If the 13 Original Primes represent the various types of Transformers, Onyx Prime must be the patron saint of utter weirdos.
The Thirteen Onyx Prime is the beast Prime with a warrior spirit eclipsed only by his fierce loyalty to his friends.
The Thirteen were first mentioned in a 2004 reference book, two full decades after the Transformers brand began (which also, side note, means that as of 2025, they've now been part of the franchise for more
time than they weren't part of it; kind of a landmark). The idea wasn't fully formed when it was introduced, with only a few members of the group definitively identified. So Aaron Archer had to not only figure out who the others should be, he had to figure out why they should be. He settled on having each of them representing a different kind of Transformer, be that Combiners or Minicons or, in this case, beasts. In fact, until the name "Onyx Prime" was invented, this character would have been named "Maximus," in honor of the Maximals.
Onyx Prime was designed as a centaur, with a humanoid upper body, and a four-legged lower body. The only art of him, in the Covenant of Primus book, showed him rearing up on his back legs, with his
front legs kicking in the air, but his arms just hanging limply by his sides. When he appeared in the comics, that was misinterpretted as a bipedal robot with digitigrade legs, a trait that eventually had to be retconned (though in a way that was, admittedly, really clever - sometimes things just work out for the best). However, subsequent depictions have followed that mistake, making him bipedal all the time, so now this figure has to split the difference between the correct and incorrect modes if it really wants to be "definitive."
He really does make for a nice robot, woth a big, broad chest and sturdy legs. The surface of the figure is more about angled plates
than exposed gears or anything, and, like many a beastformer, his face is inside an animal mouth. The beak and generally pointy "crown" shape of the head make it kind of look like an owl, a comparison no doubt helped by the fact Onyx has wings. Those are mostly mechanical, of course, but there appears to be fur on top of them, and if you turn him around, there are tiny leather ones, like Wingnut. He has decent articulation, with some very stiff hinges in the arms and legs, but the way he's designed to hold his weapon is weird.
Like all the Age of the Primes Thirteen, he comes with
one of hte Primes' ancient artifacts - in fact, he may come with two. His main dealie is the Triptych Mask, originally shown as a totem-pole-style stack of faces - from top to bottom, the masks were Farsight, Predator, and Mournsong, allowing the user to view anything, understand any thing, and witness the afterlife. (Reminder that Bionicle was one of the biggest properties in the world when all this was being initially created.) For this toy, the Triptych Mask has been designed more like a spearhead, and the set also includes a staff for it to plug onto. This may be a reference to a second artifact, the Proton Spear, which also aligns with the weapon Onyx was shown using in Transofmers One. Although the spear can plug into either of the figure's hands, the socket that allows this is out by the fingertips, not the palm, and that design choice prevents you from actually curling the hand closed when he's holding the spear. Huh?
To convert Onyx to "centaur" mode, unwrap the hoofed legs from over his shoulders, tip the entire torso back, and close the animal mask over his face, and fold the heels of his feet away. It's a simple change, but drastic.
The robot looks less proportionate in this mode: the chest
is still large, but the spindly little horse legs being up from makes the lower body look small. No way around that until Hasbro invents literal mass-shifting, though. This is a Leader Class figure, with a Leader Class body, but in this mode it's like a Leader torso on Voyager legs. But hey, give him a wild, dynamic pose and you'll be able to overlook it. The biped robot had a tail, and in this mode that gets removed and split in half to become a giant bow, with the mask-spear acting as its arrow.
Those are both technically the robot mode, though, so to convert to his altmode, fold the head back, cover it with the chestplate, flip up the groin armor, hinge the arms forward, rotate the torso back to "robot" mode, bend all the knees to make the legs as short as they can be, fold the beast mode head out, and raise the wings. Turn the bow back into a tail, and plug it back in - though upside down from the way it was in robot mode.
According to the Japanese bio, Onyx Prime's altmode
is "a hippogriff-type six-legged dragon." Sure, why not? It would have been better if his hands could somehow turn into something that looks more like hooves, rather than this beast having two sets of animal legs and one set of hands slapping along on the ground. Overall, the altmode is reminiscent of when Transformers Prime started getting into doing weird dragons at the end of its run. This is weird, but it somehow manages to come together in an unexpected way and be a cool design in all four modes.
Wait... "four" modes?
This Transformer includes something that is exceedingly rare: that is, instructions that are demonstrably, unquestionably wrong. See, the toy does officially have a fourth mode, not just something fans came up with. But the instructions that purport to tell you how to do it are incorrect.
Basically, this mode is a four-legged dragon, and it's created by wrapping the middle pair of legs back up over the shoulders, like they'd be for the robot. Simple enough. But it's clear that whoever creates the art for the instructions was just given that basic information and no more: per the illustrations, you're meant to hinge the arms to the outside, and hook the legs over them, exactly like you would for robot mode. That's what the diagrams in the instruction booklet show, and it's physically possible to achieve, so that's why it went to print that way. But it isn't right.
The robot's pointy shoulder pauldrons each have a tab on them that doesn't get used in the robot, centaur, or hippogriff modes. And if you follow the instructions, they don't get used in the dragon mode, either. So why are they there?
It turns out there's a matching slot on the back of the middle-legs' hooves, which can plug onto that tab to make the mode more stanble. But in order for that to work, you cannot move the arms to their robot position - you have to leave them in beast mode. So without question, the toy's designers meant for the fourth mode to have the hooves connect to the armor, but the official instructions shown in the instruction book were done incorrectly, and don't show that happening, with "an insufficient explanation of what we're asking the artist to show" being the most likely reason why. Thus, this is a Transformer with four official modes, and a fifth unofficial mode that's shown in the official instructions. How strange!
In a sea of Optimuses and Bumblebees and Megatrons and Starscreams, Onyx Prime is a freaking beacon of joy. It's such an utterly oddball design and so unlike anything else that's been on shelves any time recently that it can't help but stand out. It's really easy to get the hang of swapping between modes, but also really rewarding to do so. The non-robot modes could have used a little more work to really make them their best, but between Onyx and The Fallen, Age of the Primes is apparently at its best when it's turning The Thirteen into Leader Class figures.
-- 10/28/25
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