After a fairly long delay, Wave 1 SIEGE Sideswipe and Optimus Prime are finally in my hands. These toys turned up super late at retail in Australia (if at all, some places never got Wave 1) but these were online pre-orders and took even longer to arrive, plus I bundled them with other pre-orders to get better overall value. To put things in context, Wave 2 is in stores by the time I got these in hand.

In hand I am so much more impressed with these two than with Hound. While Hound looks great, his legs being easily broken messes did not win him any favors with me. Having transformed Sideswipe and Prime repeatedly this week no parts popped off, nothing warped or nearly broke like with Hound, so I didn’t swear or scream at my toys, or have a ManTantrum like usual.

These two toys have a great look and a swell deco. I hate the battle damage oil spray bullshit, but that is easily removed with some isopropyl alcohol and a careful hand.

They are mostly enjoyable to transform, although Prime is more fiddly. Sideswipe however is genuinely enjoyable to transform over and over.

Up close and personal, both toys have really nice face sculpts and you can see how they have applied some of the design ideas from the MP line to these smaller toys.

Not content to just look good, this is the first Generations line in a long fucking time not to have joints all loosey-goosey. Not only can they stand up and hold their own weight, but you can pose them like a genuine action figure. No blu-tack under the feet trickery here. It’s a really nice improvement, but really THIS SHOULD BE THE STANDARD, not the exception in modern toys at any price point.

Sideswipe hanging out with mate old G1 Sideswipe and they do look good together.

Underneath and things tuck and tab in nicely, quite impressive.

How does the new SIEGE Prime stack up in his alt mode?

Well, it’s a fairly solid alt mode – but it does look a bit bit daft. Classics Prime is still the clear winner for me in truck mode.

Piles of Prime in Voyager scale. SIEGE Prime compares nicely to this lot and has the best articulation of all. The Last Knight Voyager Prime has some great articulation too, but doesn’t balance nearly as well – meaning he falls over if you try to actually get a decent pose out of him. Not so with SIEGE Prime.

Primes and Grimlocks doing what they do with silly oversized swords.

You can never have too many good Prime and Dinobot toys in your collection, and these rascals look pretty cool together.

Striking a pose with some colorful CHUG style toys, and man this Prime fits in great with your Generations collection both official and mixed 3P.

Mixing it up on the old shelf and this SIEGE Prime goes well with just about anything you can throw at him.

Back in space truck mode, he’s a nice size. Here he is with G2 Lazer Prime, Beachcomber and Sideswipe.

In the fashionable accessory department Optimus comes with his usual Blaster and a big ass Axe for when he has to ‘Axe You a Question. The sword is from a Last Knight Leader Movie Prime, it’s just on loan from the Baybot for silly photos.

Sideswipe has a gun, and his red missile can peg into the front of it. There is an additional square tab to fit in his top mounted shoulder port, as well as the normal round gun handle. Good to have options.

Additionally there are loads of ports all over the sides of the SIEGE figures, and the bump on Sideswipe’s chest is for attaching the blast effects that come with the small scale weapon toys.

No matter what other impressive figures we get in the SIEGE line – I’ve pr-ordered around 2/3 of the whole line including Jetfire and Omega – these two remain mightily impressive.

SIEGE Prime and Sideswipe are EXACTLY what I want from a mainline modern TF toy. I don’t collect MP, I want something I can mess around with that also doesn’t look shit as many modern mainline toys do.

So great deco, classic timeless look, great articulation and the new higher price point actually feels justified in comparison to the quality dive in Combiner Wars and Titans Returns – which were both great lines, but had serious compromises with hollow bits and lack of paint. Yup, enjoying these toys very much. Can’t wait for the Red Alert redeco of Sideswipe and my leader Magnus and voyager Megatron are due sometime soon too.

Brobot fist bump for the finish.