The fandom kinda freaked out when this guy suddenly and magically, without fanfare, appeared in Toys"R"Uses and Walmarts. What? A Transformers 3 toy? That has to be a mistake! And how did we let it slip past our insanely focused warning systems?

It's not something I would pick up normally, but it is a "preview" toy months in advance, and I kind of have an empty blog to fill, so what are you gonna do.

This is "Cyberverse Commander" Optimus Prime. That's not really a description of the character so much as it is a description of the sizeclass. "Cyberverse" is what Hasbro's calling the sub-Deluxe size class stuff this year. They're building an army of little Legends class-ish toys and giving them playsets and swappable weaponry. "Commander" means that Optimus is one of the larger toys. Price-wise and mass-wise, he's kind of a Scout, but not quite. He feels about 90% of a Scout. But he sure costs 100% of a Scout! ($7.96)

As a Commander, Optimus Prime comes with an accessory weapon. It's a jetpack and two guns, which you can combine with him in various ways. It's attached via the new C joint clips and rods, which is the same stuff you use to clip Jazz's speakers everywhere. So, yeah, in theory, you could clip Prime's tiny jetpack to a larger Generations deluxe. No promises it'll face the right way, though. The guns have pegs that fit into C joint clips, so there's probably some interactivity potential there, too.

Likewise with the vague new pricepoint, Optimus Prime's complexity also falls somewhere in between the old Legends Class and Scout Class figures. The toy's transformation feels more like a Legends Class toy, but has way more steps and parts than those allow. Legends Class toys don't usually have balljointed hips and shoulders or bendable knees and elbows, or at least certainly not all at the same time.

There's also a pair of 3D glasses (red/blue) included so that you can view downloadable content from the official website.  Or downloadable 3D porn images from certain other websites.

So I guess, at the very least, this is an interesting look at what the cheaper half of the Dark of the Moon toyline is going to be like --  tiny versions of movie characters with accessories or playsets, with transformation complexity somewhere above Legends Class toys.  I'll probably skip out on most of it, since I'm not very interested in starting a whole new scale, but this toy was a welcome diversion during the winter toy drought.