Dave's Transformers Kingdom Rant: Leader Class Megatron

Megatron (Beast) (T.rex)

Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Gen/LMegatronK

Yes, the official name on the package is "Megatron (Beast)".

CAPSULE

$50 price point.

Megatron (Beast): There's a significant breakage point that can happen
upon removal from the package, so be careful. Otherwise, it seems to be
trying for a Masterpiece design on a Leader budget, and it doesn't quite
manage it. The rubberized plastic makes for extra hassle and looks worse in
beast mode than a simple rigid plastic shell would have. Finally, some
questionable color choices don't really help. Mildly recommended if yours
doesn't break, but I'm personally kinda annoyed with mine.

RANT

Packaging: Same basic shape and size as Earthrise Leader boxes, but with
the Kingdom trade dress. The box front and angled side have the crashed
Nemesis in a blasted jungle as the background. The new more skeletal
Predacon symbol is used throughout the packaging, and the cave painting on
the back is more or less a T.rex. The inner tray is the same sort of
minimal-plastic cardboard rig as seen in Deluxes and Voyagers in Kingdom.

PREDACON: MEGATRON (BEAST)
Assortment: WFC-K10
Altmode: T.rex
Transformation Difficulty: 27 steps
Previous Name Use: Technically none with "Beast" as part of it.
Previous Mold Use: None

Packaging: Twelve ties hold the robot mode into the card tray, which has
a hole for the backpack bits to poke through. A rubber band looped around
the body and head twice tries to keep the head from falling backwards.
Yay, I broke off a piece of the backpack when trying to get it out of
the tray, stripping a screw that's super hard to get at in the first place.
Hell, the screw has no slot, so I can't even try to tighten it. I ended up
gluing it in place very carefully.
http://www.dvandom.com/images/MegaRexFlaw.JPG for how it looked before I
glued it back together.
I got the Autobot Ark card with this. So, out of all the wave 1 toys, I
got three Arks, three Blackarachnias, a Dinobot, and no Optimus Prime.

Robot Mode: Normally, I transform a toy back and forth a few times
before I start to review, but I'm worried that something else will break when
I try to transform this the first time, so I'm writing the robot mode review
before any transformation. Mold-wise, it does an okay job of looking like
the animation model, although it has to fold up a LOT of crap in the backpack
to even get close. They went with the toy's beast mode colors, so the light
tan and dull green paints from the dinosaur end up making the robot mode look
off, even before you get to a really weird decision: deep magenta instead of
metallic violet. Yeah, the 1996 cartoon had a lot of excessively shiny bits,
but if you subtract the reflectivity from Megatron in the show, the resulting
color is only a darker version of the purple of the dino hide. Instead, this
toy has a garish reddish purple or magenta color on most of the robot parts
that manages to clash horribly with the green and tan bits. The result is
just plain ugly, and if the mold were any good I'd recommend passing on this
and getting T.wrecks instead...but the mold ain't that great either.
Anyway, the toy has the dino leg boots, the right arm ends in just the
T.rex head, and while there's technically a left hand it's kinda buried in
the unremovable tail-claw weapon. He does have hip-pad weapons, although
they're quite small and molded with dual barrels rather than being based on
the "anchor launchers" the 90s toy had. And yes, BotBots Quackles is the
right size for this figure.
7.5" (19cm) tall at the head, with the backpack kibble rising a little
bit higher. A mix of purples, light tan, dull green, silver, dark gunmetal,
and black. Dark magenta plastic is used on the head, torso, belt area, left
forearm, thighs, inside of the T.rex mouth, and a LOT of support bits for the
rubbery plastic shell parts (such as the hip launchers, the claw thumb, and a
lot of the backpack). Light violet plastic is used on the cores of the
shoulders, the T.rex neck, the forearm-cover part of the tail, the inner
layer of some tail flaps attached to the forearm cover, and the hip and ankle
joints. A rubberized light violet plastic is used for the T.rex head, the
outer surfaces of the shoulders, hip pads, shins, and feet, the bulk of the
claw thumb, and probably the outer surface of the tail tip. A lot of the
backpack kibble is also rubberized. I guess the goal was to make everything
feel a little more organic but it barely feels any different. (At least the
tabs and slots are on rigid plastic rather than rubberized.) Dark gunmetal
plastic is used for the upper arms, the lower pelvis, a joint in the tail/
claw bit, a strut and some hinges inside the back kibble, and the collar
area. It might also be used on the front of the head, but I think that's
just paint. Bone white plastic forms the core of the feet (poking out as
claws) and probably the cores of the shins, plus part of the knee joints.
There's also some white plastic clips on the sides of the abdomen and some
bits visible inside the hip socket area, inside the torso, and hinges on some
of the backpack kibble.
A lot of dark gunmetal paint with a decent match to the plastic. Most
of the front of the head (probably), a lot of detail on teh chest, some of
the belt front, details on the thigh fronts, and the barrels on the hip
guns. The face is painted purple (not quite the same as any of the plastics)
with red eyes, and a tiny yellow Predacon symbol on the forehead. There's
light tan paint with airbrush-style edges on tops of the shoulders, most of
the claw, and various bits of visible backpack kibble. A dull green is
similarly applied to the back of the forearm, the inner curve of the main
claw (almost none of the actual purple plastic is visible between the tan and
green), the top of the T.rex neck, and other kibble bits on the bac. There's
silver paint on the collar of teeth and some vents on the pecs. The T.rex
head has red eyes and white painted teeth and gums.
The neck is a restricted ball joint, the waist a smooth swivel. The
shoulders are swivels where the shoulderpads meet the torso, and then the
upper arms are hinged to lift up to the sides. Both arms have mid-bicep
swivels and hinge elbows. The right hand is the T.rex head, with an
up-and-down hinge at the base of the head, and the lower jaw on its own hinge
(it can open very far, but the cheek skin pieces only cover the gap to about
45 degrees). The robot left wrist is hinged to go up. The claw has a
universal joint on the "fingers" piece, and a simple hinge on the "thumb"
piece. Universal joint hips, the weapon pods can be pulled out and rotate on
swivels. The knees have swivels at the top and hinges in the usual spot.
The ankles are double hinged, mostly forwards and backwards and a little side
to side.
The left fist can hold 5mm pegs, and the throat of the dino head is a
5mm socket (TLK Leader Megatron's big flame blast looks pretty good coming
out of it). There's 5mm sockets in the soles of the feet, and a 3mm socket
in the back of the pelvis. That's basically it. There's some 4mm sockets on
the thighs, but they're for locking the hip panels into one of two
positions.

Transformation: So many rubbery panels that have to be massaged into
place. So many bits snapped together so firmly I worry I'll break the toy
AGAIN. Voyager Optimus Primal might be a decent if simplified update of the
original, but this is a big hassle in just about every way. Ben Yee's had no
trouble with his, but I'm not exactly sanguine. Here goes....
Okay, got it done without anything else breaking off. A lot of the tabs
hold weakly enough that transforming one bit will pop another apart, there's
loads of gaps even in the best case, and a few of the softer panels got
seriously bent by time spent in robot mode and took a long time to straighten
out. Getting some of the stuff unsnapped from robot mode took a lot more
force than I was comfortable exerting, especially unfolding the torso at the
waist. The hips didn't feel like they were going to break, they just took
enough force that my hands hurt.
Going back to robot mode is MUCH easier, although the pelvis hinges are
still a big hassle.

Altmode: Well, it's a big purple T.rex, although all the panels and
seams and rubberized flesh failing to line up neatly makes it look like some
sort of stitched together frankenbeast. To some extent, seams and gaps are
unavoidable, but the use of all that rubberized plastic makes them worse.
They did try to compensate a bit with the sides of the neck, using springs to
hold those panels in place, but...it doesn't really work aesthetically. At
least it has a modern horizontal spine pose and not a tail-dragger.
11.75" (30cm) from snout to tail tip, rising to about 6.25" (16cm) above
the surface, give or take. Most of the exterior is rubbery light purple
plastic, with dull green paint along the spine and light tan on the
underside, although the edges don't always line up at the boundary with
unpainted purple. The forelimbs are rubberized light purple plastic with
bone white cores for the shoulder sockets.
The dino head retains most of its range of motion, the tail tip can wag
back and forth a bit, and the firelimbs have ball and socket shoulders.
Technically the legs have all the articulation from robot mode, but moving
them too much opens up gaps...and it doesn't take too much to get the center
of mass out past the toe claws. The neck can look back and forth a little
before the side panels fail to keep up.