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Beast Wars is the best thing to come out of Transformers ever. Period. The animation is stellar, the story is excellent, the characters are varied yet not so numerous that they become cardboard cut outs.

It was also a show that was really clever about pushing new toys and gimmicks. Characters actually received new forms in a manner that made sense to the plot, not the random re-coloring we get these days. Characters transitioned from normal Beast based transformers to Transmetals and on to the (inspiringly named) Transmetal 2s. One character however got a different type of upgrade. Optimus Primal was returned from death as a Transmetal and later merged with the spark of Optimus Prime to transform into Optimal Optimus.

Optimal Optimus is officially a Transmetal but he general lacks a lot of the styling of the Transmetal design. Transmetal design tents to be “robotic but organically shaped”. Optimal Optimus, or OpOp is more “Robotic and robotically shaped”. He still has his ape based beast mode but he’s full of squared angles and considerably more robotic in overall appearance. He also has two vehicle based modes that don’t necessarily resemble any Earth cars but still could be considered very Cybertronian. His ascetics are generally more “Old Cybertron” than modern Beast Era Cybertronian. This all of course makes sense considering he obtained this form by merging with the ancient spark of Optimus Prime.

If you want even more proof of his Cybertronic nature look no further than Titaniums Optimus Primal. Not only is this figure re-branded as an Autobot instead of a Maximal but he also lacks his beast mode completely. This diminutive version of the first Super classed Transformers figure isn’t quite as complex as his larger counterpart but still manages to cram three modes into it’s design.

Ok yeah, this isn’t too impressive considering that his modes are essentially “Robot”, “Superman Flying Pose Robot” and “Jet mode with arms compressed to his sides”. I’m actually surprised they didn’t make any attempt to include “Backwards Robot” aka his ape mode.

The look in all three modes is right on however. These are the modes we recognize and known for OpOp. The sculpt of this figure is really nice. He’s completely out of scale with all of the consistently scaled Beast Wars figures unfortunately. However he IS very nicely scaled next to any G1 or newer vehicle based figures. In the Beast Wars show, the characters eventually encountered the stasis locked bodies of the original Ark crew (G1 Autobots and Decepticons). The newer Transformers are considerably more streamlined and efficient with their design making them much much smaller than their old school counterparts. This makes the Beast Wars line of toy grossly out of scale with pretty much every other line (Alternators are close). Titaniums OpOp however will fit in pretty well with his smaller size.

The other great part about this toy is the articulation. Titaniums could have ended up being no more than elaborate statues. Thankfully the designers saw an opportunity and gave us a few plastic parts and tons of articulation. I do have gripes with his Karate Chop hands but Optimal Optimus is probably the most articulated Titaniums yet. His design also permits a large range of motion in all of his joints which helps a lot.

The 6” Titaniums sub-line is one that started off a bit flakey but has overall been done very right. Instead of giving us 6” metal version rehashes of every current figure on the market we’re actually getting a large array of one shot and older characters that end up fitting in really well with modern toys pretty well. Titaniums has given us several of the interesting War Within pre earth designs such as Optimus Prime and Scourge, it’s given us revamped classics such as Scourge and Primal here. The price tends to be a bit step but the quality is good on these all around and they are actually getting larger. OpOp and Rodimus Prime are huge next to the first series’ War Within Prime. Titaniums Optimus Prime is certainly one worth looking into for any fan of Beast Wars.