by Diem » Fri May 05, 2017 10:42 pm
Alright, spent my first afternoon and first transform back-and-forth with this guy.
The transformation: I can see where people had difficulties and even breakages with this, and I'm glad that I had warning signs for what to look for. At the risk of stirring up Tumblr content, it's tough to get Megatron to keep his legs together.
I wasn't too concerned about paint chips. Orange streaks on Rodimus' sexy yellow bumper are one thing, black or gray chips on other gray is appropriate for the grizzled, old-because-he's-hard Megs. As such I slammed the silencer home without modifications and ended up with a few perfectly satisfactory battle scars.
The bungs: Nothing that about 10 minutes with my tool box to remove the two bungs and then about an hour with manicure tools to get out most of the orange-glue hybrid crap didn't fail to fix. There's a huge blob of cracked glue (at least I hope it's glue and not plastic) at the bottom of his barrel, but you gotta be doing gynecological coursework to see it.
The greebles and stuff: I love all the junk that comes with this guy. Mace with articulated chain for poses, and regular chain for awkward dangling? Great. Die-cast Key to Vector Sigma with a pleasant weight? Smashing. The fact that the blade of the light saber doubles as a shooting effect for the pistol is simple genius, as is the stock doubling as a flight stand. Prime Problem helmet? Great, now I've got to buy a second Optimus. Battle damaged face and chest? Great, now I've got to buy a second Megatron and whack everything but the face and chest with a hammer. "Urrrrrrgh" face and "Raaaarrrrrgh" face? Baller. Silencer-scope-stock field artillery combo? Nicely executed. Kremzee...wait, no Kremzeek? Well then what's the point?
The actual figure itself: I had The Fear, and I'm glad I had The Fear as it gave me the caution I needed. Fear aside, this could be comfortably mistaken for a non-transforming figure, as long as you block out some panel lines and don't look too hard at his back or bumflaps. He's very charismatic and looks like he just stepped out of the cartoon. His gun mode is a bit more panel-y than I'd like and you can't look through the scope any more unless I'm missing something, but the silencer and stock give a sense of power and push it just over MP-5's more robust gun mode. The selection of accessories is great, and while there's a lot of one-episode stuff I'd have liked to have seen (Heart of Cybertron? Pearl of Bahoudin? Cosmic rust asteroid chunk?) it doesn't feel like anything's missing. The price is a little hard to swallow, but it's hard not to attribute that at least partly to 3rd party not-Megatrons salting the market a touch.
All in all, a very much recommended figure (if you can still find it) if you don't care about paint chips.