Dave's Transformers Legacy Rant: Leader Wave 3

Transmetal II Megatron (Dragon)

Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Legacy/TM2Megatron

This is an homage to one of my favorite Beast Wars toys, so it has big
shoes to fill.

https://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Phase3/IIUltra2 - Original TM2 Megs

CAPSULE

$55 on Amazon.

Transmetal II Megatron: While it doesn't impress me as much as the
original, it's just as big and lacks chrome (which is a plus in my book).
The dragon mode holds together more solidly than the robot mode.
Recommended.

RANT

Packaging: Same as previous Legacy Leaders. Oddly, the box uses the
Transformers: Prime version of the Predacon symbol (the sort of a dragon head
thing), but the QR code's page uses the standard insect head symbol. As
usual, due to the weird shape, it's best to open from the bottom, if you open
from the top you need to also undo some tape along the side to get the inner
tray out.
Note, this will be re-released in Legacy Evolution packaging, and in
fact that might be the one that actually makes it to stores. Evolution
packaging has dropped the QR codes.

PREDACON: TRANSMETAL II MEGATRON
Assortment: F3063
Altmode: Dragon
Transformation Difficulty: 33 steps
Previous Name Use: None with that designator
Previous Mold Use: None
Function: Predacon Commander
Origin Universe: Not listed on webpage
Signature Weapon: Fire breath - Breaths pyro-beam tornadoes that unleash an
inferno of flames.

After fusing his spark with his namesake's and being thrown into a
volcano, Megatron emerges more powerful than ever with a new dragon alt
mode.

STR 10+ INT 9.9 SPD 10+ FRB 10+

Yeah, techspecs that year used a lot of 10+ for the leaders and had the
tenths place on some numbers.

The original had a third pseudo-mode as was common in Transmetal and
Transmetal II toys, but they did not attempt to replicate that feature here.
What could be done with a $20 price point's budget in the late 90s cannot be
done with a $55 toy's budget today. (It's not just inflation, I strongly
suspect Hasbro's factories were MASSIVELY exploiting workers in the late 20th
Century and nowadays they can't do so as blatantly without losing their
workforce.)

Packaging: Same kind of plain brown cardboard inner tray of other
non-window Legacy figures. Five multiply-knotted rattan strings hold the
robot mode to the tray, and the fire breath piece is held in by folds of the
tray.

Robot Mode: Big, red, with fiery wings and a dragon head for a left arm.
That had to be a confusing upgrade for Megs, who had just gotten used to
having his right arm being a T.rex head or tail (okay, Transmetal Megatron
could use both hands, but only sometimes). The dragon tail is attached to
the back of the helmet and moves with it, making a sort of ponytail
(dragontail?) effect. While it doesn't exactly have a Spark Crystal like
later Beast Wars toys had, there is a clear orange lens in the center of the
chest that has the same basic aesthetic purpose. On the plus side, the
dragon claws gripping the chest are the actual dragon claws rather than a
fake detail...on the minus side, they dislodge easily. Also, the pelvis
doesn't hold together all the well, especially given the ratcheting hip
joints. The feet are very large and do not have any hinges, keeping them as
very stable platforms in either mode.
One thing this has over the TM2 Ultra is size, being a little over 8"
(20.5cm) tall at the top of the head in robot mode, an inch taller than the
Ultra (although the older toy had wings rising significantly higher above the
head than this toy, the total "fit on a shelf" height of this toy is 8.25"
(21cm). He's very red, with orange, gold, and purple accents, basically
going for a lava motif. (Science note: because of how our eyes work, when we
look at really bright red or orange stuff like lava, anything that would
otherwise look black instead looks purple because the "visual purple" in our
eyes is overwhelmed.) Most of the toy is darkish red plastic, although as
usually happens with Transformers there's a few subtly different shades that
are really only obvious under UV light. Some of the variations are not
symmetric, suggesting two different batches of one of the kinds of plastic,
using different colorants. Like, some of the softer red plastic (not bendy,
just less rigid) is orange under UV and some is light purple, but sometimes
the left side piece will be one color and its mirror pair the other. Anyway,
weird UV stuff aside, there's amber clear plastic on the helmet lightpiping
and visor, yellow-orange clear plastic on the chest Spark, deep orange on the
fire blast...and I suspect they might all be amber with varying thicknesses
or clear orange paint on them. The wings are a pale yellow clear plastic,
although the more of the pieces are overlapped the more orange it looks.
Dull gold plastic is used on the claws gripping the chest, the scute parts of
the dragon neck, the dragon horns, the underside scutes of the dragontail on
the helmet, and the triple claw at the end of it.
Gloss warm purple paint is airbrushed onto the chest, forearms, wing
roots, kneecaps, and the top of the dragon snout. It's also painted more
nearly onto the robot eyes (the lightpiping ends up looking red under light
strong enough to shine through), the top surfaces of the dragontail and
dragon neck arm. A lighter and more metallic purple paint is airbrushed onto
the top wing blade, the one that ends up raised the highest when the wings
are spread. The face is silver with metallic almost-black on the helmet
parts around it, and gold paint in some vents next to the cheeks. The teeth
have a black zigzag line detailing them. Gold paint is also used on the
claws flanking the helmet, the nose spikes on the dragon head, the dragon
teeth, two small spikes on the right forearm, the claws on the feet (four
toes, one heel), and...the left kneecap spike. No paint on the right
kneecap, the molding is not symmetric, Transmetal 2 was all about asymmetric
mixing of organic and mechanical details, and this toy follows that
aesthetic. The dragon eyes are gold with dark gunmetal backs under the
eyes. If there's a Predacon or Decepticon symbol on this mode, I can't find
it.
The neck is a simple swivel, limited in range of motion by the fact the
dragontail can't swing past the tops of the wings. The dragontail itself has
an up and down hinge where it joins the helmet, and three restricted ball
joints along its length. The claw at the end is fixed in place, no joints.
The waist is a hard-ratcheting swivel. The shoulders look different but both
have soft ratcheting swivels and smooth "lift to the sides" hinges. The
right arm has an upper bicep swivel, double hinge elbow, and a wrist hinged
to let the hand swing down. The left arm has four restricted ball joints on
the dragon neck, and the dragon mouth is hinged to open up. And yes, it can
turn so that Megatron argues with his own hand. The hips are universal
joints with hard ratchets for the forwards/ backwards swivels and smooth
lift-to-sides hinges. The ratchets are strong enough that the pelvis tends
to pop apart before the joint will turn. There's swivels just above the
hinged knees, the ankles are a combination of forwards-backwards ratcheting
hinges and smooth sideways hinges for keeping the feet flat. There's also a
hinge mid-shin for transformation, but you can also just give the robot mode
a more digitigrade look if you want. The wing roots are hinged to flap, and
each of the five blades in a wing are on semi- independent hinges. There's
connected bars and notches that pull the lower blades out to an appropriate
angle when the top blade is lifted up.
The left fist can hold a 5mm peg, and there's a 5mm socket in the
dragon's mouth. There's a 5mm socket on the sole of each foot. There's a
V-notch gap between the pelvis pieces in back that holds a 3mm peg fairly
securely as long as the pelvis stays together. The screw holes in the backs
of the thighs will hold 5mm pegs. That's basically it, 3mm aren't present at
all.
From the box, I thought the fire breath might be a reuse of The Last
Knight Leader Megatron's flame blasts, but while it has some similarities it
is an entirely new mold. The instructions say to use it in the right hand as
a club in this mode. It's 4.25" (10.5cm) long, a bit shorter than TLK
Megatron's flame blasts, and narrower at only 2cm wide at its thickest. The
dragon mouth socket makes it point down somewhat, so the only way to have it
point at a same-size enemy in this mode is to have the arm raised, as the
ball joints in the arm can't bend it upwards at all, it has to lift at the
shoulder. So, yeah...flaming club.

Transformation: Okay, I did have to check the instructions to get the
dragon hips transformed properly. Without help, I got the rest into the
right places and got a pretty unstable pelvis with the robot face poking out
under the cloaca, which is non-ideal on both structural and aesthetic levels.
Mind you, I could tell I was missing something, because there were tabs and
slots that weren't used in robot mode that I had failed to find a use for.
It took a bit of excessive force to get the pelvis properly connected with
all the folding panels and extra tabs, but it was one of those cases where
the result is very stable, rather than "struggle to get it connected and then
it pops out on its own," which sometimes happens. The way it's set up makes
it hard to see if you've got things lined up, though, so there's a chance
that applying excessive force will just warp a tab, so be careful.
Going back to robot mode, I saw my mistake in trying to get the neck
piece locked down. The tabs and slots around the collar are not meant to
hold it (the parts on the collar piece itself are for dragon mode's pelvis),
there's a rectangular tab and slot on the underside of the collar that needs
to be seated properly. Technically the dragon chest piece has a tab that
goes into a slot on the back, but at least for mine it's very hard to keep
both things connected at once. Probably a hinge pin driven in a tenth of a
millimeter off true or something.