Dave's Transformers Movie Voyager Rant: Wave 2 Megatron Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Movie/Voyager2 Strictly speaking, this is wave 3, by Hasbro's lights. I originally thought it'd include Optimus too, but based on both the co-sell on the box and the look of the shelves, I'd say this is shipping with more of Autobot Ratchet. CAPSULE Megatron: Face it, we're not going to get a really good toy out of this movie character design, it's just too hostile to reality. But this is one of the better doomed attempts, albeit with a very simplistic transformation and weirdly touchy feet. Mildly recommended. $19.96 at Wal-Mart. RANT Packaging: Standard Movie Voyager box. The co-sell is for Ratchet, and the photos on the box back have the old-style Megatron head (less human). The art on the front uses the corrected final version of the head. Two twist-ties through the cardboard tray. Five more ties hold the jet mode to the plastic blister. A rubber band holds the missile to the cardboard, and another holds the right wing closed. In-package, his robot hands are deployed, but should not be. As with other Movie toy reviews, Function and Motto are mine. Since I already recycled Megatron's G1 motto in other reviews, I'm giving him a new one here. DECEPTICON: MEGATRON Function: Conqueror Altmode: Cybertron Jet Licensor: None Previous Name Use: Pretty much all lines Package Call-Outs: "Wings snap into place!" "Firing missile!" Motto: "I hold with those who favor FIRE!" MEGATRON was made a monster. From the very day he first came online, his eye has been on a single goal - the domination of the universe. More than any of the other TRANSFORMERS, he is a true robot - knowing no fear, pleasure or passion except that which leads him towards his destiny. To him, other beings are simply tools to be used until they are broken. Those that serve him well and long may find themselves rewarded, but the moment they fail, they will be discarded. Lying frozen for centuries has left him only that much more determined. He will be victorious, and those in his way little more than stepping stones on his path to conquest. STR 10 INT 10 SPD 10 END 10 RNK 10 COUR 9 FRB 10 SKL 9 Avg 9.75 Vehicle Mode: Yes, it's the Cybertron Jet again, and this time it's going with the Fast Attack Battler style, where the legs are just sort of hanging out the back, covered somewhat by the tail section. 10.5" (27cm) long, and in "normal" position the wingspan is 6" (15cm). The wings can be folded out for attack mode, though, with a swept-forward span of 11.75" (30cm). The theme here is that this is Megatron just after he breaks out of the ice, with bits of ice clinging to him. However, they went a bit overboard, and much of the mass of his wings is made of clear blue ice-pattern plastic. So, instead of seeming ice-coated, he looks like he's turning into ice. The clear ice blue plastic is used for the main segments of the wings, the missile, and pieces attached along the top and bottom of the vehicle mode (one covers the robot face, two are on the shoulders, two on the shins). The fold-out extensions of the wings are a rubbery clear light blue plastic. The spindly robot fingers that stick out at the front are made of rubbery gold plastic. Some of the connective pieces are black, and the rest of the toy is made of a light silvery gray blue plastic. There's various silver airbrushing bits, both on the ice plastic and on the light blue-gray. The "chin" of the nose section is all painted silver-blue. There's a few bits of gold paint, notably on a couple of tiny thrust intakes on top of the wing roots, and some black details (but no black wash to bring out the detailing). Some metallic blue airbushing is also present, but not obvious in this mode (it's mainly for the benefit of robot mode). Little light blue-gray wheels on the belt and the toes let this mode roll along. Pushing in on the "chin" of the nose section will launch the missile from the front. The main gimmick is the wing scissoring trick. Fold the vertical parts of the wingtips horizontal and then pull the icy tips out to get the full flat wingspan mentioned above. Then pull back on a tab in the tail assembly and the wings will scissor forward (like the original BW Airazor) and almost but not quite extend past the nose of the jet. On mine, they don't quite end up at the same angle, so it looks lopsided. At full forward motion, you can push down on a tab between the wings to lock them forward. While not as clunky as Leader Megatron, I'm continued to be disappointed at how they can't seem to make such a fake and cheaty altmode work. Basically, Legends Megatron is the only one to really come close, mainly because they ditched movie-style legs and focused on making a robot of some sort out of the Cybertron Jet. And here, even with all sorts of "it doesn't have to look real" leeway, they still have obvious robot bits hanging out (the hands don't really retract enough, the head is clearly visible from the side, the legs just sit there). Transformation: Pull the arms apart, pop the cannon out of its tabs on the chest. Then Automorph and clip the wing pack to the back. Push out the hands, get the toes more or less in place, and that's basically it. Pretty simplistic transformation for a Voyager. Automorph: Bringing the legs down makes the shoulders rise up and the ice shield in front of the face drop. The feet automatically fold up with springs, but there's no way to stabilize them in robot mode (the front will sort of stay hooked forward, but the heel claws don't have any such trick). Robot Mode: 7" (18cm) tall at the head, decently proportioned. The ice panels end up on shoulders, chest and shins, and the eyes are light blue lightpiped. The upper arms are black plastic, as is the strut that connects the missile launcher to the left arm. The face, oddly, is painted black. Much of the chest is also painted black, then covered by the ice panel. The chest ice panel is not movable, being locked into the Automorph, so you can't put the arms together in vehicle mode for a fusion cannon effect. The best you can do is have him holding the gun up to his chest pointing off maybe 20 degrees or so to his left with both hands touching it. The hands aren't really made to hold anything, but the "spare" strut hanging from his right upper arm is just a little over 5mm in diameter, so you could fit some weapons on that. The left arm strut is not removable. The head is on a ball joint, and the waist does turn, although you can't leave the wing pack clipped in place. The shoulders are universal joints, and a panel on the shoulder rises up to give the arms room to rise up more to the sides. There's an upper arm swivel (and the struts are on their own swivels), hinge elbows, hinge wrists with the claws able to open. They have the weird spindly shape Megatron got stuck with, though, and it's hard to tell which, if any, is a thumb. The hips are ratcheting universal joints, but big spikes on the thighs keep them from clicking apart more than one click. There's a smooth swivel below each stiffly ratcheting knee hinge. The feet spring closed at the least provocation, but the springs aren't strong enough to make the figure tip over or anything. The landing gear wheels on the toes loosely hook under the shin ice panels, but the toes are all but guaranteed to pop down when you lift the figure off the table. The wing unit swings up to let you use its claw attack function in robot mode as well, and it's a bit more convincing an attack in this mode than in jet mode, since now it can reach out past the figure. Overall: They keep trying, and it keeps not really working. This is one of the better attempts at making Movie Megatron work as a toy, but it looks like they really lost the argument with Bay about making a design that could even come close to working as a toy. Still, there's a few ways this could have been better, notably the feet locking better and the wings having tech-molded bottom surfaces with paint to make them look solid with ice on them, rather than being made of ice. Dave Van Domelen, gets a sort of Archadis vibe here....