2008 SDCC Nemesis Prime

Central processing cooooores! Central processing cooooores!

For various reasons, the format for this review will be a little different. Let’s see how it goes shall we?

For a gallery of Nemesis Prime, go here: http://www.seibertron.com/transformers/toys/classics/nemesis-prime/1542/

Character
Back in the Robots in Disguise (RiD) cartoon series, there were quite a few interesting concepts that flew around. One of which was that while the good guys were the heroic Autobots (naturally), the bad guys were the Predacons (at least initially). Megatron would eventually get his hands on some Protoforms, which were these incubation pod thingies that held pre-scanned Transformers. And he used them to scan various military vehicles to form a new breed of robotic baddies, the Decepticons.

While the first batch of Protoforms scanned resulted in the Combaticons, the last Protoform in Megatron’s possession went through another of those interesting concepts that RiD had flying around. During the hoo-hah between the Autobots against the newly formed Decepticons, a human bystander tried to get away from the crossfire by getting into a tanker truck. There was an accident and Optimus Prime jumped in and held onto the truck to save the puny flesh creature. It was then that Megatron scanned the truck (with human and Optimus attached) with the remaining Protoform. The result was a black and teal colored “Optimus Prime” by name of Scourge.

Scourge was an interesting character. He was a competent fighter with a keen mind, and loyal to Megatron. Or so it seemed. Of course, Scourge was but biding his time for the most opportune moment to seize power. Unbeknownst to Scourge however, Megatron knew of his disloyalty all along, and Scourge met his end when Megatron betrayed him and the rest of the Decepticons before they could do the same to him. I believe they were lured into an enclosed tunnel whenst lava was released and they were all melted down. I don’t remember if Scourge managed to survive that, but the bottom line is, I’m pretty durn sure he didn’t make it out of the series intact.

So that’s Scourge, who doesn’t really have anything to do with the 2008 San Diego Comic Con Nemesis Prime, except that ever since RiD, the idea (and toy) of an “evil Optimus Prime” has popped up quite frequently through the years. Said evil Prime is of course, Nemesis Prime.

Another Nemesis Prime of note before we get to the one who’s ACTUALLY being reviewed here is the one from 2004, which used the Big Convoy mold from Beast Wars Neo. In that one, the story is that he was originally an Optimus Prime who was captured by Unicron and tortured for aeons, before finally breaking and becoming a herald of the Dark God.

Now, onto THIS Nemesis Prime, the one with the picture at the top of this post.

He’s quite similar to the 2004 Nemesis Prime, in that he was just some poor nameless schmuck-bot who was kidnapped and tortured by Straxus until his mind broke. He was physically augmented to be on par with Optimus Prime, and brainwashed/mindhumped to possess Optimus Prime’s knowledge and mental acuity. The problem is, he’s kind of an deranged psychopath. Straxus died before he was able to put Nemmy to use and presumably, the conversion process to Nemesis Prime was incomplete as well. So now that Nemmy’s on the loose, he’s gone on the hunt for both Autobots AND Decepticons (don’t let the Decepticon emblems fool ya kiddies!). He hides in the shadows, waiting for luckless victims, a veritable robotic Jack the Ripper.

So as you can tell, the basic premise of this Nemesis Prime has a lot of potential. Were this a Nemesis Prime with his head on straight whilst maintaining his quirky serial killerness, he’d be running on awesome-sauce. Still, a good bio. There isn’t much to him as a character, hence the need to talk about his roots, but hey, whatcha gonna do cry about it? Onto the toy!

** out of *****.

Toy
One of the reasons why I’m not doing a regular style review of this toy is that the original 2006 Voyager Classics Prime of which Nemesis Prime shares the same mold; is arguably my favourite toy of all time. Nah, scratch that. He’s the bees’ knees and the (yellow accented) apple of my eye. Normally I wouldn’t buy a straight up repaint like Nemmy-poo, especially since I already got the white Ultra Magnus variant, but I promise myself that if they did a black repaint I could snatch up for a good price, I’d grab it. After two years, my wait’s finally over and I’ve made good the promise to myself. Anywho, this is a great mold and if/when I finally get a camera, I’ll be doing a full review on the original with original photography and such.

Onto Nemesis Prime, I’ll start on a sour note. Because Nemmy is EVIL (misguided)! The upper torso joint on mine doesn’t have the clicking noise when you turn it (I like the clicking noise) and in vehicle mode, the side panels can’t seem to lock on to his grill for some reason. Meaning I have to maneuver the panels so that they don’t reveal any internal parts as well as to keep the truck symmetrical. I’ve seen video reviews of the figure before though, and they don’t seem to have my problems, so it’s probably just my copy. Relatively small flaws though.

Now onto the good stuff. Which is well… almost everything. This is an awesome mold, with great articulation and heroic proportions. It’s very hard to say anything about this mold because it’s almost perfect in every category. As mentioned, it’s got very heroic proportions, which doesn’t necessarily fit a character like Nemesis Prime, but on the other hand, there is a certain “aggressiveness” to the design that never quite fit either Optimus nor Magnus, but of course, is juuuuust peachy on Nemesis. There’s a real feeling of “back alley mugging”-threat from Nemesis. I just love standing him behind some Autobot. And of course, he has a black paint job, which is cool. I’m sure some long time fans might be tired of the black repaints, but this is my first evil Prime, so I’m down with it.

The final gist of it is, that Nemesis Prime is a really good toy with no significant flaws. He DOES lose out to the original version of this toy, not on technical aspects obviously, but due to the unquantifiable factors such as character history, initial impact etc. If you can get Nemesis Prime at a reasonable price, and especially if you don’t have a prior version of this (or even if you do), he’s a good purchase.

****1/4 out of *****.