General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20267 min read

Power of the Primes

Power of the Primes is a Transformers brand project consisting of a Hasbro toyline and an accompanying animated web series, both serving as the third and final chapter of the Prime Wars Trilogy. The toyline is a subline imprint of the Generations series, built around a line-wide gimmick called "Prime Masters": small figures representing the sparks of the Thirteen Primes of Cybertronian mythology¹. The web series, Transformers: Power of the Primes, was produced by Hasbro and Machinima with animation by Tatsunoko Production and premiered in 2018².

Key fact	Detail
Position in brand	Third and final portion of the Prime Wars Trilogy, following Combiner Wars (2016) and Titans Return (2017–2018)¹^•³
Toyline debut	Revealed mid-2017 at San Diego Comic-Con; figures first released at the end of 2017¹^•⁴
Line gimmick	Prime Masters, 1.5-inch figures representing the sparks of the Primes, sold with Pretender-style decoy armor and usable with Deluxe, Voyager, and Leader Class figures¹^•⁵
Fan Vote Prime	Optimus Primal won the first-ever Fan Vote Prime poll from nine candidates and received a Leader Class figure⁶^•⁷
Web series	10 episodes, released May 1, 2018, running 1 hour 42 minutes total⁸^•⁹
Series plot	After Optimus Prime's death, Megatronus seeks the Enigma of Combination and the Matrix of Leadership, and the factions clash over the Requiem Blaster while a new Prime is chosen⁸
Collector market	A price guide covering 46 figures lists total retail value of $1,085.54 against a market value of $2,230.30⁴

Spoilers

Story: The animated web series

Story. The series follows the death of Optimus Prime at the end of the Titans Return arc. In the aftermath, Megatronus, one of the original Thirteen Primes, obtains the Enigma of Combination and the Matrix of Leadership and seeks to use them for his own purposes, while the remaining Transformers search for the Requiem Blaster, uncover mysteries of Cybertron's past, and see a new Prime chosen to decide Cybertron's fate⁸^•³. Later episodes center on Megatronus launching a completed device that drains the sparks of Transformers everywhere, a possessed Rodimus Cron, and a final battle with consequences for Cybertron and the wider Transformers universe¹³.

The toyline

Position in the trilogy. Power of the Primes concluded the Prime Wars Trilogy, a three-year Generations subline cycle whose earlier entries were Combiner Wars and Titans Return. In keeping with those two toylines, it carried a single line-wide gimmick. Hasbro first revealed the line at San Diego Comic-Con in mid-2017, and figures reached stores at the end of that year¹. The line was manufactured by Hasbro, with its Japanese partner Takara Tomy producing it for the Japanese market⁴.

Prime Masters. The central gimmick was the Prime Master, a small Titan Master-type figure representing the spark of one of the Thirteen Primes, the legendary bots who in Cybertronian mythology shaped the universe. Unlike Titan Masters, Prime Masters were sold only at their own price point, packaged with Pretender-style decoy armor whose outer shells were based directly on the 1988/1989 G1 Pretender toys, but each one could interact in some way with all of the larger assortments¹^•⁶. Each Prime Master converts from robot to spark mode in one step and hides inside its decoy armor, which itself converts to a weapon mode; the Vector Prime Prime Master, for example, comes with Metalhawk decoy armor, and its fiction grants other bots the ability to time travel⁵.

Class structure. Legends Class figures retained the ability to seat a small figure in their alternate mode, while the Deluxe and Voyager Class price points saw the return of Combiner Wars-style combiners, with Deluxe figures carrying Prime armor that converts into a combiner hand or foot¹. Leader Class figures used "Evolution Armor" to convert from a smaller bot into a larger legendary leader: the Leader Class Optimus Prime evolves from Orion Pax into Optimus Prime, converts from robot to tractor-trailer in 33 steps, and comes with a Matrix of Leadership accessory¹⁰. The Titan Class Predaking, a combiner set of five figures, sat at the top of the assortment⁴.

The Fan Vote Prime. Before the line's release, Hasbro ran a fan poll to determine a character who would become a new Prime in both the toyline and the accompanying stories. Nine options were offered: Hound, Ultra Magnus, Arcee, Optimus Primal, Thunderwing, an "Unknown Evil" (a silhouetted Deathsaurus from the 1989 Japanese series Transformers: Victory), Megatron, Shockwave, and Star Saber. Optimus Primal won, taking a place in the Leader Class assortment⁶.

Throne of the Primes. The line's most elaborate release was the Throne of the Primes set, a San Diego Comic-Con 2018 convention exclusive at an approximate retail price of $69.99. It celebrates the fans' choice with a figure that uses converting Evolution Armor to evolve from a 5.5-inch scale Optimus Primal into a 9-inch scale Optimal Optimus, and it packs in four convention Prime Master figures (Nexus Prime, Amalgamous Prime, Prima Prime, and the legendary 13th Prime), a Scepter of Sparks accessory that holds four Prime Masters, and a Halo of Primus display that holds twelve⁷. Takara Tomy released its own PP-43 version in Japan on January 24, 2019, with the figure standing approximately 22 cm tall as Optimal Optimus¹¹.

The Thirteenth Prime. To work around the ambiguous identity of the Thirteenth Prime, the toyline created a Prime Master of the Thirteenth with a generic design. Its lore held that whoever possessed the Matrix of Leadership was considered the Thirteenth at that point, making the Thirteenth a position or state of being rather than a specific individual⁶.

The animated web series

Transformers: Power of the Primes is a 10-episode animated web series produced by Hasbro and Machinima, with animation by Tatsunoko Production². It premiered on May 1, 2018, with a total runtime of 1 hour 42 minutes, and was directed by Yuuzou Satou with writing by Adam Beechen, Jamie Iracleanos, and F.J. DeSanto⁸. Episodes were initially available only through the go90 app in the United States and the Prime Wars Trilogy Tumblr elsewhere; on July 10, 2018, all ten episodes were posted to Machinima's YouTube channel in full HD with English audio and no subtitles¹².

Cast. The voice cast includes Peter Cullen as Optimus Prime, Judd Nelson as Hot Rod and his corrupted variants, Jaime King as Solus Prime, Ron Perlman as Optimus Primal and Optimal Optimus, Wil Wheaton as Perceptor, Mark Hamill, Gregg Berger, and Kari Wahlgren as Victorion⁸^•⁹. Nelson's and Cullen's involvement continued a distinction of the trilogy: Titans Return had featured both actors reprising their G1 roles in animation for the first time in over 30 years³.

Aftermath and collector market

The Prime Wars Trilogy format of Machinima web series paired with Generations sublines ended with Power of the Primes; Hasbro's subsequent animated output moved in other directions, and the Generations brand later revisited the same mythology with a separate Age of the Primes line³^•¹⁴. On the secondary market, the line has appreciated overall: a 46-figure price guide lists a combined original retail of $1,085.54 against a market value of $2,230.30, with the largest single gains on exclusives such as Evolution Nemesis Prime ($169.22 average against a $119.23 difference) and Punch-Counterpunch ($150.00 average, +$125.01)⁴.

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026