Dave's BWII Rant:

     Galvatron

     Another trade acquisition, prices for outright purchase vary wildly from
around $50 to around $100 depending on who you buy from.

CAPSULE

     Some good design work and nice gimmicks, pretty poseable, challenging in
transformation and with pretty good sculpting.  However, the paint job is
sloppy and a few of the joints delicate.  Recommended.

RANT

(For this one I'll run with the techspec numbers and what I know from the
anime and manga to fake up a techspec)

DESTRON: Galvatron
Function: Criminal Mastermind
Transformation Difficulty: Advanced (7)
Quote: "Megastorm no baka!"  ("Megastorm, you idiot!")

Imprisoned for years on a Cybertron prison ship (Comics BonBon July 1998),
Galvatron bided his time and listened to tales of prisoners from all over the
galaxy, until he knew where to locate the mysterious Argonmoa Energy.
Assembling a crew of trusted associates from both inside the prison and
outside, Galvatron staged a daring jailbreak and headed for planet Gaea, the
Cybertrons in hot pursuit.  Once there, he uncovered an ancient computer that
controlled the Argonmoa Energy and exposed himself to its power, changing his
body into a powerful triple-changer form (anime episode 2)!  Not only was his
robotic form greatly enhanced, he also gained mighty drill-tank and dragon
modes, turning him into a one-Destron army.  While potentially the better of
even Lioconvoy, he prefers to let his underlings do most of the fighting.
After all, this is why he worked so hard to GET underlings.  Additionally, he
has trouble containing his vast power, and lapses into long stretches of
comatose slumber as his body continues to cope with the awesome energies
barely contained within it.

STR 10  INT 10  SPD 10  END 10  RNK 10  COUR 9  FRP 10 SKL 10  Avg 9.875

     The box art is computer-generated and shows Galvatron pretty directly as
a toy (no Romitazation of his backpack and other bits), but in his animated
colors, predominantly pink.  Galvatron started out lavender in the cartoon,
but the Argonmoa Energy turned him pink.  Fortunately, the toy is the best of
both worlds, the pre-Argonmoa colors and post-Argonmoa form.  All BWII toys
have "landscape" images inside the box behind the figure (Lioconvoy had a
veldt, for instance), and Galvatron's background is the image of Cybertron
used in the BWII catalog.

     Dragon Mode: This is the mode the toy is sold in, more or less.
Actually, it takes a few steps to transform it the rest of the way to dragon
mode, but the instructions include those steps (yay!).  Despite being in
Japanese, the instructions are quite thorough and understandable even to
those who don't read the language.  The dragon mode is roughly equally split
between lavender, "Decepticon purple," black and gold, with a few accents in
red, gunmetal and aqua.  These accents are painted on, and rather sloppily,
unfortunately.  The worst bits on mine are more visible in robot mode,
though.  The gold plastic is filled with metallic flecks, and the lavendar is
slightly pearl-like in appearance.
     From snout to tail tip (a line shaped like an integral symbol), the
dragon is about a foot long (30cm).  Hard to measure exactly with stuff in
the way, tho.  The fully-extended wings also measure about a foot across, but
look kinda wimpy due to the size of the shoulderpads (drillbit halves).  The
tail is pretty much locked in position, but the neck poses using a mechanism
pretty much the same as in BW Transmetal Megatron's tail.  The forelegs have
shoulders and elbows, but the shoulders are simple swivels, seriously
limiting poseability (and making it hard to get the arms out of the way in
transformation).  The hind legs have thunderthigh syndrome, and really don't
move much.  They *can* move, but it doesn't really get you much because the
lower halves are so spindly.
     The only gimmick really available in this mode is the wing-flapping,
which uses the same mechanism as Transquito has.  It's kinda hard to work,
though, and the range of motion is very restricted.

     Transformation to Tank Mode: There's a very clever assortment of tabs
and slots in the hip area which keeps it fairly stable in its two different
configurations.  In fact, there's a lot of tab and slot stuff in this toy, so
be careful about breaking the tabs.  It's a little tricky getting the neck
lined up so that the drill bit halves close around it properly, but the final
result is nice and stable.  About the toughest part of transformation is
getting the dragon forelimbs out of the way without having to snap off the
wing assembly, which is harder to get back on in tank mode than in other
modes.  

     Tank Mode: This baby's just a shade over a foot long and very stable,
thanks to the plethora of pegs, tabs and so forth.  It has a lot of "it's a
vehicle because we tacked on treads and say it's a vehicle" aspects to it,
but it still looks cool.
     In theory you can deploy the slashing wings in this mode, but they're
not really meant to be used here.  Also, you can fire the axe-missiles, but
only at targets standing right behind the tank or flying above and behind.
The main gimmick for this mode is the drill, which spins using the same kind
of motor found in Inferno's butt, Lioconvoy's mane and Rhinox's sawblade
weapon.  It doesn't spin too long freely, but the button is placed so that
you can easily keep pushing it to sustain motion.

     Transformation to Robot Mode: First, if you really wanna, you can get a
gerwalk mode out of the tank by transforming the legs first, which is a
simple enough affair since the tank and robot modes have the same hip
configuration.  It even balances fairly well, with the drill out front and
the tail out back and the wings out to the sides.  
     From there on in, you really have to transform in a particular order, as
bits get in each other's way otherwise.  Fortunately, the instructions are
pretty clear about the order.  You may find the wing assembly popping off
during transformation, and I recommend removing the missiles first or they
may fly off.
     Note that the waist joint isn't very robust, and could wear out with
repeated transformation.  So far I've heard no reports of Mirage-like
snapping, but it could happen.

     Robot Mode: Not counting extra height that his huge backpack can give,
Galvatron is merely 7.5" (19cm) tall, shorter than the lanky Lioconvoy.  The
drill simply hangs off his back and acts as a third leg.
     Galvatron has all the popular joints.  Neck, waist, shoulders (two
joints per shoulder), upper arms, elbows, wrists, ball hips, upper thigh
(ratcheting, even), knees and limited toes.  However, the toes don't flex up,
reducing the number of poses possible that don't require the drillbit as a
third leg.  The wing assembly cannot be flipped over and attached so that the
painted parts face up, which makes it look less cool as a jetpack (you can
still spin the drillbit to look like a jet engine).  Finally, the coolest bit
of his appearance is the "spark" in his chest.  This is a glass marble with a
jagged piece of gold foil behind it (I checked to make sure the gold was
behind the marble and not a coating on the surface by bouncing a laser beam
into the marble...I do not recommend trying this at home, since where one
beam went in, four or five came out in unpredictable directions).
     As mentioned already, the drill gimmick is mostly decorative here.  The
wings can flap, but bump into the shoulderpads pretty quickly regardless of
whether they're in wing mode or claw mode.  The axe launchers STILL can't
fire at a target, due to the built-in curvature...it takes a lot of fiddling
to get them pointed forward.  They fire a foot or two, and the missiles can
be taken out and held in the figure's hands as axes.  The big weapon is the
wings, detached and placed in one of the hands.  The wings open up into claws
just like Transquito's do, with enough span to grab a person's head in them.
Unfortunately, it's hard to work the mechanism without taking the weapon out
of the figure's hand first.  On the plus side, the figure's huge backpack
lets it hold such a large claw weapon without falling over forwards.  The
claw can also be used attached to the backpack, but not as well.
     As a final note on the robot mode, fans of the old "huge feet" style of
transformation will like this figure, since it has the traditional oversized
lower legs (as opposed to the often-spindly lower legs of many BW toys).

     Overall: A lot of thought went into the design, but a little more effort
could have gone into the actual production.  A few stiffer or sturdier joints
in some places, smoother action in other places and better paintjobs all
places would have made this a better toy.  Still, it's pretty good, and
easily worth the price being asked for it in Japan (2980 yen, about $20-25
depending on the exchange rate of the moment).  Surface shipping adds another
ten bucks, airmail thirty, so any price asked over $55 is definitely dealer
markup.  

     Dave Van Domelen, has the claws stuck in his ears, help!