Beast Machines: Megatron
Oh boy. Well, at least they made a Megatron toy. Okay, maybe that's too harsh.
First off, Megs isn't a bad toy, he's actually a pretty cool deluxe toy. The bad thing is
you have to pay a mega price.
Megatron is packaged as a mega sized toy, in a mega box (like Tankor, Cheetor and Rattrap), but
even while he's still in the box you can tell he's not really that big. He's got a skinny little
dragon body with the majority of the box being taken up by his wings, if you want to call them
that. Just like in the show Megs is a red dragon, how he was at the end of Beast Wars, except
smaller. Actually, the dragon mode is pretty cool, and could be cooler if they had stuck on
the wings the TM2 had instead of these crappy things.
The wings are big and gray and hinged and look fairly stupid. Early reports were that they
were loose hinge joints as well, making them flop all over the place. I must have a newer
version since I don't have that problem with them. However, wing crappiness aside, Megs is a
pretty cool beast mode.
Transformation is pretty cool, and actually kind of complicated (though nowhere near that
of the TM2 version), which is something I suppose. Essentially you rotate his body, which
becomes his chest, which unfolds to reveal his head. His dragon tail and head become his
arms, with the tail folding up to reveal a lone hand (Megtron can never seem to get two hands).
In robot mode his wings still sit stupidly on his back, and he now faces the problem of having
his stomach explode since it's made up of his dragon arms. They just kind of sit there with
nothing holding them into place except luck and a bit of friction. It was a clever thought I guess,
but it wasn't pulled off very well.
Ah, but there's more. His wings fold over his body (if you flaten his arms at his sides) to
form his cloak, made popular in the show. Sadly they decided to put a picture of the show's
cloaked Megs on the box, so I spent a good ten minutes trying to get his arms to stick out
of the cloak like in the show. Bad idea from Hasbro's package design team there.
Oh, and then there's the inevitable comparison to TM2 Megatron. Dragon mode is absolutly dwarfed
by TM2 Megatron, and put to shame as well. Robot mode is also dwarfed, as they both lose roughly
the same height ratio to their beast counterparts. Can't compare cloaked modes since TM2 Megatron
doesn't have one, though I suppose you could compare TM2 Megs' crappy vehicle mode to the
cloaked mode, in which case there's a close call as to how cool it is. I guess BM Megs wins
there, but only because the vehicle mode is really horrible.
So, all in all, Megatron isn't a bad toy, per say. He has a neat looking beast mode, and an
okay robot mode, it's just the damned size and price tag (though I got mine on clearence at Walmart
for $6, hehe, they had a ton of Megatrons) that will no doubt annoy the hell out of you. If you can get
one at a lower price, then I suppose it's worth the cash, though it's inferior to TM2 Megatron
who has the better size and is only $5 more. It's your call.
