whaaaaat?
Okay, so this one’s a bit of a stretch. But bear with me.
So Motormaster is a Decepticon, and, more specifically, is part of the Stunticons team. Like Optimus Prime, he ALSO turns into a semi cab with a trailer, although in his original incarnation, MM’s trailer was part of his ‘bot mode. The original toy was a boxy mess that the animators TRIED to clean up for the cartoon, but, well…. here’s the result:
Motormaster’s 1986 toy 
Motormaster’s animation model
Being the leader of the Stunticons, however, Motormaster was a combiner — When he, well, combined with Wildrider, Dead End, Breakdown, and Drag Strip, they formed the mighty MENASAOR.
Menasor in an episode of the cartoon 
Menasor’s 1986 toy
Menasor was the only of the Transformers combiner teams I completed as a kid (although I had a couple of Go-Bot combiners, too), so he’s been my favorite. Also, a black and purple truck? Totally in my wheelhouse.
Anyways. After a handful of re-releases of 80s toys in the early 2000s, Hasbro eventually started the Transformers Classics line in 2006, where they released this brand-new Optimus Prime toy:
And then in 2007, Hasbro did this:
The name “Motormaster” must have been unavailable to trademark for some weird legal reason, so this black-and-purple Optimus Prime repaint was named after the Stunticons’ combiner form, but it was CLEARLY supposed to be Motormaster.
So, inspired by this strangeness, later in either 2007 or early 2008, I decided to make my own repaint-Optimus-into-Motormaster custom, using the 2006 Classics OP.
While digging through some stuff earlier this week, I came across him. He was still in pretty good shape, but could use a bit of touching up. I ended up re-painting almost all of him, as I was much more experienced at customizing toys than I was back when I first painted him. So he’s cleaned up, and I added the yellow accents to really make him pop.
Since then, Hasbro and Takara have had Motormaster and Optimus share molds a few times. My favorite one was the 2011 Transformer’s Collector’s Club exclusive Transformers Animated Team Stunticon Box Set, where “The Motor Master” looks like Lemmy from Motörhead and apparently sounds like “Macho Man” Randy Savage (Ooh, yea!):
And perhaps most notably in 2016, the COMBINER WARS Optimus Prime was actually a retool of Motormaster, where they’re MOSTLY the same figure bit with a few pieces replaced and different paint jobs.
I hope you all enjoyed Optimus Prime Repaint week! Leave me a comment down below if you want to see more themed weeks like this one, or go back and leave some comments telling me which repaints from this week were your favorites!
Roll out!