From Newsgroup: alt.toys.transformers

Dave's Transformers Icons Rant: Wave 1

Icons Optimus Prime (Autobot Symbol)

Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Misc/Icons1

Okay, BotBots gave us Retro Recon, who turns into an 8-bit Autobot
symbol, and the mold got a slight redeco for the recent (2026) countdown calendar. But now we get a full-sized robot that turns into an Autobot
symbol, with a Megatron that becomes a Decepticon symbol announced already if not yet available for pre-order at the time of this review. No regular store sightings of Optimus Prime either at time of review, it may well be an online exclusive aimed purely at the adult collector who can be counted on to buy every new mold Hasbro puts out ( >_> ) ( <_< ). If this keeps going, I'd be quite amused if they do a G2 Autobot symbol that becomes Laser Optimus Prime, followed by a black redeco that mounts the symbol mode upside down as RiD01 Scourge. :)


CAPSULE

$46.99 at HasbroPulse, for what's basically a Voyager with premium paint and a big accessory (the stand).

Icons Optimus Prime: Well, the symbol mode looks nice, with red chrome (well, not actually chrome, see below) and stuff. Transformation is a little more hassle than it needed to be, because symbol mode prioritizes very small seams. Well-articulated robot mode that has a few odd proportions, and a
good included stand that works in both modes. Recommended if you can look
past the price.


RANT

Packaging: A window box that shows most of the symbol mode through its window. 8" (20cm) tall, 7" (18cm) wide, and 2.5" (6cm) deep. The trade
dress is similar to Studio Series and Age of the Primes for 2026, but without
a line-wide band around the bottom, just a thin red line separating the Transformers logo from the character namebadge. The transformation steps cartouche in the upper left just has an Autobot symbol as the altmode. The
art on the front is a "strobing" sort with motion from the symbol mode in the upper right through a transitional mode to the robot mode at the bottom of
the window. The robot art is covered up below the chest by the rest of the trade dress, although the left side of the box has a vertical slice of the
same art that shows down to the pelvis. The right side has a sort of bio
note in English, French, German, Spanish, and Portuguese. The top just has
the character namebadge in white on a black background, the bottom just has
the usual legalese. On the back are renders of the two modes, showing that
the symbol has a display stand.
Inside, the cardboard inner tray has a blue background with various faintly visible Autobot symbols and what I guess is a sort of screen static pattern. Optimus, in symbol mode, is held down by a blister that's secured
by tabs pushed through the card and taped in back. The rifle is held in the lower left by two plastic ties, the support strut of the display stand is held to the right flap of the tray by three strings, and the base of the stand is held in the lower right by two strings. The instructions are loose behind
the tray.


AUTOBOT: OPTIMUS PRIME
Altmode: Autobot Symbol
Transformation Difficulty: 25 steps
Previous Name Use: Yes (unless you specify "Icons Optimus Prime")
Previous Mold Use: None
Origin Universe: Marketing Department

Bio Note: Originally known as the "First Face," this ancient symbol was adopted by modern-day Autobots to represent their faction.

Symbol Mode: Oh, good. This doesn't seem to use chrome per se, it looks more like they took silver paint or maybe chrome but then sealed it with
clear red paint. It's a subtle difference, but should be a lot more durable than regular chrome. (I've used "clear over chrome" a lot in my kitbashing
to try to fake clear plastic, so I recognized some of the tells.) Anyway,
it's a big Autobot symbol...if you don't know what that looks like, this probably shouldn't be your first Transformers purchase. While it has transformation seams on the front and on the sides, and the back shows some robot elements, they absolutely minimized such elements.
The symbol is 3.75" (9.5cm) tall, 3.75" (9.5cm) wide, and except for the bit in the back that connects to the stand, 1" (2.5cm) thick. When on the stand, the total height is a bit over 4.5" (11.5cm), which is also about the height of the stand on its own. All of the exposed plastic on the symbol in this mode is light gray, as is the gun, while the stand is all medium blue plastic. The red of the symbol is shiny red that as noted above I suspect is clear red over chrome or brilliant silver. Most of the gun is painted dark gunmetal except for the grip pegs.
There is a 5mm socket near the bottom on back of the symbol, while at
the top there's a "hang it on a nail head" sort of socket. In addition to working with the included base, it'd work on a nail or screw head more than
5mm wide and less than 8mm, so you could hang it on the wall. The stand has
a "nail head" of the right size at the top, and four 5mm sockets along each side of the strut. The reverse end of the top piece has a slot that accepts the robot butt to make it a display stand for robot mode too. Note, the nail head peg is deliberately loose, so the symbol can sort of swing back and
forth a little. It also means it can't be stowed on the robot's back, it
just falls off.
The instructions show how to use the rifle as a support when not using
the full stand (the front grip peg goes into the 5mm socket in back), but
don't have any suggestions for where to best store the rifle ON the stand, since you can't have it in support position and still use the stand.
Basically, pick one of the eight sockets on the strut and apply your
aesthetic preferences. (I used the main grip peg on the lowest socket, with the rifle pointing straight up.)
The symbol mode has no articulation, unsurprisingly. The stand has a soft-ratcheting (60 degrees at a time) swivel to let you pick which end of
the top piece is forwards. It looks like there's a hinge there as well, but it's just the fact that the top bit is attached via another 5mm peg and
socket. I do kind of wonder if removing the top bit would let the remaining peg work in the butts of any of the Breastforce members, but I'm not curious enough to disassemble Liokaiser to check.
I'll describe the rifle in robot mode, since it's really not used in
this mode.

Transformation: They really wanted to minimize the size of gaps, so I needed to use a knife to get things going in several places. The easiest
first step, though, is to grab the cheeks and pull apart. Then fold the bit with the 5mm socket down in back and the nose down in front, which unlocks
the waist and lets you turn it 180 degrees. Straighten the legs and rotate
so that the painted parts of the boots face outwards, then open up the boots
to pull the feet out. Pay close attention to how this works, because getting the feet back in can be pretty tricky if you're having to figure it out from scratch. The heel spurs are easy enough to fold out even with nails as short and weak as mine. Next pull the top quarters apart and up into shoulderpads, with the arms folding out of them. I needed a knife for this part. Opening
up the forearms to get the fists out may or may not require a knife, it
depends on how well you align the fists when stowing them again. Pull back
the bit on top covering the robot head, which frees up the whole chest-and- shoulders piece to swing down on a strut to meet up with the waist. Note,
for some reason the faction symbol on the robot's sternum (yes, he has an
extra symbol) is on a rotating piece, so it might be upside down and need to
be flipped. This is easier if you do it when the chest is pulled all the way forwards. Then it's just a matter of folding up the panels in back to tuck them away.
Note, if you want to use the stand in robot mode, the nose plate has to
be folded back up, but this does tend to block the waist joint, so the instructions recommend leaving it down as a buttcape when not using the
stand.

Robot Mode: A bit spindly in the thighs, and the colors are strongly affected by the theme of symbol mode (the pelvis doesn't have to be red to
make altmode work, but they decided to go with it to match the chest), but
the Optimus-ness is more than just the head. The shape of the pelvis and the vents on the shins also match the standard Optimus body plan, and while the shins can't be blue without messing up symbol mode, the feet are. The big shoulderpads make it look kind of Laser Optimus Prime-ish.
6.75" (17cm) tall in mostly light gray, shiny red, and blue. The
shoulder roots, hands, and feet are the same blue plastic as the stand. Everything else is light gray, although there's two slightly different types. Roughly speaking, any part that's not directly visible in symbol mode is a slightly lighter shade that glows differently under UV, but the difference is visible under normal light when you look at the forearms. Not sure which
shade the head is, since it's so thoroughly painted that it was hard to be
sure it's gray underneath at all, but probably the shell type.
In addition to the symbol mode red paint, the pelvis front is painted mostly red in the same style, leaving stripes and a triangle unpainted to
give it some patterning. The helmet is mostly painted a slightly metallic
dark blue, which is also used on the edges of the "ribcage" section. The faceplate and forehead tablet are painted brilliant silver, while the eyes
are AllSpark Blue. The sternum has a red on white Autobot symbol, in case
his allegiance was uncertain.
The neck is a ball and socket joint with the socket in the head and an okay amount of tilt range, the waist is a smooth swivel that can be blocked from moving if you fold up the buttcape (which is on a hinge). Swivel and hinge universal shoulders, additional swivels to let the arms lift up within the shoulderpads, upper bicep swivels, hinge elbows, restricted ball joint wrists, and mitten hinge fingers. Pinned hinge and swivel hips, lower thigh swivels just above the hinge knees, and the ankles are dual hinged with one
as a rocker side to side and the other forwards and backwards, plus swivels
to let them rotate around a vertical axis. The heel spurs are separately hinged and can fold down to help support some more active poses if you're not just using the stand.
The hands can hold 5mm pegs whether or not the fingers are folded in,
and that's basically it. You can sort of get the rifle to store on the back using the 5mm wide part of the hanger slot, but it's not a firm fit. Instead of a 3mm socket in the butt, there's a nonstandard slider channel that fits into the stand's rectangular socket.
The rifle is roughly shaped like Optimus Prime's G1 rifle, including the irregular pentagon at the back end, but with a sort of not-handle shape atop the barrel (which partly blocks the front of the molded sights, although the butt end totally covers the other end, but I guess he'd just network with the lens or something), and then a bent ammo clip ending in a 5mm peg in addition to the main grip peg. Why bent? Because that puts it at the right angle to
be used as a support for the symbol mode as discussed earlier. The arms have enough range of motion to hold the rifle by both pegs, or to open up the off hand at the mitten joint to cradle tbe barrel. The whole thing is 2.75"
(7cm) long, light gray plastic painted almost entirely dark gunmetal. It's made of two pieces glued together, so it lacks the hollowness that is so
common in accessories these days. The barrel tip is a 3mm stud.

Overall: Okay, it's a gimmick even by the standards of "Transformers are gimmick toys," but it works pretty well and they didn't cheap out in any
major way. Is it worth what was the Leader cost not too long ago? Eh, it's getting harder to defend any Transformers on a pure price basis, a situation not helped by rampant and stupid tariffs, but I find it to have been worth my time, at least.


Dave Van Domelen, will almost definitely get the Megatron Icons as well, unless it sells out or something.

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