Megatron's helicopter mode is very poor, even taking into consideration the size. Basically the whole robot mode is hanging off the bottom side, completely ruining any illusion that this helicopter is flight-worthy. It's particuarly bad near the back end, where the robot legs are clearly thicker and larger than the helicopter tail piece. On the plus side, the cockpit and wings are well-sculpted, and the rotors spin quite well. The color scheme is also quintessentially Megatron, with black and a dull gray being the main colors, with red serving as a nice accent color. It's not the most eye-catching color scheme, but it is, of course, Megatron's. The gray is a bit more of a milky, slightly purplish gray this time around, but it's small enough of a change to still make the toy look like Megatron while keeping it slightly unique. Pressing down on the light red part of Megatron's tailfin will (mostly) automatically transform him, with all that's still required being unfolding his arms and seperating his legs. However, out of all the Activators Megatron accidentally transforms the easiest, as his pieces don't seem to clamp together quite well enough to resist the pull of his internal springs sometimes. Needless to say, this can get pretty annoying.
    Megatron's robot mode is the better of the two modes, but it still suffers from some noticeable kibble problems-- namely, the wings, rotors, tailfin, and the cockpit hang off of his back. (In other words, the entire alternate mode-- again.) However, it tends to tuck away a bit better than in vehicle mode, with the cockpit and tail sections folded onto each other fairly snugly, and the wings behind the arms is actually show-accurate, so I can't fault the designers there. Having the rotors still on the wings (they can't be detached) is a tad annoying, but that's fairly minor. His core robot mode looks excellent, both in proportions and paint apps-- all of his major details are painted, and he looks pretty much like he does in the show. His head, arms, and chest are molded with particularly crisp, accurate detailing. The only thing I don't like I about the paint is how they only painted the front of the legs black-- it looks odd seeing the sides gray, why not just mold the lower legs in black instead? Megatron also has great articulation, particularly for an Activator-- he can move side-to-side at the neck, as well as the shoulders (at three places), elbows, wrists (!), hips, knees, and ankles. The aforementioned backpack does limit his poseability a little, but other than that he's aces.
    Activator Megatron is one of the weaker toys, with each of his modes basically carrying the other mode either on its underside or its back, which hardly gives him points for an inventive transformation. His helicopter mode is particularly weak, but his robot mode looks pretty darn good if you ignore the kibble. If you can possibly afford the Leader class toy, I'd get that instead, just because it doesn't have as much of a kibble problem-- however, if you can't afford that, this is an okay substitute (at least in robot mode), given it's the only other toy of his Earth mode.

Review by Beastbot

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