Definitely, definitely, *not* Nexus Maximus. Timelines Nexus Prime!

When the five separate components are presented with the option to join with each other and reform Nexus Prime, they are clearly given the choice,

“TO DIE. TO BE REBORN. OR TO LIVE AND FADE AWAY.”

This means they have found the answers they were searching for. Or rather, that four of them were searching for; Heatwave seemed quite content to ignore the big, empty space that was his past. It also means that to truly wipe out that void and rejoin that past they must lay down their individual lives.

Where once there was a void there would now be a history that was truly legendary, they were all pieces of one of the original Primes, one of the original thirteen Transformers. Each Prime was given a station. Nexus Prime was to be guardian of Rarified Energon, the basis of all Transformers life, the building block of both their bodies as well as their souls, their Sparks. Another of the Primes, Prima, the Warrior of Light, carried a sword and within the hilt of his sword was the Matrix. Yeah, that one:

His sword, the Star Saber, was so powerful that it could destroy entire star systems. In order to keep it from being used by evil — perhaps even another of the Primes, Megatronus, also known as The Fallen — Alpha Trion and Nexus Prime split the sword into five pieces. Nexus Prime would take each piece and hide it. In order to ensure that no one Transformer knew of the location of all five pieces, Alpha Trion and Nexus Prime first used the sword to cleave Nexus Prime into five separate robots. However, the plan worked too well. The five components of Nexus Prime became lost to time, living out their own individual lives, unaware of their true identity and no longer aware of where the five pieces were hidden. Given the choice to recombine, they somewhat reluctantly took it and now are traveling across the dimensions trying to recover the five pieces of the Star Saber.

When they recombined, they lost their individual lives but became part of something far more powerful. Nexus Prime now had access to all of the individual five’s special abilities, basically giving him mastery over energon in all of its forms. Now, as far as the fiction goes, this combining and never coming back apart works very well. He is given standard proportions and something that his toy doesn’t really have. Actual fists.

Nexus Prime, from the cover of the Transformers Collectors Club magazine issue 30.

Don’t get me wrong, his toy is absolutely amazing, and as a collection of the Energon series combiner pieces, it is very flexible (if not transformed exactly as the instructions state) and can form two very good hand-like appendages. However, the thought of him never again separating into his five components would be very sad indeed.

Maybe Primus thinks it’s unbecoming of a Prime to parade around as an entire military lineup, but I think the idea of a Prime that can become five separate, super-powered robots is quite grand.

Then, when they hit a threat too large to take on divided, they can unleash the might of Nexus Prime.

"Hey! I have hands. Sort of..."

Hasbro has stated that his “correct” assemblage is as the image from Issue 30 shows above. That is: Landquake as the right and Breakaway as the left arm; Topspin as the right and Skyfall as the left leg. However, I cannot abide that on his toy. Topspin’s combiner piece actually creates the most hand-like of all of the pieces. Additionally, when not transformed like the instructions, he allows for an actual elbow joint, so I swap Breakaway and Topspin.

Nexus Prime’s name itself has also been subject to a little bit of unintentional hilarity. When the fiction for the character was submitted, he was a Prime, but for some reason, when the names of “Maximus Prime” and “Prime Nexus” were submitted for the toy itself, Hasbro actually told the Collectors Club no. Hasbro instead suggested they drop the “Prime” and just use what was left over. Therefore, the TCC released his toy name as “Nexus Maximus”.

Here’s a lesson for all of you that are in the job of naming things for release to the public: use Google. (Warning: putting Nexus Maximus into Google ~~may~~ will return results that will make you giggle, if not outright blush. That’s all I’m saying.)

His name was officially changed to Nexus Prime and a humorous image was thrown up on the TCC forums where Aquarius, the hippy Quintesson from Shattered Glass, explains that the name “Nexus Maximus” was the fault of a bad translation job by Alpha Trion’s minicon companion.

I wonder if Beta Maxx was also in charge of proof-reading this comic, considering Aquarius' name is misspelled.

Nexus Prime is listed as an Autobot but has Decepticon, Autobot, and even red “heroic Decepticon” symbols on him. The individual molds actually keep the spark crystals from their original versions with Autobot symbols for Skyfall and Breakaway,