Back when Transformers Animated Season 4 was being worked on, the plan was to give Optimus Prime new Powermaster armor so he could take on Megatron in a physical fight. Designer Eric Siebanaler began working on a concept without any input from Derrick J. Wyatt, mainly thinking about what would work from a toy standpoint and taking some cues from the Japan-only Wingblade Optimus Prime. But that toy, of course, was cancelled when the show was.
In 2024, a group called DNA Design announced DK-54, an upgrade kit for Legacy United "Animated Universe" Optimus Prime that did its part to finally make that Powermaster armor a reality, as well as converting into a trailer to complete Optimus' fire truck mode for the first time ever.
At the end of that same year, they released DK-56, a retooling of the kit that was colored for Legacy United Motormaster, turning him into a sleek black tractor trailer.
In February 2025, a fan repainted that kit to sort of simulate Menasor, an idea so good that DNA Design adopted it a few months later as DK-56A.
Legacy Motormaster is the same mold
as Optimus and Nemesis Prime, so he doesn't even warrant a quickie blog review: you can read either of those for the specifics. This is just an upgrade kit, though, so you will need to buy the figure separately if you wish to use it. And yes, it only works with the Legacy United version, not the original BotCon exclusive
The kit is sold in a box with graphics that reference the BotCon box set, fittingly enough - the checkerboard motif, the four-quadrant logo in the center, etc. - just in different colors and with no infringing marks. Inside are 13 pieces, including one to change the actual Motormaster figure: Motormaster was traditionally a fancy sleeper cab, so there's a small "raised roof" piece that can swap in for the lights Optimus had. Clever! Too bad Hasbro didn't think of that themselves.
Other than the new roof, no modifications need to be made to Motormaster to allow him to use the kit. Everything just fits on the existing toy. There are a pair of "boots" that slip onto the feet and reach all the way up to the knees, new forearms with their own hands (you just leave the toy's regular ones folded away, same as if you were transforming him), a Menasor face that slides over Motormaster's head-box, a large set of wings that plugs into his back, a pair of rocket boosters for the wing tips, and a pair of pods with panels that flip up to reveal sculpted missiles. If you know it started as Powermaster armor you can obviously tell, but if you don't, the new colors really hide its origins surprisingly well.
On DK-56, all the pieces were just black, to blend with Motoromaster, but since Menasor is a lot more colorful, so is DK-56A. One shin is ecru and the other dark grey, to represent Breakdown and Wildrider; the forearms are yellow and red, for Drag Strip and Dead End. The feet and hands are purple, while the wings are gray with a thick purple stripe. The shapes may not be any kind of real reference to the characters, but the colors absolutely carry the day. There are even small accents to help sell the illusion more, like giving the white shin blue outlines and a red panel to reference Breakdown's hood. All the limbs have similar little touches like this, rather than just being flat blocks of color.
If you want to make him even more "Menasor-y,"
the instructions suggest taking the rockets off the wings and instead plugging them into the upper arms: since one is red and the other is yellow, they match the forearms and therefore further the illusion that the full arm is formed from a pair of the Stunticons. Having them there does block the bicep swivels a bit, but if you don't push them in all the way it still works fine.
The set includes a massive sword, like Menasor always had, and a large gun, which is newer. If it bothers you that the vintage Menasor never had wings while this one does, the promotional shots for this
kit offer a unique solution: take the wingpack off and convert it into a gun tower, similar to what Legacy Menasor had. None of the other kits this one is based on suggested anything similar, so it's clear DNA Design was thinking with the fans in mind on this one. It's too bad the wings aren't removable from the pack, though: you need the backpack if you're going to have the missile pods over the shoulders, and Menasor always had pylons there that those visually stand in for; so you have to choose between "inaccurate because wings" and "inaccurate becase no shoulder-lumps." But remember, no Animated designs were direct copies of what G1 had done, so adding a few new flares here is perfectly fine.
Other than the biceps, which we mentioned,
turning Motormaster into Menasor doesn't lose him any articulation. In fact, since the legs are so much longer, the set actually adds rocker ankles to allow you to keep the toy's feet flat on the ground in all poses! Plus, the fingers are hinged now The gun may be too heavy to hold up, but that's a function of the original Hasbro work, not the upgrade kit.
If that's all this kit offered, it wouldn't be worth your attention. But like the best kits, there's more here! Strip off all the pieces, and they can combine into Motormaster's trailer. Tilt the ankles to the side so you can flip the toes and heels away, then slot the feet together to form the rear wheels; flip over the panel on top of the gun, and fit the forearms onto slots on the gun's sides; wrap the wings around the sides of that conglomeration, again using slots on the arms to hold everything together. Plug the rockets onto the sides of the trailer, and store the sword on top.
Since the Menasor head wasn't originally designed for this set, it doesn't have a specific place to go, but as the instructions point out, you can just drop it inside freely and it'll stay put. Well, as long as you've already connected the trailer to the truck; if you haven't done that, the head'll just fall straight through. It would be nice if there were somewhere for Motormaster's axe and now-superfluous lightbar to go, however.
It never made much sense for the DK-56 upgrade kit to be all-black, because Motormaster's entire vibe has always been
a black cab and a gray trailer. Well, this one gets that right, but in tradeoff gets a few other things wrong. No, we're not talking about the fact you can see flashes of the bright, colorful limb pieces in there: I always figured the idea was that the Stunticons were posing as a stunt-show team (something that's explicity true in Animated) and that since a tractor trailer isn't exactly ideal for performing stunts in an era prior to Christopher Nolan physically verting one in The Dark Knight, the truck's role was to be the transport, loaded up with the actual performing cars in the back and driving them to the next show. So we see their colors inside? Of course we do!
No, the problem is one we don't often see on third-party kits, especially from a source that's already done, at minimum, 55 upgrade kits before this one, especially when most of those kits are direct bodypart
replacements: the colors don't match. Really! The purple on the kit has more blue than the purple on the toy, to the extent where you don't even need to have them right next to each other to see it. Plus, the wheels on the kit have paint on their hubcaps, while Hasbro left theirs unpainted black. This isn't enough to ruin my enjoyment of the upgraded toy, but we expect better than that at this point.
As one of the, like, nine people anywhere on Earth lucky enough to actually have the full Animated Stunticon team, I was a bit disappointed
at the time that there was no way to combine them into an Animated Menasor - Derrick J. Wyatt kept trying to work Devastator into the show, but Hasbro wouldn't let him because they didn't want to sell a toy that expensive (can you imagine, a Transformer costing $50? Outrageous!), so of course none of the toys that were repainted for BotCon were capable of combining, meaning the only way they could have become Menasor would be if someone just made a standalone frame that you hung the all the existing toys on, and surely no one would willingly do something that bone-stupid, would they?
The problem with a lot of upgrade kits is that they'll be, like, "now the thumbs can move and the toy is a half-centimeter taller. That'll be $75 dollars, please." DNA Designs' DK-56A costs about $60, but it makes drastic changes to the toy it's upgrading, and is especially clever for being something that was designed to be something else entirely. Had it been made from scratch, there would probably be more direct, strong connections to the Stunticons and their unique shapes, and there'd probably be something to change Motormaster's chest, but since this was at least created as an Animated product from the start, the lines look like they belong in the universe even if it's just the colors that sell what they're specifically meant to be today. It's odd that the purples don't match, but even that can't make me unhappy with this set. Since I already had the 2011 Motormaster, I had no need to buy the Legacy United version, and in fact passed on it multiple times at multiple stores. But when I saw BigBadToyStore had this in stock, I immediately went looking for a Motormaster to put it on. Animated remains one of my favorite Transformers franchises, and anything that will expand that collection - especially if it's as good as this - is highly welcome.
-- 04/14/26
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