Voyager Megatron

[JediTricks]

After reading Tformers' PAINFULLY generous review of this figure, I went out to pick up a replacement Knock Out and found the new Voyagers as well, so I picked up Megs - I had wanted a Megatron figure to go at least against my m1 Voy Prime.

Alt mode:
Megatron is a cybertronian tank, which means he's got treads and a cannon and is otherwise a big tangled mess of plates - oh, and Megatron's head at the very front between the treads peeking out behind a cage. Adding to the mix are jet elements, there are thrusters and stubby wings; the rear of the vehicle seems to be large jet engines, but they are mainly hollow and look more like closed, spring-loaded feet (and yet they aren't). Sculpted details are plenty, but feel a little shallow. The tank's overall look is wide and sleek and round, it borrows more than a little from Batman Begins' The Tumbler, especially the front end. The cannon pivots up and down, and can rotate on its Z-axis so it could look left or right as well (but not up at the same time). The whole thing rolls on 4 small wheels under the treads, minimal ground clearance but the wheels do roll. And the vehicle is fairly solid.

That all sounds good, right? Well, unfortunately, all is not paradise. While exciting at first look, a closer inspection reveals some ugly truths, the greebles on the front of the cannon are warped and its red projectile looks like a club, there are big cuts into the tops of the larger set of tank treads, the whole thing is slightly off-center and not in an intentional manner, a lot of the look comes from 2 panels on arms floating out at the front, and the vehicle mode is mainly a single big shell piece sitting on top of a robot doing a yoga pose. The color is a grayish, greenish, bluish affair with a few touches of a mettalic version of that (which looks a lot better than the plastic version), lots of black, a little silver, gold, and red translucent accents. The silver is sprayed only in a few places as a true accent, and there just isn't enough to go around.

All in all, I like the alt mode for how it looks and what it's trying to be (fast flying tank? cool), but I am frustrated by what it truly is, which shows when you keep looking at it.

Transformation:
Surprisingly, the shell is held on by just 2 pegs on either side into the tenuously-attached treads, unpeg them and the once-solid tank is now ready to flop apart by your command. It's a rather basic transformation, rotate the treads around and fold a few ways, fold the shoulders out, flop up the back kibble, and rearrange the neck a little. There's just not enough going on for a $20 figure. And considering how little is going on, why have the backpack vague or leave no stops for the toes or right shoulder? And I really hate how the right arm just folds around like Megs is holding it behind his back in alt mode, very lazy.

Robot mode:
This is a small voyager-class figure, putting him next to voy OP is embarrassing, Megatron is over a head shorter, standing just 6.5" tall. On his own merits, it's more silver spray on gray-green, a few bland gray plastic joints and such, a moderately-detailed chest with a lot of cutaways, a giant right arm, a tiny left arm, digitigrade tank tread legs, and a wide backpack/cape that used to be a flying tank. The whole robot mode looks simplistic, like a FAB or something designed for younger kids who won't be dropping $22 on this thing. A Decepticon logo ends up on his right front thigh armor, it feels out of place. Megs gains an uncovered face of sloppily-applied silver, gold, the gray-green plastic, and red. The face is a little more recognizable than the M1 version, but it looks like he's smiling which is offputting (he's actually got a mouth full of pointy teeth and then it's supposed to be separate plates next to that, but the cuts look smiley), the eyes have the eyebrow line, and the eyes, mouth, and sides of the face are light-piped. The figure is designed to sit the head right onto the body with no neck, which makes him look more kiddified, but it can be raised up to look acceptable. The left arm is the tank cannon, and it's small with the cannon opening vaguely pretending to be robot fingers. The right arm is a big, vaguely crab-like affair that's sculpted to be a cannon with a big movable crab-thumb, but the canon is a tad underwhelming. The chest is pointy things with a few small cutaways revealing caramel gearing inside. The body tapers down to the waist, and then the hips and legs are uniformly big and chunky and limited in detail. The thigh armor is made up of spring-loaded panels front and back, the leg itself is the fatter tread now bent in the middle ending at a separate toe piece, and with the smaller tread jutting out the back as a heel. I like the tread-legs, it's what sold me on the whole concept really, but it doesn't quite impress as much in person, and the toes far too often end up flipping up which looks silly.

The back has a big hollow near the top that's ineptly covered by the face-cage halves. There is a shameless amount of backpack shell attached by a hinged panel to the lower back, which officially folds halfway up to stick far out and fold back on either side. The official Hasbro instructions say to fold the backpack shell halves all the way back, leaving you with more backpack than figure. If you fold out the sides back out, you could call this a cape, it juts out about 30 degrees back like a cape in the wind, but it reveals how little of an actual torso is there. You can fiddle with it so that the backpack sits up as high as it goes and closer to the body, this is "angry winged" mode I guess and it works for that, adds a lot of width and bulk and danger, as well as bringing the cape closer, but it's still blatantly a big piece of kibble. Honestly, the best thing to do is leave it where it started, fold the sides partway back, giving you a cape that holds against the body and hiding Megs' lack of back. The alt-mode "tongue" which normally would fold all the way into the cape can be used to hold the cape upright in any of the 3 positions by folding into the back gap.

Mech Alive:
The inside of both biceps is cut away to reveal the internal peg's details, which change as you rotate them, but this gimmick is pretty flat. The main MA gimmick is that when you turn the waist, the caramel gears in the chest all rotate. To me, this is just stupid, it requires peering into Megatron's chest to see it, and all you get is some over-scaled gears turning and an obviously hollow chest that cheapens the figure. Finally, there's the right arm, straighten the elbow and from his cannon forearm folds a blade. It's a nifty exercise, but the end result is a rather underwhelming green-gray plastic blade with silver spray on some thin supports. I think the biggest problem is that the blade itself is not much to look at, they gave it the same sculpt as the rest of the arm, and the angle makes it seem underwhelming. So it's more fun to scissor out than actually leave out. If I didn't mention before, the left arm is a spring-loaded missile launcher, the missile translucent red and has a bit of a scepter thing going on, but not really in an exciting way.

Articulation:
Megs is fairly articulated, but not in a satisfying way. The head sits flat and officially has no articulation, but raise up the neck and he has a semi-limited ball joint on a hinge giving him a decent range of motion (just don't raise the neck too high or it looks terrible). The shoulders are universal joints, but they end up rotating on transformation joints more than on official robot shoulder joints, making him look odd. Upper arms swivel, elbows hinge (the right elbow hinges all the way to 155 degrees, it looks cool, and it's a generous ratchet so it's easy to have sword out or sword in at any angle), the right thumb is hinged. Waist rotates, backpack is on a dual-hinge plate and has hinges just off the center panel with a few movable winglets here and there. Hips are universal joints, ratcheting sideways and "frontways". The upper thigh rotates, and the digitigrade knees are on limited hinges backwards. The leg articulation doesn't work well with the rest of the figure thanks to limited range and non-movable heels, so ultimately Megs isn't all that poseable.

Overall: C
There's something about every aspect of this figure that says "almost". The tank looks exciting at first but doesn't have much going on. The transformation is bland and way too simplistic. Robot mode is small and not impressive, looking more like a kiddie toy than a $22 Transformer. The bot mode is saddled with odd proportions and a big backpack of kibble, underwhelming moving gimmicks and detailing, and suffers weak articulation. I guess he could be somewhat menacing when put next to smaller figures, but the lower body doesn't share that opinion. The deco isn't hideous, it's cold but it's not silver enough, so while it works in tank mode, it's pretty bland and underwhelming in robot mode. "Underwhelming" seems to be this figure's mantra, it's not horrible, just not good either.

[onslaught86]

Hmm, first decent review I've seen of him. Disappointed to hear he's not all that and a bag of chips, but I expect to cut him more slack because I'm a shameless Megatron fanboy and rather like this design. Although I'm not cutting the Leader any slack, he looks worlds of awful. It's the articulation and lack of intrusive gimmicks that sell this one to me.

He's out here, reportedly, but hasn't hit saturation yet. Bah, want him and Mixmaster badly.

[JediTricks]

Hmm, first decent review I've seen of him. Disappointed to hear he's not all that and a bag of chips, but I expect to cut him more slack because I'm a shameless Megatron fanboy and rather like this design. Although I'm not cutting the Leader any slack, he looks worlds of awful. It's the articulation and lack of intrusive gimmicks that sell this one to me.

He's out here, reportedly, but hasn't hit saturation yet. Bah, want him and Mixmaster badly.

There were some generous reviews out there of Voy Megs, one which called his transformation complex and ambitious. Those are LIES spread by sadists. His transformation is really simplistic once you realize that it's 99% positioning limbs.

Leader Megs this time around looks like something I'd consider before not buying at least, last movie there wasn't a single thing about that toy which suggested a purchase to me.

Mixmaster is one I'll need to see reviews from someone other than TFW and Tformers to be confident of, the Botcon thing looked pretty sad for a $20 robot, and even in Tformers glowing review the pictures looked pathetic. However, I can see how it could be good from other angles or positioned differently, so I'm still open minded about it.

[onslaught86]

It's a Movie Megatron, he turns from a vague sorta-vehicle into a vague sorta-robot, transformation's never going to be all that. Super Megs' awful arm and head articulation make him even less appealing than the last (Who at least had okay LOOKING arms, even if they had horrible jointing and poor functionality), I've learned my lesson from last time and won't touch him unless he's dirt cheap or repainted. The grey kills what the mould didn't.

Mega Megs here has a better looking tankjet mode, articulation that produces some very nice poses in pics, and an interesting and oddly appealing colour scheme. Hopefully he'll filter out here properly and I'll get him next week.

O6 got Mixmaster and seems to like him. I dig the alt-mode, and the robot looks satisfying in much the same way as Movie1's Bonecrusher. Shame about the walnut-noggin. The movie establishing Mixmaster's cannon mode as more than a half-assed transformation stop intrigues me too.

[Onslaught Six]

I dunno, the walnut-noggin isn't that distracting, especially since the cannon is the same colour. He's good.

[JediTricks]

It's a Movie Megatron, he turns from a vague sorta-vehicle into a vague sorta-robot, transformation's never going to be all that.

That's a cop-out, his arm just folds around, his legs rotate around and up, the only thing that pegs together is 2 small points on the shell piece's wings... hell, if it wasn't for the rotating-around left shoulder and the flop-out lower legs, you could do his transformation with a GI Joe figure. The statement that it's "never going to be all that" makes it sound like he falls into some gray area between the spectrum of "all that" and "super lazy repositioning limb crap," when in fact he falls squarely into the latter. Being a cybertronian mode shouldn't be an excuse to be a lazy alt mode and shabby transformation - although come to think of it, you wouldn't know it looking at the last 2 years of Hasbro's Megatrons!

Super Megs' awful arm and head articulation make him even less appealing than the last (Who at least had okay LOOKING arms, even if they had horrible jointing and poor functionality), I've learned my lesson from last time and won't touch him unless he's dirt cheap or repainted. The grey kills what the mould didn't.

I'm still waiting for ANYBODY to review this figure, seems like nobody wants to touch it with a 10 foot pole.

O6 got Mixmaster and seems to like him. I dig the alt-mode, and the robot looks satisfying in much the same way as Movie1's Bonecrusher. Shame about the walnut-noggin. The movie establishing Mixmaster's cannon mode as more than a half-assed transformation stop intrigues me too.

O6 has weird tastes at times, even with this movie you guys aren't agreeing on some toys. Mixmaster is teeny tiny in alt mode, the amount of box he takes up is ludicrously little, so on that alone I'm going to find it an easy pass.

[Onslaught Six]

I'm still waiting for ANYBODY to review this figure, seems like nobody wants to touch it with a 10 foot pole.

86 owns him now, so.

O6 has weird tastes at times, even with this movie you guys aren't agreeing on some toys. Mixmaster is teeny tiny in alt mode, the amount of box he takes up is ludicrously little, so on that alone I'm going to find it an easy pass.

I do have weird tastes! It's because I'm crazy and too lazy to actually bitch about things these days.

Don't pass on Mixmaster for that, though, definitely. Remember, JT, this is Movie Aesthetic! Little vehicles asplode into big robots! All the Deluxes look teeny tiny for the amount of package they take up in vehicle mode, too, but then in Robot Mode, they're tall and huge. Mixmaster's a naturally hunched over toy, but he can compete with the uber-tall likes of Ironhide and Ratchet from the first movie Easily. And his arms are just about as long as he is.

[JediTricks]

Don't pass on Mixmaster for that, though, definitely. Remember, JT, this is Movie Aesthetic! Little vehicles asplode into big robots! All the Deluxes look teeny tiny for the amount of package they take up in vehicle mode, too, but then in Robot Mode, they're tall and huge. Mixmaster's a naturally hunched over toy, but he can compete with the uber-tall likes of Ironhide and Ratchet from the first movie Easily. And his arms are just about as long as he is.

I'm way too broke to even consider Mixmaster. He's too spindly with large kibble chunks, and he's dinky, he's small, admit it. The movie aesthetic hasn't been large chunks of kibble so much as lots of little chunks everywhere, yet Mixmaster here has a whole truck front end on his ass, and large drum sections for arms.

M1 Ratchet is not a tall figure IIRC, I don't have him anymore though. When you stand up Mixmaster, does he look like he deserves to be that tall or did they sacrifice bulk to get him to that height?

I don't really like mega-long arms on TFs, there are VERY few I think get away with this.

[BWprowl]

Don't pass on Mixmaster for that, though, definitely. Remember, JT, this is Movie Aesthetic! Little vehicles asplode into big robots! All the Deluxes look teeny tiny for the amount of package they take up in vehicle mode, too, but then in Robot Mode, they're tall and huge. Mixmaster's a naturally hunched over toy, but he can compete with the uber-tall likes of Ironhide and Ratchet from the first movie Easily. And his arms are just about as long as he is.

Seconded. Mixmaster ends up deliciously large in robot mode. Which is pretty impressive considering how much of his vehicle mode length winds up folding in as panels on his back.

[JediTricks]

Seconded. Mixmaster ends up deliciously large in robot mode. Which is pretty impressive considering how much of his vehicle mode length winds up folding in as panels on his back.

I'll second my question about this then by using different language: is he a big bot, or a tall stick figure with kibble?