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Orion Pax

Transformers One
by yo go re

Back to the beginning.

A hero fulfills his destiny, becoming the legendary Optimus Prime.

It's annoying that as the Transformers movies get better, their returns diminish. Bumblebee was great fun, but instead of a Bumblebee 2, we got Rise of the Beasts, a movie you may have entirely forgetten existed until just now. The toyline certainly forgot it, or else you'd have been able to buy all the characters. Now we've got Transformers One, which turned out to be way better than expected, but it was barely promoted and so got written off as a flop before it even opened outside the US. Not cool, guys!

TF One was at least the third continuity the movies have given us, but this one is fully animated and takes place entirely on Cybertron, following the friendship of Orion Pax and his best bud, D-16. I've heard anecdotes from people whose friends or family watched the movie not realizing who the characters were going to be, which sounds sincerely adorable to me.

The set-up for the movie is that certain Cybertronians are born without a transformation cog, and Orion Pax was one of them. Eventually he gets a cog, and so his body is reshaped to accommodate his new ability to transform. Orion has a broad, boxy chest with a narrow window running through it, curved pads on his shoulders, and then big ol' honkin' feet and shins. It definitely reads as "pre-Earth Optimus Prime," just like it should.

This is the actual TF One toy, not the Studio Series - they're both about the same size and complexity, so I just had to pick whichever one was readily available at the store. The figure moves at the head, shoulders, biceps, elbows, waist, hips, thighs, and knees. You can tell this is the less-premium version, because the unarticulated hands are wobbly due to the way they fold out for transformation, and lots of the pieces either want to pop off too easily or are very stiff to move. He does include a nice Matrix of Leadership that can store inside his chest, and comes with a blue Energon axe that can replace his hand. Unfortunately, the weight of the axe makes the hand flop around even more than it already did, so it's kind of pointless.

Converting Orion to his truck mode is a little fiddly. Like we said, a lot of the pieces want to fall off when you move them, so when you have a step that's like "pull the arms down to the side" it really becomes "pull the arm off, drop the shoulder joint down to the side, and reattach the arm." The panel on his back that becomes the truck's roof will pop off if you move it even slighter farther than intended at the wrong time, and the way you have to fold the legs over is rather clunky and awkward.

This is, at once, both recognizable as a take on Optimus Prime's usual truck altmode, and also as something not of this world. It's like if one of those fancy, tricked-out Japanese tractor trailers continued to evolve into the future. The cab is as blocky as you'd expect, with a thin windshield slit and a grey grille. His smokestacks point back instead of up, which is an intersting choice. The axe can be stored between the legs in this mode, which is fine, but not a big selling point.

Transformers One was surprisingly good, and seemed to be enjoyed by everyone who saw it. Unfortunately, "everyone who saw it" was not the same as "everyone who should have seen it," and if you fall into that second category, fix it. The toys aren't exactly flying off the pegs, but you'll definitely want to see it before they're actually gone and the secondary market is the only place to get them.

-- 02/04/25


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