Celebrating the 10th Anniversary of Transformers: Prime - Dark Energon Optimus Prime (2012)

Ten years ago, on November 26th, 2010, the first episode of Transformers: Prime aired. It was the centerpiece of what came to be called the "aligned continuity family," stemming from comments by Hasbro at the time that suggested they were attempting to "align" all of the disparate representations of the past then-quarter century of Transformers fiction into a single continuity. Almost immediately after this announcement was made, it became clear that it didn't extend as far as such a statement would seem to have suggested. The live-action movies, still in their heyday at the time, were clearly separate, and however much the character depictions in Prime drew inspiration from Generation One counterparts of the past, they were clearly not the same characters, either (despite Generation One voice actors Peter Cullen and Frank Welker returning to voice the new versions of Optimus Prime and Megatron, respectively). Also, although there were a couple of non-G1 influences on Prime (most notably the character of Bulkhead, who came from Transformers Animated), they were fairly minimal, with Generation One being the obvious primary influence (which ultimately made Prime similar in this regard to all other non-G1 continuities before it). For better or worse, the "aligned" name stuck.

Trailbreaker (1984)

Back when I did 30th anniversary entries on all of the original series of Transformers characters, I covered Trailbreaker, but used a more modern toy rather than his original, and find myself surprised to not have covered the original toy at all before now. Since I discussed the (relatively few) distinctives of Trailbreaker's character in my previous entry, I'll focus instead on the story of how I came upon the specific toy and brought it to its current state.

BotCon 2015 Parasite w/Ripper

Whenever possible, the folks behind the creation of BotCon exclusives liked to do homages to obscure characters or concepts, often layering on several in a single figure if they could get away with it. Such was the case with Parasite, one of the BotCon 2015 exclusives.

Transformers Tribute Evolution Pack Orion Pax (2017)

Oddly enough, the version of Optimus Prime featured in the 2017 "Evolution Pack," which contains just two toys, was not the earliest version of the character depicted in the set, despite already coming from a point in time before the Transformers came to Earth. That honor goes to the "Orion Pax" figure, who represents Prime from a point in his life before he even became Optimus Prime.

Transformers Tribute Evolution Pack Optimus Prime (2017)

One of the reasons that the current War for Cybertron trilogy caused some confusion (especially when it was first announced a couple of years ago) was that the name had already been used back in 2010. At that time, Transformers: War for Cybertron, was a video game (or, given the differences between versions of the game created for different gaming systems, perhaps it should be considered a set of games) published by Activision setting the action on Cybertron in an era before the Transformers came to Earth. This provided the opportunity for several toys to be created, depicting characters as they appeared in the game(s).

TFCon 2013 Exclusive Roswell

Although TFCon is an unofficial convention, and thus (unlike BotCon up through 2016) could not feature official Hasbro molds, TFCon nonetheless routinely features exclusive toys that homage Transformers characters and concepts. A toy from third-party manufacturer iGear named Roswell, one of the several exclusives from the 2013 convention in Mississauga (a city neighboring Toronto), is a multi-layered homage.

Transformers Collectors' Club Lio Convoy (2015) and Galva Convoy (kind of...)

For quite a few years now, I've made it a practice to post Transformers articles with artwork featuring the character, typically artwork that was used on the packaging the figure came with. While this isn't the case for this week's feature on Lio Convoy (this artwork comes instead from a club story that introduced the character), it was the case for last week's feature on Nova Prime. Nova Prime's artwork was fairly distinctive, and I'm sure fans not already familiar with it wondered what was going on with it. By now, at least part of the answer should be obvious, since both Nova Prime and Lio Convoy use the same base mold, rendered in different colors.