Tag: Optimus Prime

Optimus Prime that transforms on its own

Someone has created an Optimus Prime action figure / toy / collectible that transforms on its own. It even responds to voice commands and you can drive it around via an app. If this interests you in the least, here’s a video showing it off:

I have to admit, that is really cool. It’s great that they used the original transforming sound effect and that they got Peter Cullen to voice the dialogue. So props to the maker of this for doing it right.

It contains over 5000 components, 60 microchips, and 27 servo motors, with more details at the official site. As you might expect, technology this awesome is not cheap. $700 is out of my budget for such things, so I won’t be able to provide a hands-on review. Hopefully in the future it’ll get a lot cheaper, because it would be a great addition to my desk.

The reviewer in the video declares this the coolest toy ever. Of course that’s debatable, but I’m not going to argue with that. It is indeed awesome. Do you know of a toy or toy-like collectible that is more awesome?

how Transformers CGI should have looked in the movie

If you’re a Transformers fan like me, you might’ve been disappointed by the redesign of the characters in the 2007 movie.  I very much was.  I was willing to accept some redesign, to be more modern, and in a few cases, to be more practical (like with Megatron and Soundwave).  But the movie took it way too far.

To give you a taste of how it could’ve looked, I present this video clip.  It’s the fight scene between Megatron and Optimus Prime, the one with the famous quote of “One Shall Stand, One Shall Fall”.  This starts as the original cartoon and switches into 3D CGI.

CGI rendering of G1 Transformers clip

[Update: 7/8/11]

Apparently Hasbro took the video down off their site, for whatever reasons.  But it’s still on YouTube:

A fan took this video and replace the audio with music from the original G1 cartoon series, which makes it even better:

It’s not the highest of CGI quality (due to budget and time, I’m sure), but it shows that the characters in the live-action movie could’ve been made closer to the originals and still looked good, especially with a high-dollar budget.  So why did Michael Bay and crew decide to totally change the design?  The new look for the Transformers in the movie didn’t have much personality, as they all looked too similar and generic.

Until someone does a live-action Transformers movie RIGHT, I’ll always wonder what might’ve been…