two toys inside, and Starscrean's altmode does NOT make a good first
impression here. Optimus's side has an Autobot symbol within a five-petaled flower, which seems to be a variation on the cherry blossom (Sakura) as well.
Removing the slipcover, the altmode art is reproduced larger on the
front and back, wrapping around in each case to the hinge side (printed metal hinges). The non-hinge sides have gnarled cherry trees and plagues/tags with the relevant faction symbols for the sides. Big bronze-ish faction symbols
are on the tops of the sides. Opening it up, the two robots are behind
plastic windows, with a big Transformers logo along the bottom of the
combined fronts, and more cherry branch and blossom motifs along the top
edge. Optimus Prime is on the left, Starscream on the right.
Note, "Age of Samurai" is not anywhere on the box or in the
instructions. There's one big instructions sheet for both, behind Optimus Prime's inner tray. It uses bronze as the accent color, and has more of the cherry blossom branches twining around in the borders between instruction panels.


AUTOBOT: OPTIMUS PRIME
Assortment: G2268
Altmode: Ox Cart with Ox
Transformation Difficulty: 27 steps
Previous Name Use: Yes
Previous Mold Use: None
Origin Universe: Age of Samurai

Packaging: Five ties hold the robot to the inner tray (which is mottled shades of red with a big Autobot symbol in the background), with rubber bands around the forearms to keep the armor panels from coming loose. The naginata is held to the left edge inside the tray by a single tie and a fold-out
corner bit. (Pause while I go through the trash looking for the naginata
blade which flew off directly into it while I was trying to get the shaft out of the packaging.)
The back of the instructions are for Optimus, with the top third showing various ways to assemble, use, and store the naginata.

Robot Mode: While some Optimus Prime heads have been more kabuto- influenced than others, I think this may be the first time it's just outright
a samurai helmet. The overall motif is of laminated armor, with the roof halves of the cart forming oversized shoulderpads, and other armor elements present all over the details of the body. There's still the nods to fake
truck windows and grille on the torso, but they're mostly sold with color and only minor molding. Really, the only parts that stand out as not part of the armor motif are the cart wheels stick to the outer faces of the upper boots. The backpack is made of harness bits, but that's a pretty minor detail and robot modes usually get a pass from behind. The backs of the thighs are even molded to evoke the more flexible armor found there.
5.25" (13cm) tall at the head, with the shoulderpads rising to 5.5"
(14cm) and the back-stored naginata raising the total shelf height needed to 6.5" (16.5cm). The colors are the usual red, dark blue, and light gray with yellow and silver bits. Dark blue plastic is used for the head, backs of the thighs, boots and feet. Vibrant red plastic is used for the torso core,
torso sides, "regular" shoulderpads, forearms, and inner thighs. Light gray
is used for everything else, including the big outer shoulderpads, pieces between torso and shoulder, neck root, and knees (the rest being obvious by omission).
The chest not-windows are painted dark blue, if not quite as dark as the plastic. The abdomen, faceplate, helmet tablet, shin vents, and toes are painted silver, and the roof-crest bits of the big shoulderpads are also painted silver. Details that look like molded house symbols (kamon), which
one source I found claimed was the Horio clan, are molded on the cheek pieces of the helmet and the upper torso flanking the head and painted gold. (Other places had a different symbol for them, but I suspect if I want more reliable sources I'd need to be able to read Japanese. Anyway, these are basically circles with two smaller circles inside at the right and left edge.) There's also gold paint on the armor skirt in front, the cart wheel hubs, and the naginata blade. The eyes are bright blue. There's silver outline Autobot symbols on the fronts of the inner shoulderpads, and no-outline red Autobot symbols on the roof-half outer shoulderpads.
The neck is a very restricted ball joint, the waist is a smooth swivel, although if you store the naginata on the back it gets in the way of extreme rotation. The inner shoulderpads are on swivels with the upper arms hinged inside them to lift up to the sides. There's swivels just above the hinge elbows, and the wrists are ball joints that can rotate like swivels or bend inwards for transformation (or wiggle room on two-handed naginata grips). Pinned hinge and swivel hips, swivels just above the knees (the
transformation prevents swivels any higher up), and sideways hinges at the ankles. The outer shoulderpads are on double-hinged struts for
transformation, but they're mostly supposed to snug up against the shoulders making an angle of about 30 degrees outwards from vertical.
The fists can hold 5mm pegs, there's 5mm sockets on the outer faces of
the forearms, and on the undersides of the feet. There's a 3mm socket in the center of the back. There's nonstandard ]-shaped tabs on the back and the outer shoulderpads for storing the naginata. These tabs are wider at the top than at the bottom, so the naginata can only be stored blade up.
On the subject of the naginata, it's basically a spear with a large
curved blade, for those unfamiliar with the style. Often depicted as a defender's weapon, so it's appropriate for Optimus Prime. It comes in two pieces, both made of light gray plastic, with a total assembled length of a little over 6" (15.5cm). It's not really meant to be used in two pieces, there's no way to really hold the blade on its own for instance. It splits
so that the haft can be slid through both fists for a proper two-handed
grip. The haft is mostly 4.4mm in diameter with irregularly spaced thicker
5mm bits, none so long that they can't be forced all the way through a fist. Getting two thick bits into fists at the same time is difficult, but you only really need one fist with a solid grip anyway. The butt end is a blunted spike, and some of the longer-socketed Fire Blasts can go onto it for a
blasty naginata.

Transformation: Well, I didn't need the instructions, but there's a lot
of tabs that need to go into slots at the same time, sometimes at weird
angles, and my hands hurt a bit by the time I was finished. Basically, the torso becomes the ox with the robot head swapping into the chest with the
bull head and the rear legs hiding inside the robot thighs. The arms and shoulder armor become the "house" part of the cart while the legs form the
base and wheels of the cart. You need to make sure all the tabs are in place or it'll look rickety and the wheels might not move. The folded down thigh backs help guide the slight bend of the knees, since they only tab in place
at the correct knee-bend angle. Checking the instructions now, the bottom
line of them does an adequate if not great job of showing how to fit the cart together in back. Still, even on later transformations when I know how to do it, the tabs don't all like to stay in place. The naginata just goes on the roof all in one piece, there's no attempt to hide it.
Transforming back to robot mode is quite easy by comparison. Just don't forget to snap the transformation joint just above the knee all the way
closed, or the figure won't stand well.

Altmode: It's a two-wheeled traveling cart with a roof (so one could in principle camp out inside it if it wasn't too full of goods) pulled by a
robot ox. One of the weirder altmodes for Optimus Prime, although in a world where he's been a sneaker and a baseball cap it's a tough competition for the absolute weirdest altmode. The harness of the ox has design elements I
suspect are meant to evoke the traditional truck mode smokestacks, although they're parallel to the ox's back rather than sticking up. There's no wheels under the feet, so the whole thing doesn't so much roll as slide. As often happens, the rear view is a mess, although they at least try to seal up the back somewhat. There's certainly room under the peak of the roof to put the naginata haft, but nothing to secure it in place, so it's not really an improvement over the rooftop pegs.
Ignoring the naginata stuck to the roof, the whole thing is 5.5"
(13.5cm) long, with the ox being mostly red with gray and silver and the cart being mostly gray with some red, blue, and silver. The blue plastic is
mostly hidden or forming the "don't look at this" rear and underside. A "typical" ox is 1.8 to 1.9 meters long including the head, but that's a
modern ox (which is probably bigger) and on the other hand Optimus would
likely be above typical size. The ox part of this altmode is 7cm long, so a 1:28 scale is not unreasonable as a rough estimate. This also puts the whole thing at the same scale as some Deluxe car altmodes. Well, honestly, these days that's more likely a Voyager car altmode scale, it's been a while since Deluxes were bigger than 1:36 scale outside of some weird outliers.
Red plastic is used for the ox head, back, belly, and legs. Ignoring
the underside and the feet in back, the cart is all light gray plastic, which is also used for the back half of the harness, the flanks, and the horns.
The part of the yoke that's molded as part of the back is painted silver,
which I suspect is supposed to blend into the light gray plastic and doesn't even come close. The hooves are also painted silver, the eyes are bright
blue, and the nose ring is painted gold. The sides of the cart (which were mostly hidden under the big shoulderpads in robot mode) have red painted on
the rearmost panels, while the front panels on each side are the robot shoulders. The windows are painted the same dark blue as the robot's chest, and the shoulder Autobot symbols show through on the sides. The windows are molded with armor slats, so I guess in a forgiving fakey transformation they become the robot chest. (The actual robot chest is clearly visible as the
ox's belly.)
Very few accessible connectors, just the nonstandard roof tabs and the
3mm socket from the robot back is now on top of the ox's spine. I suppose
you could rotate the fists in back so that the fist sockets were accessible. Technically the forelegs can move, although the joints are practically down
by the knees. No articulation in the ox head, but as long as you transform
it correctly the wheels do spin freely.

Overall: I'm sure everything fit perfectly in the world of Platonic Forms...er, renders, and maybe Lego-level manufacturing could make it work in this world. Still, as WIRNIR goes, the flaws aren't too bad. If this were available solo, I might strongly recommend it purely for the weird value.
Too bad it's paired with a relative turkey.


DECEPTICON: STARSCREAM
Assortment: G2268
Altmode: Eagle or Falcon
Transformation Difficulty: 20 steps
Previous Name Use: Yes
Previous Mold Use: None
Origin Universe: Age of Samurai

Packaging: The inner tray is the same visual theme as Optimus's, but
with a big Decepticon symbol. Eight ties hold the robot to the tray, and a plastic bag taped to the bottom of the inner tray has the arm gun, wingtips
and tail/fan.
The front of the instruction sheet is for Starscream, with six steps for assembling the robot mode out of package and the rest of the top half showing various ways to use the weapons.

Robot Mode: Rather than trying to directly make a chest cockpit, the design goes for the multiple layers of v-neck robe seen in some Japanese fashion of the feudal era, presumably something that the Yamabushi were known to wear. The upper/inner layer is colored yellow-orange to evoke the cockpit while still basically being a V shape. The helmet is an effective blend of
the traditional Starscream helmet, elements of a feudal-era helmet, and a bird's head typical of the bird-type tengu. He does not have the giant
phallic nose often also seen on tengu, though. Other details of the body
evoke puffy sleeves and leggings with tight lower leg binding leading to sandaled feet. And, of course, mechanical bird wings on the back and a
bladed bird's tail that can be left on the back of the belt as a buttcape or held as a war fan. Oh, and so the colors don't have to do the entire job of proclaiming this as Starscream, there's little triangular scoops on the shoulders to improve the likeness.
Maybe a bit more than 4.75" (12cm) tall in the usual Starscream colors
of light gray, light blue, and bold red with some accent colors. Light blue plastic is used for the collar area, shoulder joints, most of the forearm (there's a sort of elbow armor around them), fists, hip joints, and shins.
The head and shoulder scoops are entirely painted over, but based on a few places where the paint has flaws I'm pretty sure they're light gray plastic. Everything else is light gray plastic which is significantly lighter than the light gray plastic on Oxtimus. No gang-molding here.
The head is coated in metallic black paint with dark silver on the face and gloss red for the eyes and some eye-like details on the helmet. Gloss
red paint coats the shoulder scoops and is used on the torso sides, abdomen, most of the pelvis front, and feather vanes on the wings (only the side
facing forwards in robot mode). The upper vest details are painted yellow orange like his usual cockpit. There's round not-intake details on the pecs that are painted dark silver. The feet are painted light blue (very good
match for the plastic) except for the soles, the sandal strap details, and
the bird claws in back (yeah, it's that sort of foot). There's also light
blue paint on the feathers of the tail, but it doesn't go all the way to the tips, leaving the sharpened bits unpainted. If you extend the wings, you can see no-outline violet Decepticon symbols on the backs of the wings.
The neck is a ball joint but limited so it can only turn or let the head tilt back, the waist is a smooth swivel between the belt and pelvis. The shoulders are on disk-type swivels with pinned hinges to let the arms lift up to the sides, there's swivels just above the hinge elbows. There's transformation hinges just below the elbows, and the wrists are ball joints that can rotate or bend inwards (although that's not needed for transformation). Pinned hinge and swivel hips, upper thigh swivels, hinge knees, transformation hinges in the lower shin, ball joint ankles. The
ankles mostly turn, but they can wiggle a little in other directions, if stiffly. The wings have single hinges at the roots, double-hinges in the middle, and "flare the feathers outwards" swivels for the main flight
feathers. The tail root has a hinge that bends upwards about 30 degrees.
The fists can hold 5mm pegs, there's 5mm sockets on the outer faces of
the upper arms (for gun attachment), 5mm sockets under the soles of the feet, and a 5mm socket for attaching the tail to the butt. There's no 3mm socket
on the pelvis, instead that socket is placed on the tail/fan. The elbows
have molded thrusters which are disappointingly not 5mm sockets. There's no connectors on the wings for holding the guns.
The arm guns are patterned after "tanegashima" rifles according to
TFWiki, which are matchlocks (a slow-burning cord gets dropped into the
primer pan by pulling the trigger), and they're identical rather than mirror images so that the matchlock mechanism is on the right side for both. Most tanegashima rifles had their triggers well back on the curved stock, to judge by the Wikipedia entry, and these have the 5mm pegs in the trigger position. The muzzle ends in a 3mm stud. Each rifle is a little more than 2.5" (6.5cm) long and made of a single piece of light gray plastic with no paint. The undersides get to be hollow, I suppose making gap-fillers would be pretty
easy. When mounted on the upper arms, the curved stock does not interfere
with any range of motion.
The tessen war fan has five blade feathers with paint on them and then outer blades with no paint but with details that look like the tips of
fighter jet wings. 2" (5cm) wide and about 1.75" (4.5cm) long including the 5mm peg grip. There's a 3mm socket on the painted side where the feathers meet, but not on the other side.

Transformation: It took me a few tries and careful scrutiny of the box render to get this done, but again I didn't need the instructions. I even figured out that the box render mistransformed the legs, I guess in an
attempt to depict a "swooping down to grab" pose that did not look good at
all.
The backplate opens to let the robot head swap with the bird head, but
be sure to turn the shoulder scoops inward before you do so. The entire
pelvis piece folds forwards 90 degrees on a hinge above the belt to provide
the room for the arms to tuck against the sides. While it looks like you should fill the gap under the tail with the forearms, the forearms just go under the upper arms, with the gray parts of the forearms tabbing into slots
on the top of the waist piece. Note that the hips are supposed to tab into place on the undersides of the belt area, but at least on mine the tabs don't really stay in very well.
Going back to robot mode in THEORY doesn't require removing the rifles, but I'd recommend doing so anyway. Otherwise, just a lot of limb twisting
and trying to avoid popping parts off, not difficult here either.

Altmode: According to TFWiki the original idea was to make Starscream a crane, and that definitely would've helped deal with the long legs that
utterly ruin the looks of this raptor mode. They decided to go with a raptor of some sort because falconry was popular among the Japanese nobility too,
and he could be Megatron's falcon on top of being a tengu. Anyway, if you correctly fold the legs up, it's not quite as bad as the box render suggests, but it's still a bird crouching atop a pair of robot legs with a boxy torso with lots of gaps. The elbow thrusters in back make an attempt to justify
the boxiness, I guess. Bird altmode designs are more on the miss side of hit or miss, but they keep trying. To look decent, this one would need to lose
the entire robot mode below the waist joint, then maybe tack the feet onto
the bottom of the belly.
4.75" (12cm) from beak to tail tip, fully spread wingspan of 8" (20cm), and it stands way too tall at 3" (7.5cm). Same basic colors as robot mode,
but the gray is more dominant. The bird head is light gray plastic while the lower beak is light blue plastic. The robot abdomen is now the neck, with
the shoulder scoops turned inwards to make for a smoother transition, red
paint on all of it as in robot mode (a tiny bit of the yellow-orange paint is visible at the base of the neck). The upper beak is painted light blue, and the bird eyes are painted bright red. The small Decepticon symbols on the wings are now more visible.
The wings retain and now should use their full articulation, the tail
can be lifted up a bit without looking bad, and the bird head can bend downwards on a neck transformation strut and the lower beak can open up on
same hinge as the rest of the head. The legs can't be moved without looking even stupider, basically you can do a little wiggling of the ankles while
it's standing. I wonder if the box render was trying to show something like
a "swoops down to grab" leg pose and just didn't commit all the way, because
if you straighten the legs and angle the claws as far forwards as they'll go
it looks okay as an attack pose. It can even stand like that, although it looks like the moment before Starscream slams into the ground and explodes.
The upper arm 5mm sockets remain where the guns should go, just rotated 180 degrees from the robot mode positions. The feet sockets are still accessible, and I suppose you can still see the fists but they're not in a useful place. Since all the painted parts of the wings and tail are supposed to be facing down in this mode, the 3mm socket in the tail is technically accessible for a flight base, although it's not in a great spot in terms of
the center of mass.

Overall: Decent robot mode, transformation is okay, altmode is better
left unused. They really should give up on bird altmodes and switch to birdlike monsters where they can just let the legs do whatever. A box under
a jet that you can just sort of ignore is one thing, giant awkward legs AND a box under a bird is another thing, and a bad thing.


Set Overall: If they weren't doing obligatory two-packs, I'd definitely recommend just the Oxtimus Prime. But Starscream is an anchor around the
set. At least if they make a Thundercracker/Skywarp pack it'll be an easy pass. I mean, I'd probably buy a Hearts of Steel Seeker pack, to give a reference point there.


Dave Van Domelen, got a bunch of Metal Cardbots and needs to decide if
he wants to actually review them....



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