(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 Cybertron Defense Red Alert. For a review on the mold itself, read the review of Cybertron Defense Red Alert here.)

    Megatron's pre-Beast Wars form is, fittingly, a bit honking missile launcher. Guess he must've missed the huge gun when he got his beast form, eh? Anyways, the color scheme is definitely 100% Megatron, though the amounts of the colors are changed a bit to make the colors more suitable for a vehicle. Granted, light purple isn't the first color I'd pick for a military vehicle, but it's not the last, either. There's plenty of Megatron's trademark light purple, with the amount of dark purple used being a bit less than on the original toy. There's also green used, but substantially less of it this time-- there's only a few light green spots visible only in robot mode, though the transparent part of his big cannon is a nice forest green color. The new color to be used in a much greater amount on this toy is a purplish shade of black, which works with the other colors quite nicely-- probably more than straight black would have, in fact. Red and silver are the other two accent colors used, and they help to give some lighter colors to this otherwise mostly darker-colored figure. Overall, all of the colors fit together very well, and my only real complaint regarding any of them is that they aren't the most suitable for a military vehicle, as said before, but this is hardly something the designers can change when Megatron's colors were already pretty much picked for them-- they worked well with what they had. A little interesting nugget of info-- the "MGT-1" on the side of the vehicle mode is an obscure nod to Larry DiTillio (I BELIEVE, but it could have been Bob Forward), one of the main story editors on the Beast Wars TV series, who said-- unofficially, mind you-- that "MGT" was Megatron's pre-Beast Wars name, as he supposed they all had "machine-like" names before they acquired beast modes.
    Megatron is one of the lucky ones to get a head remold, which is pretty much spot-on with his original Beast Wars head. All of the mold and paint details are in the right places, however, there's something odd going on with the eyes. They're far too long, they go almost halfway to the back of his head! I'm not sure what the person that carved the head mold was thinking when they did that, but it looks rather weird and off a bit. Of note is that the electronics in Cybertron Defense Red Alert have been scrapped for this toy, to keep the costs from getting too astronomical. Also, like most of the other exclusives at this year's Botcon, the Cyber Key used in the Cybertron version has instead been replaced with a solid gray Planet X Key bearing a Predacon symbol and a painted bit of Golden Disk detailing over the main part of the Cyber Key, hence the new name "Golden Disk Key". Also of note is that in addition to being a Botcon 2006 exclusive, you could only buy Megatron for a whopping $95 with Waspinator at the convention-- it was not available free to preregistrants or available at all to those who did not attend the convention. Megatron is limited to 500 pieces, so he's worth a pretty penny.
    Darksyde Megatron (so named for the Predacon ship, which is now officially named) is a very, very cool repaint of an already A+ toy, and as one of the most beloved and unique TF characters to boot. Of course, he's very expensive, but out of all of the Botcon exclusives released in 2006, I think he's the best. The new head mold could use a little work, though.

Review by Beastbot

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