From Newsgroup: alt.toys.transformers

Dave's Transformers Age of the Primes Rant: Voyager wave 5

The Thirteen Nexus Prime (jet sort of)

Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/AoP/VNexusPrime

Wavemate is Armada Sideways, which I've seen people have in hand for a while now, but Pulse has not yet shipped as of early May 2026 when I started this review. Will it ship before I finish? Let's see!


CAPSULE

$42 at Hasbro Pulse.

Nexus Prime: Decent blocky G1 robot with some Gundam design motifs, transformation is awfully involved for something that turns into a brick with tiny wings. The undocumented combiner torso mode is decent, I am boggled as
to why there's no indication on the package or in the instructions that this
is a thing it can do. Mildly recommended.


RANT

Packaging: Same as other Age of the Prime Voyagers. As usual for a
Prime, they gallery slice on the right side of the box is centered on the character inside the box, showing how little they resemble each other.

Note, Nexus Prime isn't quite at the bottom tier of the Thirteen in
terms of toys and media. Every Prime has a Prime Master (although some only came with the Throne of the Primes set), they all get entries in the Covenant of Primus, and they've all shown up in a few all-the-Primes crowd scenes.
For some of the Primes, that's it. For others, like Alpha Trion or
Megatronus, there's extensive presence in toys and media. Nexus Prime is slightly above the bottom. The character was created for the official TF Collectors' Club, a set of five mostly-clear-plastic redecos of Energon combiner components with a new-head combination being...Nexus Maximus. In
one of the more notorious Naughty Mistakes in official Transformers products, Hasbro had "safe search" on when they checked whether the name was already in use, and to their credit they did sufficient legal due diligence, as Nexus Maxiumus was not used for anything in the toys trademark category. It was, however, the name for a sex toy designed to help forge a connection between
two people, but not the sort of combiner Hasbro had in mind. So it became Nexus Prime soon after release despite Hasbro's reluctance at the time to dilute the "Prime" name. (As opposed to Age of the Primes, which is practically going homeopathic with the Prime name.)
Anyway, Nexus Prime was the star of several years' worth of BotCon
comics and toy exclusives, which is slightly more exposure than, say,
Micronus Prime got before Age of the Primes. Due to what amounts to a visual game of telephone, the art for his head warped repeatedly (the faceplate got mistaken for a visor, which kicked things off), leading to his brief
appearance in TFOne after which this toy's head seems designed.
While nothing on the box or in the instructions even hints at this, the toy has a third mode where it can take Silverbolt's place in the torso of Superion. There's word there will be special combiner limbs for Nexus Prime coming out, but so far no confirmation that there will also be a new combiner skeleton. (I get the sinking feeling that if they do sell a new skeleton, it'll be in a gift set with a slightly redecoed Nexus Prime and all the limbs for over $200.) Hasbro is really over-reliant on the target audience being hooked into all the online rumor sites to try to sell this toy. Even a small combiner component symbol on the box would've gone a long way to making sure people buying this don't get disappointed by the boxy and kinda lame "jet"
mode and the apparent lack of the character's whole purpose...combination.
That was just plain stupid and/or arrogant of Hasbro marketing. Then again, the 2026 A-Level Studio Series Deluxes seem to be marketed at people who
don't open boxes, so I might be way outside what Hasbro thinks is the market for Generations and Studio Series. (Mind you, once you actually open the
box, the combiner head stuffed into the backpack is really obvious.)
Anyway, on the box back the inset with the Enigma of Combination has the Cyebrtronian font saying "THE ENIGMA OF COMBINATION," unsurprisingly.


THE THIRTEEN: NEXUS PRIME
Assortment: G2001
Altmode: Spaceship, jet, something. A brick with tiny wings and cockpit. Undocumented Altmode: Combiner torso
Transformation Difficulty: 23 steps
Previous Name Use: No mass-market (PotP was not sold separately)
Previous Mold Use: None
Origin Universe: Aligned

Packaging: 5 plastic ties hold the robot to the inner tray, one tie
holds the Enigma of Combination in the upper left corner. The plastic bag taped to the right flap has the two winglet blasters.
The box art shows gold paint on the fake combiner ports on the shoulder fronts, but the toy leaves them unpainted.

Robot Mode: Very boxy, similar to the sorts of blocky robot modes seen
in G1 combiner cores (well, and G1 bots in general). The head looks vaguely like a Gundam GM-79 but with the top edge of the optic visor being straight across and the sides of the helmet having a more RX-78 cheek guard look.
This is basically the head used in TFOne, based on the comparison pics on TFWiki (he really only showed up in a chaotic battle scene). The other distinctive design element is the repeated use of round details that I think might be meant to evoke combiner ports. There's two types. One is a smooth dome shape with a two-ringed border that has radial details across the rings
at the four diagonals (upper right, upper left, lower right, lower left).
These are painted with slightly metallic yellow gems and silver rings, and they're on the center of the chest and the outer faces of the forearms. The other sort has a round depression in the middle that has five radial lines in
a star pattern, single smooth rings around them, and little tabs at the top, bottom, and sides. The ones on the shins are painted gold, the smaller ones
on the fronts of the shoulders are unpainted on the toy but shown painted
gold on the box render. The fist-backs but up against jet mode thrusters
which can also pass for wrist cannons.
6" (15cm) tall in a mix of medium blue, bright red, light gray, and
black, plus some silver and gold ccents. There's technically two types of
blue plastic, but it takes a UV flashlight to tell them apart. Blue is used
on the torso front, the torso side panels that unfold in transformation, the head (I'm pretty sure, anyway, it might be black), the backs of the
shoulders, forearms, pelvis, hip outer shells (it's one of those "a third of the pelvis is actually part of the hip joint" designs), and the winglets of
the guns. The actual red plastic is restricted to the shoulder fronts and
most of each boot. Black plastic is used for the feet, transformation hinges on the boots, the gun parts of the weapons, the collar area, and the
backpack. Somewhat light gray plastic is used for the biceps, fists, inner hips, thighs, abdomen core, and the Enigma of Combination.
The head is coated in red paint with the faceplate painted silver and
the visor a sort of dull gold. The non-leading-edge parts of the winglets on the guns are also painted red. The round things described earlier are
painted as stated there. The lower abdomen front is painted silver, as is almost all of the Enigma. The Enigma has the same sort of pattern molded in its center as on the robot chest, and the middle of that is painted dull gold with Nexus Prime's sigil printed in black. There's black paint on the
forearm blaster/thruster bits and the kneecaps. I'll discuss the backpack paint in vehicle mode, since it's the nose end of the jet.
The neck is a ball joint with the socket in the head, and it can tilt in any direction some, while the waist is a smooth swivel. The shoulders are "swivel at the torso and hinge inside the shoulderpad" universal joints, there's bicep swivels, and hinge elbows. The wrists are technically on swivels, but the wrist cannons make it hard to get a grip to turn them. If
you want to move the wrists, it's easiest to insert a 5mm peg accessory to
use as a lever. The hips are the sort of universal joint described earlier, there's upper thigh swivels, hinge knees, and instep hinges for the ankles. There's transformation hinges in the feet, but they're not very useful for articulation here. The winglets on the guns are attached via hinges, so you can fold the winglets to the sides when the guns are being held in the fists, which I think looks a little better.
The fists can hold 5mm pegs, and there's 5mm sockets on the inner faces
of the forearms (not exactly useful in this mode), on either side of the backpack (for storing the guns to make them look like robot mode wings), on
the soles of the feet, on the back of the pelvis (used for connecting to Superion's frame, and probably Bruticus's), and one inside the jet nose of
the backpack for storing the Enigma. Note, the fists are blocked on the underside so this figure cannot borrow two-handed weapons. There's 3mm studs at the tips of the wrist blasters/thrusters. There's also 5mm sockets on the tops of the toes, but they're covered up in this mode and are for attaching
the winglet guns in vehicle mode.
The guns are identical. Long pistols which have a G1 feel, plus
winglets on top. The winglets look like they'd be tail fins or canards or something, but nope...they're the main wings. The gun part is black plastic and just under 3" (7.5cm) long, with a 5mm peg grip near the back and 3mm
stud barrel tips. The winglets are blue plastic with red paint hinged on top slightly ahead of the grip, with octagonal pseudo-ratchets that make them stable every 45 degrees to either side. When mounted on the backpack it
gives the robot mode something like stubby Seeker wings. They can't mount on the shoulders or forearms to look more Seeker-y as guns, though, and the
barrel does not get wide enough to let the guns be held like axes. Pity, they'd make decent axes.
The Enigma of Combination is vaguely like the Matrix of Leadership, but the casing goes out in skinny triangle-ish shapes rather than handles. The actual toy has little connecting bits between the tines on either end to protect against breakage. It's a single piece of gray plastic almost
entirely painted over, 38mm wide and 14mm tall with a 5mm peg sticking out of the center of the back. It can be held awkwardly in either hand, and it's designed to fit snugly under the front of the jet nose to act as a canard.
It does not go into the robot's chest.

Transformation: I was able to figure it out with just the box picture to work with, and I gotta admit there's some pretty clever panel folding tricks involved, such as opening up the boots to let the shoulders go inside them.
I mean, it mostly results in a rectangle with a skinny jet nose sticking out the front and little winglets pegged onto the sides. Okay, not a rectangle, more of a blocky letter E. There's an awful lot of pieces moving around in service of that block-E (not Blokee), though. On the positive side, nothing falls off or flies off during transformation, the only parts that need
removing are the winglets which are guns anyway, and once you get the hang of the shoulder root panel hinges there's no place where pieces need to be
forced past each other. Do make sure to pull the backplate down all the way before trying to open up the shoulder panels, there's a tab at the bottom
edge that locks into the backpack.
Going back to robot mode is pretty simple and straightforward, although getting the head back out of the chest can be difficult given its fairly
smooth shape and the stiff hinge. I need to get a tool to pry it out.

Altmode: So. Blocky E with tiny wings and a skinny jet nose. It looks like the sort of thing that would form the upper half of a Duocon-style
robot, the pelvis is really obvious in the back. The cockpit and nose
section also feels kinda Gundam "core fighter" in vibe, with tiny wing stubs right ahead of the main E where they'd have no function, and the nose end
made of skinny trapezoids. A bit more black and a lot less gray in the color balance. There's no landing gear, but the backpack harness on the underside has four little nubs that let it rest a little off the table stably. There's also VTOL vectored thrust vents molded into that piece on the underside. The Enigma forms the real canards near the front of the nose.
6" (15cm) long with a "wing"span of 7.75" (19.5cm). The only new-ish plastic is the cockpit/nose section, which is black plastic. The cockpit window is painted dull gold, the bits at the back on the sides are painted
red, and the little winglet nubs are painted a slightly metallic blue.
The winglet guns go into 5mm sockets on the sides near the back, those toe-top ones mentioned earlier. The pelvis back socket is on top in back, if you had a third winglet gun it could go on top as a tail fin and make it look
a tiny bit better as a space fighter. The forearm sockets end up on the underside, where I suppose they could be used for a flight stand, but they're way off-center. By default, the fist sockets point inwards and are also accessible. The forearm thrusters' 3mm studs are for thrust-style Fire
Blasts.

Combiner Mode: I think I managed to figure this out based on what I had
to do in order for it to fit into Superion, although it took a bit of
fiddling. From vehicle mode, fold down the nose to reveal the combiner head, and turn it backwards. After removing Silverbolt from the torso, plug
Nexus's pelvis into the tabs and peg at Superion's waist, with the underside
of the "jet" being in front. The Superion chestplate then snaps into place over it. The arms have to be pulled back because there's not quite enough clearance for the shoulder pieces of Superion's skeleton to fit over the
Nexus boots...maybe I just didn't try hard enough and the arms are supposed
to stay in vehicle mode? I didn't feel like risking breakage, though. With the arms removed, the Nexus feet can fold in against the sides better,
though. Aha, wait, if you bend the toes 90 degrees first, slots on the
bottoms of the toes can go into tabs on the thighs, this is definitely Intentional.
Oh, if you just fold out the combiner head in robot mode, you get a sort of chibi Nexus Prime.
http://www.dvandom.com/images/NexusSuperion.JPG for some pictures you might find helpful. The pictures were taken before I figured out the toes thing, though, so the feet are more just bent in rather than locked in. See http://www.dvandom.com/images/NexusCore2.JPG for a slightly tweaked and more stable core version (I don't feel like disassembling Superion again). The
arms might be officially down rather than up, but they definitely should end
up flat against the back rather than angled out like I have in the first picture. I do think the forearm sockets are meant to be used in this mode
for something, though.
Anyway, regardless of the details, the blue parts are almost all shoved
to the back, making this mostly black and red, although the center half of
the torso front is going to be covered by the combiner chestplate piece. The head is the only new piece in this mode, it's a chunk of black plastic on a black plastic neck shaft that's part of the backpack stuff. This adds
antennae and looks more like the art in the Covenant of Primus or the head on the Prime Gallery statue, but it also looks like an elaboration on the
regular robot head. Just add antennae, give the faceplate more detail so it looks a bit more like a pilot's breather mask, and leave the cheek armor bits black. The top of the helmet is painted red, the visor (with a more Angry
Eyes shape to it) is still painted dull gold and the faceplate dark silver.
The neck turns and has some wiggle room in all other directions, there's no
cut to let it tilt back a lot. As shown in the picture earlier, it fits nice and solidly in Silverbolt's place on Superion even with things not quite transformed correctly, and it's nice and stable.

Overall: I get that they don't want to spent more money on instructions for the torso mode (where they gonna be, a gift set that'll make people
re-buy this toy?), not giving ANY indication on the package is a mistake,
given how underwhelming the altmode that is shown on the box is. It's a
decent blocky robot, but is otherwise an accessory for a Commander class
toy.


Dave Van Domelen, Sideways did not in fact arrive before this review was finished.


--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2