STRENGTH             RANK
10.0                 10.0
INTELLIGENCE      COURAGE
10.0                 10.0
SPEED           FIREBLAST
9.5                   9.9
ENDURANCE           SKILL
10.0                 10.0

Color Scheme:

ORANGE! WTF? Orange? Umm... isn't he supposed to be a *silverback* gorilla? Apparently that's too realistic. Hasbro's worried that children will be mistaken as having a real silverback gorilla and might get captured by animal control. Feh.
Kidding aside, I think orange was a really stupid choice. That's not to say the toy looks horrible... just that it could look SO much cooler in black with a silver back. Get it? A *silver*back? Anyway, he also has some gold accents, metallic-brownish-grayish color of some kind, a little turquoise here and there (yay! ;-) and, well... orange. :\ Ok, so it's really not that bad, and does have a certain balance to it. I'll admit to liking it, but probably only because of the turquoise.

Robot Mode:

A standing up gorilla with Primal's head. No, seriously. Refer to the transformation description below. I'll give the toy its due props, though. The face looks spot on to the cartoon, save for the colors. Umm... that's about it. It's not a BAD robot mode, just unimaginative. There's really not much to say here, so look at the pics and decide what you think. I'll let someone else handle the "in robot mode he has x points of articulation" crap. ;-)

Beast Mode:

Yeah. Ok. Umm... a bending over robot with a gorilla head. hehe. OK, so he looks a little better as a gorilla than a robot, but only because his gorilla head kind of goes with his back and the legs are short and the arms are big. The gorilla head looks pretty good, too, but I'm not sure why they chose the big red nose. It's nice that the beast head/face looks a lot like the show as well as the robot head.

Transformation:

Very simple. Just extend the legs, swap his gorilla head for his robot head by manipulating the chest a bit, fiddle with the hands to swap the fingers and thumbs, and it's done.

Gimmicks:

He was designed around a single gimmick. his left arm houses a motorized punching and rocket launching gimmick. By raising and lowering his left shoulder panel, the motor is wound up. Pressing his spark crystal on his arm releases the energy in the motor which makes the shell on his forearm rotate around his arm, which in turn presses a button that makes his forearm extend quickly while releasing a missile that's hidden within in. If you can get it to work, it's not that bad of a gimmick. The problem is winding it enough for it to activate the punch-launch thing before the motor fizzles. Another gimmick he has is his beast head, which has a button that moves his muzzle up and down, making it look like he's growling and baring his teeth or something. He also has a jet pack hidden in his back, which is kind of cool. Check out the head shot pic for images of these last two gimmicks.

Pros/Cons:

More show accurate than the first Primal, but still pretty far off. They obviously can do it if they want to, I just wish they would have. I mean, Rattrap is almost perfect. Anyway, it's a good toy, especially if you can find him for retail or lower ($15-). I got mine for $9 at Toy Works (KB spin off), and it's definitely worth that. One interesting side note: instead of identical end panels as most of the boxed toys have, this one has an ad for transformers.com on one end panel.