(NOTE: Because this is a repaint, this is not a full-blown review. This mainly covers any changes made to the mold and the color scheme, and merely compares it to the Prime voyager Dreadwing toy. For a review on the mold itself, read the review of the Prime voyager Dreadwing figure here.)

    Megaplex-- for better or worse-- closely follows the color scheme of his original Machine Wars toy, with a mostly light gray and pale bluish-green color scheme. If you've been following my toy reviews for any real length of time, you know that I really don't like the bland, light milky shade of gray that's used on a lot of Transformers in place of a darker, more metallic shade of the color that I feel would work a lot better on toys that are supposed to be metal robots. This goes double for expensive BotCon exclusives-- having light milky gray being such a huge portion of Megaplex's color scheme is major turn-off for me in terms of the color scheme, regardless of how accurate it is to the original toy. That said, the dull green does complement and contrast against the gray pretty well, and I appreciate that it's spread fairly evenly across the figure. For all of the "bendy" plastic, FunPub added another badly-needed color-- a rather pale shade of blue, which complements the bluish green excellently and looks pretty nice. There's also a very nice shade of translucent white used for the cockpit and other transparent plastic bits on Megaplex, and it's a very unique, nice shade-- it's pretty much the exact shade of a particular flavor of Gatorade Frost, if you know what I'm talking about. A fair amount of black is also used on Megaplex, mostly for the stripe detailing on the top of his main wings and tailfins, which helps immensely to add visual interest to the vehicle mode, Unfortunately, this black is not painted on the underside of the wings or really given any real presence at all in the robot mode beyond the lining around the cockpit window. This makes the robot mode look very, very bland in comparison-- FunPub really dropped the ball here by not adding stripes to the wing undersides, or more black paint apps or just... SOMETHING else. On the other hand, I do like how they added the Decepticon symbols over the greenish-blue triangles on the wings that were on the original toy, and adding this same sort of "Elite Decepticon" symbol to Megaplex's chest makes him look important. As one final color addition, Megaplex has a good amount of his face painted white, which contrasts with the blue pretty well.
    Megaplex has no mold changes-- which is real bummer, since he NEEDS a new face sculpt. Apparently FunPub got access to the Prime Dreadwing mold rather late in the process, and didn't have time to make a new head mold-- which, in my opinion, meant they should have trashed the idea. The entire IDEA behind Megaplex is that he's a clone of (Machine Wars) Megatron-- given that he doesn't have the other usual Megatron features, having a Megatron-y face was VITAL, and instead he's got the normal Dreadwing face, which just doesn't work for his character. Additionally, the "Powerizer" weapon that came with the Dreadwing mold is missing, in apparently some miscommunication with the factory. This is a double bummer, as perched on Megaplex's arm and extended, it could have called back to G1 Megs' fusion cannon. Combine these two and there is literally nothing on this toy that calls back to Megatron beyond being gray.
    Botcon Megaplex is one of FunPub's biggest missteps in a while, especially given how central of a role he plays in their Machine Wars set. The color scheme-- though accurate to the original toy-- could have used more paint apps and/or something additional to make him look less bland in robot mode in particular. The lack of any Megatron-esque details-- such as no new head and the lack of a fusion cannon lookalike-- are also major missteps, whether FunPub's fault or not. As such, he just doesn't really fill the role he's supposed to at all, and just looks like a blander Dreadwing. He unfortunately joins his fellow boxset pal Skywarp as being one of the weakest exclusives of 2013.

Review by Beastbot

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