Nexus Prime

"This is stupid garbage." That was my opinion upon seeing Nexus Prime revealed. Let's see how playing with the actual toy changes things. Nexus Prime is one of the Thirteen Primes born on Cyberton and possesses an artifact called the Enigma of Combinatin, which grants Transformers the ability to combine, and is considered the progenitor of Combiners. It is said that he created many warriors with this ability. He himself can combine with Transformers that possess the ability to combine using this power to become a large warrior, but not many have ever seen him in this form. When Hasbro began working on the concept of the 13 Original Transformers, the first one they revealed was Vector Prime, in 2004. The next year, Fun Publications began the Transformers Collectors' Club, and offered their first exclusive, a repaint of the Energon Skydive/Fireflight mold; that BotCon trend continued annually until they'd released a full Energon-style Combiner, at which point it was revealed that that Combiner had secretly been one of the Thirteen all along. Needing a name for this gestalt, FunPub suggested Nexus Prime and Maximus Prime. Hasbro, who had approved making this character a Prime, rejected both those names, but suggested combining the non-"Prime" parts, and calling it Nexus Maximus. Which would be fine, except corporate nanny culture really bit Hasbro in the ass on this one: someone at the company would have been responsible for making sure the name wasn't already in use, but they apparently had Safe Search turned on when they googled it, because "Nexus Maximus" was definitely already the name of an existing product, and that product was a sex toy. A normal person would have found this out, but because HR was so paranoid about the possibility of someone looking up porn on a work computer, that type of info was blocked. Let that be a lesson: trust your employees. This Nexus Prime's head is based not on the existing toy, but on the character's appearance in Transformers One, a very round head with a visor for the eyes and a mouthplate for the rest of the face. That, however, is based on repeated misinterpretations of the original design, which had separate eyes and a mouth that was framed by chin armor. At some point the mouth area was interpretted as a visor, and the actual eyes became decorations on the forehead; that was further smoothed out and refined for One, so now we've got something that doesn't look remotely correct. The story of Nexus Prime (funny how FunPub was suddenly allowed to use the "Prime" name now, I wonder what changed?) was that he was originally a single being, but that when it was decided that the Star Saber would be too dangerous to have sitting around, both it and Nexus were split into five pieces, with each now-individual part of him being given a fragment of the weapon to secretly guard. All the components had their own names and personalities, with the torso-bot (Heatwave) being made from the Onslaught molds, and thus giving the Combiner Bruticus' chest. You can find a few parallels between that design and this one, if you really try: the circle in the center of the chest is obvious, but mightn't that rectangular vent on his abdomen be a nod to the windshield that used to be there? Are the sculpted shapes on the pelvis stylized versions of the old toy's kibble? This would be a really great robot design... for a generic trooper bot. All the Nexus Prime components were made from solid red plastic and translucent blue. We don't get any translucence here, but the colors are the same. Stronger, even, with better, brighter hues chosen. Offset by a little bit of gray for the hands and mid-limbs, as well as black elements scattered about, it all looks quite nice on its own. It does fail a bit as an homage to the old toy, which ended up looking more like orange and purple due to the materials used, so you'll have to decide which you like better: something that's more true to the idea, or more true to reality. But this does give Hasbro the opportunity to do a repaint in accurate colors for the die-hards, though. Nexus Prime's artifact is the Enigma of Combination. We've had Enigmas of Combination before, with the Power of the Primes torsos (Elita-1, Grimlock, etc.), but this is the Enigma of Combination. The real one. The first one. This one doesn't look at all like those old ones, which were shaped to work in Titan Master notches, being instead more similar to the Matrix of Leadership: a circular center part with four triangular "wings" sticking out the sides. A 5mm port allows it to be held by hand, and the wings on the robot's back can be removed and held as guns, though he's already got blasters molded over the back of his hands (which make it hard to use his wrist articulation, annoyingly). He's fun to pose and play with... in this mode. A lot of work went into designing the figure's conversion, we can tell you that. The way things fit together as you move between modes is very pleasant. The altmode is a jet thing that looks like a worse version of Raindance. A toy from 1988. A big flat block with a jet cockpit on the front and the gun-wings on the side. There's a ton of flipping panels and turning parts, but we're not going to tell you all about them because it's not worth it. Congratulations, Prima, you no longer have the worst altmode! Someone designed a "fan mode" to try to improve it, and all that does it make him look like Broadside, which ain't much better. Hell, we called that "junk" nine years ago! If this were some new character, created from scratch and with no expectations on his name, he'd still be bad, but he might at least be acceptable. But he's not some new character, he's Nexus Prime, and as Nexus Prime he's a massive failure in every way. The reason the altmode feels like an afterthought points to what's wrong with this toy. Nexus Prime does not turn into a jet. Nexus Prime does not turn into anything, the same way Superion doesn't turn into anything, or Defensor doesn't turn into anything. At most, he turns into five separate robots. Giving Nexus Prime an altmode defeats the purpose of it being Nexus Prime! There's nothing about this in the instructions, but on one of those promotional livestreams, the TF team showed that it's possible to turn this toy into the chest for a Combiner, and said there are plans to do all the limb-bots in 2027. How do you not see how that's even worse! Nexus Prime does not turn into a Combiner's chest, Nexus Prime is a Combiner. Nexus Prime's chest is Heatwave, a robot who turns into a missile launcher, not into a cassette tape with wings. So if you release Skyfall, Landquake, Breakaway, and Topspin, and they somehow join with Nexus Prime, that's still not right, because we won't have a Heatwave! It's like they rushed this out incomplete because otherwise they wouldn't be able to fulfill their promise to do all 13 characters in Age of the Primes. Except AotP has been running since 2025, so they've had ample time to start doing Nexus Prime limbs and get them all out by now. This is like releasing a robot that looks vaguely like Devastator, but he turns into a single dump truck. Actually, remember when they repainted Titanium Rodimus Prime in black and released him as Menasor, even though nothing about him looked like Menasor at all? This is like if they did that Menasor, then announced the rest of the Stunicons would be released the next year so you could build Menasor. Dumb, right? But it's exactly what they've done with this. Plus this "chest" mode is clearly designed to work with the way Hasbro is making Combiners right now (ie, "wrong"), which means it's not designed for Combiner limbs to attach to, it's designed to use a big stupid frame to hold everything in the dumbest, laziest way possible. We've already got the chest part; where's the frame supposed to come from? The livestream that showed him as a Combiner used the recent idiotic Silverbolt frame, and it looked like the stupidest goddamn thing you've ever seen in your entire life. Imagine being willing to put your name on that. Imagine being willing to show it off in public! There were three random guys standing in the room when it was revealed; any one of them could have grabbed it up and smashed it against the table until it shattered, then shamed the other two for not doing that before he could. Imagine having so little self-respect that that didn't happen. So, has my opinion on Nexus Prime changed? Yes! This is stupid garbage, and everybody involved in it, from the designers who made it to the brand managers who okayed it, should be goddamn embarrassed of what they released. That's a change, right? They made a Transformer with three modes, but only made one of those modes any good. They released a Combiner as only part of himself, at the worst possible time in the brand's history to be a Combiner! It's utterly fitting that this character was originally named after a dildo, because anyone who thought this was acceptable work in 2026 can go screw themselves. I'm returning this to the store and getting my money back. In fact, more than that, I'm going to break it before I do, so the store discards it as a loss instead of selling it to some other unsuspecting sucker. This may not only be the worst toy of the year, it may be one of the worst Transformers ever made - not by quality, but by concept. Jesus Christ you goddamn morons, what's wrong with you? -- 06/09/26 Why did no one stop this at any point along the way? Tell us on our message board, the Loafing Lounge.