The Energon Pub

Decades after the toy was released, a forgotten part of its history has been uncovered. And so has Megatron's face!

The Beast Machines "Mega" Megatron was never a very popular figure (although I learned to respect it little more when Titanium Series Optimal Optimus came out and the two paired as diminutive rivals) and it was largely due to some strange decisions with sculpt and deco. It turns out things used to be even stranger! I've recently acquired the resin prototype for the figure (which per the original box from Takara was actually designed as a Deluxe, not a Mega) and it had not one but 3 robot heads included. One of the heads was the same masked face that we saw on the final production, but the other 2* were an unmasked variant! I don't have any further information about the head sculpt or why it went unused, but it was a pleasant surprise!

Fans familiar with the final production toy might notice that this resin prototype also has the carpus and thumb mirrored on opposite wings from what we ended up getting.

The prototype, along with others, will be on display at RoboCon June 9th-10th. https://www.facebook.com/PetesRoboCon/posts/621695531507670

*Both of the unmasked heads are the same, just one is painted gray and the other left bare resin

Interesting. Judging from the broken part on the side of his face that's not even yellow resin molded, is it? It looks like a hand sculpted piece? Is the other head like that? I wonder how early in they backed off from that? I wonder if they had originally planned for this to be his head on the show and after changes were made quickly went with the show accurate version, or if they planned for a separate helmet to put on this head?

Emerje

I kinda like the look of that head. It reminds me of the old "Ninja Turtle snarl" that all the Transmetal toys had.

Sabrblade wrote:I kinda like the look of that head. It reminds me of the old "Ninja Turtle snarl" that all the Transmetal toys had.

My favorite example of that came from the bear mold (Polar Claw et al).



There's a lot of sneering figures, like most Megatrons, but these guys look like they're hamming it up for school picture day.

Emerje