Megatron

Megatron launches a full attack on the space station, guarded by Starscream and his army. Hey, speaking of Starscream: like that figure, WfC Megatron had a toy the first time the game got toys, but this one is bigger, because now they're not limited to the Deluxe size class. Voyager Megatron for the win! The toy may be bigger, but his head still feels very small. He's got the traditional sort of "helmet" head-shape, and a super angry scowl on his face. Rather than the nearly white color of the old toy, this one's surface is a more appropriate grey. He's still accented with dark grey and a muted red, but losing the white is a huge, immediate improvement. Weirdly, this figure's sculpt is less accurate to the game than the 2010 version was. Where are the ridges across his shoulders? Why is the left forearm the wrong shape? Why does his chest stick out so far? War for Cybertron came out more than a dozen years before any work would have begun on this toy; what possible excuse is there for basing it on the concept art and not on the final product? We can forgive the blatant kibble around the lower legs, because it still aesthetically ties in with the shapes that should be there, but the rest of the sculpt is a mistake. Megatron is armed with his fusion cannon, because why wouldn't he be? Just remember, the big part goes in the front, not in the back like you might expect. I mean, you could pose it the other way around, there's nothing stopping you, but the intention is to have it in the front. He still has the removable right arm feature all these modern figures have sported, though his secondary weapon is a big purple club, so you'll need to borrow someone else's weapon if you want to use it. Most of the articulation is fine, but the knees only bend about 30° for some reason. Well, immediately, "some reason" is that there's a tab on the back of the knee that bumps against the shin, we just don't know why the toy was made with that impediment in place. One of my major pet peeves with Transformers is fake kibble. Not simply that it exists - I understand the need to fudge things a bit sometimes when going from a purely artistic creation to a real physical object - but rather when the designers don't do anything to hide the fact it's fake. Take Unicron, for instance: the little pinchy mouth-parts on the planet mode are supposed to be the same things as the devil horns on the robot's head; but toy designers can't make that work, so they end up giving Unicron a second set of horns that grow out of his shoulders or something, making their job easier at the expense of the final product. And similarly, here on Megatron, the thing on his shoulder that is supposed to turn into the cow catcher on the front of the tank instead just gets hidden underneath, while a second copy of it is obtrusively sticking up from the robot's back. Ugh. So bad! If you can't make the transition from shoulder to tank work, then at least make sure we can't see them both at once! The tank mode, at least, manages to be better than the last version. It's more angular, and more complete than before, and looks nicer overall. Having the secondary claw on his back means it can actually be the right size in this mode, and we don't have robot arms sticking out from underneath anymore, either. One feature that didn't make the jump from the past to the present is the ability to choose between hover tank and ground treads. That was fun, but you can't do it now. Studio Series Gamer Edition War for Cybertron Megatron is better in most ways than the old Generations figure, but its few weaknesses are annoying ones. He's a worthwhile upgrade, if you've been collecting long enough to already have the previous figure, but only worth full price if you don't. -- 11/12/24 What's the worst example of fake kibble you can think of? Tell us on our message board, the Loafing Lounge.

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