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Series: Legacy
Year: 2023
Allegiance: Autobot
Class: Leader
Prelude: While the bad guys usually wear black, it has also become somewhat fashionable in recent years for them to wear white. Case in point Nova Prime, bearer of the Autobot Matrix of Leadership long before Orion Pax came along and genocidal madman who wished to extinguish all non-Cybertronian life in the cosmos. This murderous despot has received a new toy in the Legacy Evolution line and we’re going to check it out right now. Let’s say go!
Robot Mode: Let us start by saying that Nova Prime is a retool of Siege Galaxy Upgrade Optimus Prime, himself a retool of Siege Ultra Magnus. I never owned Magnus, but I did review the attempt to recapture the glory of Galaxy Convoy and was not that impressed, I must say. But maybe Nova Prime can do better with this mold.
Like Galaxy Convoy and Galaxy Upgrade Prime, Nova Prime is a normal-sized robot that puts on his trailer as a suit of armor to become a larger robot. Let’s start with the smaller one. Nova Prime’s inner robot is a straight-up repaint of Galaxy Upgrade Prime, now mostly white with some grey, blue, and golden highlights. If not for the gold he could easily be mistaken for an Ultra Magnus inner robot, mind you. The robot is still a bit weirdly proportioned with a pretty big torso on relatively small legs. Articulation is pretty good, no complaints here, and Nova carries a blue-grey version of Optimus’ rifle as a weapon. So nothing really new here except the coloring.
Like Optimus, you can enhance Nova’s inner robot mode by putting on some of the super mode parts, such as the shoulder pads and boots. See pictures 9 through 12. So bottom line for the inner robot mode: not bad, but weirdly proportioned, and probably not the reason for anyone to buy this set.
Alternate Mode: Nova Prime’s inner robot transforms into a tractor, which can link up with his trailer into a kind of… futuristic gun truck? Galaxy Convoy and Galaxy Upgrade Prime were supposed to be fire trucks and they made it work as long as you squinted a bit, but that was the red paintjob, too. This white truck here is definitely not a fire truck, just a truck with big guns on top. Here you see some differences from Galaxy Upgrade Prime apart from the coloring, as the sides of the trailer are composed of Nova’s trademark wings and don’t bother with badly faked wheels, either. The big guns can still be raised and targeted.
The trailer can also become a sort of battle station (see pictures 7 and 8), but it’s not really all that great. Neither does Nova work as a truck without the trailer, as you can clearly see the robot fists on the back if the trailer is not attached. So bottom line for the alternate mode: not bad, but still not the reason anyone would buy this set.
Super Mode: Now we do come to the reason anyone would buy this set: the original design for Nova Prime was created by Don Figuera, originally as an alternative Optimus Prime body, but was then used for the evil white Prime and has since become his trademark. Nova links up with his trailer, gaining boots, a new chest plate, shoulder pieces, gauntlets, and a new rucksack with guns and, most importantly, dark grey wings. Apart from the boots and shoulder pieces, everything else has been resculpted from Galaxy Upgrade Prime’s armor pieces, so we have a robot that, while similar in design to the Siege Optimus figure, looks decidedly different.
The big guns from the rucksack can either point up or point forward underneath the arms, same as before. The wings can fold forward and back and the additional black guns on the legs can be removed to serve as handguns, too. Nova Prime does not really need those extra-long heel spurs he can unfold from his feet in this mode unless you put Nova into some real head-thrown-back-to-laugh-evilly poses, he can maintain a balance just fine. Articulation remains excellent and the only real drawback are that the guns, when pointing up behind his wings, are very clearly hollow.
So while this super mode doesn’t really fix any of the issues I had with its Galaxy Upgrade Prime incarnation, it does look tons better in my opinion and – lacking the direct comparison with Galaxy Convoy – it simply works a lot better here than it did in Siege, I think. So bottom line: a very nice Nova Prime figure in this mode. Thumbs up.
Remarks: Nova Prime (or sometimes Prime Nova) was often mentioned as one of the previous Matrix holders before Optimus Prime, but it wasn’t until the original 2005 IDW comics continuity that he actually became more than a name on a list. Nova Prime was the first Prime that was not one of the original Thirteen and unified a war-torn Cybertron by way of his dream of expansion. Which included splicing sparks from the Matrix, building monstrous combiners, and launching the original Ark into the Dead Universe, where he became the host of the Darkness, Nemesis Prime, and attempted to destroy all of creation. You know, typical politics stuff. He later tried to escape from the Dead Universe with the aid of Shockwave, but was killed by Optimus Prime.
This is actually but the second official Nova Prime figure, the first one being a Transformers Club exclusive. Nova was part of the Amazon-exclusive Pre-Cybertronian War imprint and you can see the other four figures in this subline hinted at on his packaging artwork.
I was not a big fan of the Galaxy Upgrade Optimus Prime figure, mostly because it utterly paled in comparison to the original Galaxy Convoy. Now, though, as Nova Prime, the figure works much, much better. Sure, it still has a few issues, but they are more easily disregarded here and the retooling done for Nova works out nicely. There is already a DNA Upgrade set to give him bigger wings and somewhat longer legs if that’s what you’re after, too.
So bottom line: I like this Nova Prime figure. It’s not perfect, but by far the best use of this mold so far.
Rating: B
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