Peter Cullen died at the end of August. Hasbro released a new song about Optimus Prime on October 9, and the closing line of the company’s own description sets out the order the two events happened in.

The song was created before Peter’s passing; but offers an opportunity to thoughtfully recognize his extraordinary contribution as part of a wider celebration of Optimus Prime, the film and the fans who have sustained its impact for four decades.

“Optimus Prime Forever” is credited to the Knights of Unicron, it carries a 2026 HCPLL copyright line with Gus Rios named and Matt LaPlant producing, and it went up on the official Transformers YouTube channel on October 10 under the title “Optimus Prime Forever - Knights of Unicron (40th Anniversary Single)”. [1] It is on the streaming services as well, and the artwork Hasbro commissioned for it puts Optimus in the canyon from the 1986 poster, holding a flying V under the anniversary logo.

None of that was designed for a eulogy.

Who is playing on it

The Knights of Unicron have played most of the music of this fortieth anniversary, and we covered them at length in August when the Celebration of Life concert went online. Per the credits on that video the group is Matt Harvey, Gus Rios, Andy Selway and Ross Sewage, and they took the last fifty minutes of the show. They are also the band behind The Transformers: The Movie: The Soundtrack (The Reformatted Edition), the re-recording of the 1986 score and songs that brought in Stan Bush, Sebastian Bach, Brittney Slayes, Mark Osegueda and Cold Slither’s Torch. [2]

That work was under way long before Cullen died, and it had been covers and re-recordings throughout. This time the band wrote something new for the film rather than playing the 1986 record back.

What changed between the writing and the release

A song called “Optimus Prime Forever”, commissioned for an anniversary, was finished while the man who had voiced the character since 1984 was alive. By the time it reached the public, Cullen had been gone for six weeks and the official channel had already posted “Till All Are One: A Tribute to Peter Cullen” and run the Transformers Day theatrical tribute. In the spring that title was a fan slogan, and Hasbro has chosen not to pretend it wrote the song with the loss in mind.

Hasbro could have said nothing and let listeners date the song themselves. It put the order of events in its own copy instead.

What you can buy today

The single itself is free, on the official channel and on the streaming platforms.

If you want the band on a physical format, the record in stock is the Reformatted Edition, on BigBadToyStore’s exclusive Hot Rod Red vinyl. It was $35.99 with the add to cart control live when we read the listing this afternoon. It is the band’s ten track re-recording of the 1986 soundtrack rather than anything built around the new single: “Optimus Prime Forever” is a new composition and it is not a track on that record.

Footnotes

  1. The release date and the upload date are a day apart. The streaming credits give October 9 as the release; the official channel’s own upload of the single is timestamped October 10. Both are in the sources below.
  2. Our August piece has the full running order of the concert, including where in the two hours the Knights of Unicron set starts.

Sources