This is the latest in a series (of indefinite length and regularity) of blog posts memorializing cancelled toys. Our figure today is Hasbro's Transformers Animated Marauder Megatron.
It's publicly known that Transformers Animated Season 4 would have seen Megatron escaping from prison and setting up shop on Earth, and that he would have recruited Blackarachnia to give him a triple-changer upgrade, a choice which would have led to him beginning to experience mental issues much like Blitzwing's.
Well, because it takes extra time to design a triple-changer, work got started on Megatron early. So while Optimus Prime's Season 4 look had only reached the design stages, Megatron had already been fully sculpted, even reaching the resin hardcopy stage!
As is usual with Animated stuff, there are a lot of old references in the design: the grille over his mouth (in addition to giving him a Hannibal Lecter feel) is from Beast Machines, while the general blocky shape of the head is from the Japanese-only Return of Convoy. While all the fan art of Marauder Megatron has depicted him in the usual gray colorscheme, apparently Derrick J. Wyatt personally imagined him with a more Galvatron-ish blue and purple look:
If you compare the images of Marauder Megatron's approved altmodes to Emiliano Santalucia's early designs for Bumblebee Concept Art Megatron's, the parallels between the two are undeniable.
So in a way, this new movie toy is secretly an (extremely) untooned Animated figure.
