Name: Leo Prime
Function: Maximal commander of black ops unit The Pack
“That’s an order soldier.”
Leo Prime is a career soldier, commander of an elite Maximal black ops unit designated The Pack. So secret is his unit, even those in the Maximal command structure are aware of it only as a rumor. Leo Prime and his comrades in The Pack travel wherever trouble is thickest, often working undercover to deal crippling blows to Predacon Plots.
Beast Mode:
Leo Prime is a techno-organic lion. Although he is designated a Maximal, he bears the Autobot emblem on his lion’s head, which transforms into his robot chest. The lion form is highly detailed and this version of Leo Prime (Convoy) has been repainted to resemble the G1 Optimus Prime color scheme, which looks great in bot mode, but absolutely makes little to no sense in lion form. Fortunately for me, I usually leave my bots in robot form, so beast mode does not bother me. The lion form has some flexibility with poses but is limited to moving the legs and claws forward or backward to give Leo Prime a pounce position, and a stand-at-attention position. A little bricky and the tail is a detachable from the joint, which can come off quite easily with even a little bit of play or movement.
Robot Mode:
Leo Prime’s robot mode is pretty decent. As opposed to Leobreaker and Nemesis Breaker who had the same head mold, Leo Prime has an Optimus Prime head mold. Being a “Voyager” class, he is about the same size as other $20 price point figures and is well designed with good joints. Leo Prime is another figure where the arms and legs of the Maximal beast form mode become the arms and legs of the robot mode. The robot head is cleverly hidden in a compartment of the lion’s head and has some movement flexibility in bot mode. The G1 Optimus Prime color scheme gives Leo Prime a presence as a figure. The arms and legs do not have as much movement but the forearms and hands can be maneuvered to give Leo Prime some decent poses.
Special Features:
Leo Prime has several unique features. The tail turns into his “jungle whip” which resembles a flail more than a whip. He also has key activated “robo-shredder claws” which pop out when you put the key into the slot on his forearms. Some of the most uniqueLeo Prime’s features are what he does not have. He does not have the electronics of the original version and the 3rd combiner mode (to combine with Cybertron Optimus Prime) is nowhere on the directions and no mention of the combiner mode on the packaging. This “secret” about Leo Prime may be remembered like the secret modes of RID Megatron (which was later revealed with RID Galvatron) or it may be lost as a legendary tales of Maximal slag.
Transformation: 2. Transformation difficulty is marked a 3 out of 4 on the box, but I give Leo Prime’s basic transformation a low score because the arms and legs are the same for both modes. The 3rd secret mode gets a 6 because you have to remove the forearms and reattach them to the connectors in the feet and put the tail in the join on the side of the legs. Overall Leo Prime’s transformation is not very complicated.
Durability: 10. Leo Prime resembles the G1 toys of yester-year sans the metal.
Fun: 8. Leo Convoy/Prime was one of my desired Beast War toy and although this is not the orginal version I wanted to get of him, I do like the color scheme and resemblance to Optimus Prime.
Price: 8. I picked Leo Prime up at Wal-Mart for $20. This is a standard price point for the Voyager line and is decent for the toy. The toys are all about the same size and quality varies. I did not mind paying $20 to get Leo Prime.
Overall: 9. Leo Prime is overall a good figure with the exception of missing several features that Leobreaker and Nemesis Breaker versions had. The color scheme does not look good in beast mode, but looks great in robot mode. Even though this is a repaint and does play on the popularity of Optimus Prime/Convoy, by giving the toy a new head mold, Leo Prime gains an edge over normal repaints. Anyone who is or was a Beast Wars/RID fan will not be disappointed with Leo Prime.
Lolli enjoys collecting Transformers toys, and writing new toy reviews for Transformers toys. Lolli also posts on www.tfarchive.com as Savannahtron where he reviews Transformers toys. 
So is this toy a rejected prototype? I’m talking about both color variations, not just the red version. I know it’s sold only at Target. But I see what folks mean when they say the transformation is almost nothing. Could this have been a rejected prototype, maybe for the Predacon Razorclaw? & they decided to make a deal with Target by giving it Optimus Prime’s face to help it sell more? I assume this isn’t related to Leo Convoy? Maybe influenced by it? It would of been interesting to have seen this toy in normal lion colors with the original head they may have planned on marketing with. While I thought the white version of this toy was alright, yeah the red version could well be one of the worst looking Primes I’ve ever seen! Yellow may have been better and more accurate to what the original version may have been meant to look like if in fact this is some sorta rejected prototype.
Is it posible that maybe they released the white version to test market for the posibilities of releasing that Japanese Leo Convoy related Beast Wars anime series? It seems kinda hard to believe after all these years that Hasbro would do that now. I’d like to see someone custom paint this guy in the normal yellow and brown colors to see what Hasbro mave have originally planned , if in fact this toy (not color variation) is a rejected prototype of some sort. I know it lacks quality so I can see why Hasbro may have decided not to market it on a larger scale. The robot made does look half decent in white color. It certainly does remind one of Leo Convoy, but even Leo Convoy looked more like a normal red Optimus w/o having to color the whole lion red! U R right, a red lion makes little sense. This ain’t Voltron! I wonder now if anyone ever colored red the original Primal apes or bat? I’d like to see that. However I suspect it too would look aweful.