Megatron

Here's how the Hearts of Steel hierarchy breaks down, in terms of importance to the story: • Bumblebee: absolute star of the show. • Starscream: the villains' active leader. • Optimus Prime: seen in flashbacks, eventually gets used in a sequel. • Megatron: never appears at all anywhere. Seriously, he didn't even appear on an alternate cover. The only eason we get this toy is that Guido Guidi came up with a Megatron deisgn for fun, and it was used as filler material in the tpb collection. So if Hearts of Steel was already an alternate reality, we now have an alternate reality of that alternate reality, one where Megatron participated. For the most part, the shape of the body is classic Megatron: a broad, blocky chest; tapered, narrow waist; big, flared shins; all the things that call "Megatron" to mind. The spikes on the front of his chest are new, but they definitely give an "old timey" feel the Decepticon leader usually doesn't have. The rivets around all his panel lines would do the same, if they toy hadn't been done in dark, dark grey that makes details like that nearly impossible to see unless you're looking for them. The major change has to be the two gigantic wheels on his shoulders. The design sheet identified them as "shields," but they really do not look good, wildly out of place here. They're quite silly. He does have the typical bucket helmet look for the head. If only that had been this grey color, it would have been fine - it would have worked as a reference to the original Marvel Comics model from back in the '80s, which left the body light gray and only had the helmet dark (because that's what the prototype toy they were working from looked like). But the fully dark body just ain't it. Megatron's got his cannon, of course, because what kind of weird Megatron wouldn't? Both Guidi's design and the sculpt of the toy make it obvious that the cannon was meant to be able to collapse from its full size to a more compact version when it's on his arm, but here it's just a single solid piece. It can be removed and held in his hand if you want, but why would you want? The toy has rocker ankles, but you have to be careful because if the feet aren't in the right position when you try to use them, they can pop off the leg. The biggest flaw, however, has to be that those humongous shoulder "shields" get in the way of the articulation: you have to flex them out to the side if you want to bend the elbows. Or heck, just move them all the way up, and let Megatron grind his own face with the spikes on them. This figure continues the tradition set by most of his Timelines peers by requiring things to be in positions that are not particularly clear or easy to achieve if you get them a little bit wrong. In his case, the major offenders are the forearms: when you turn them around and fold the arm in half, you have to remember that the stump of the wrist is not meant to line up exactly with the top of the shoulder, like you'd think it is, but rather sits back just a little bit. Yes, there's a notch on the back of the shoulder that's meant to help you line them up properly, but the plastic is so dark and the wheel is so in the way that you can't actually see it to use it. The full conversion isn't difficult (open the back to fold the head away, open the forearms so you can fold in the hands and fold out the small guns, turn the forearms and bend the arm in half as described above, turn the waist around, and fold the legs over), but that one step can be a bit of a headache. When designing Megatron, Guido Guidi came up with two period-appropriate ideas: one was an old-fashioned pistol, and the other an advanced (for the time) artillery cannon. Well, you know how Hasbro is pathologically set on pretending their main villain was never a gun, so a cannon he becomes. Should have saved that for Hearts of Steel Galvatron! It's a heavily armored device, rather than just having a wooden frame and wheels like real ones would have, and it even has some small extra guns on it for even more firepower. The wheels roll, but don't expect the cannon itself to move up or down - it's just stuck in place. At least you can convert the toy both ways without needed to remove the gun barrel; that's always a plus. There are, right now, no other Hearts of Steel toys announced for the future, so this may be all we ever get. That would be a shame, because we're not out of cool designs yet: give us ironclad Shockwave, Soundwave with a cargo hold for a cassette, or the Insecticon combiner, Hasbro! Judged by himself, this Megatron isn't great, but he gets a lot of bonus "cool points" just for being an official toy of the 1800s take on the character. -- 09/16/25 Would the gun have been better than the cannon? Tell us on our message board, the Loafing Lounge.