The big bad for the Season 1 finale gets a big $30 "Mega" toy. His alt mode is a tank... kinda. It's basically a turret on top of compressed robot parts. The sides have some fairly nifty tread details on them, but they're pretty clearly the legs (though to be fair, the shoulders and arms that make up the front end of the sides are less obvious). There's no back end to the tank at all; just the turret above what is fairly clearly the robot chest and pelvis folded on top of each other, and then the tread-legs on the sides. Of course it's a large simplistic 5-step changer so one has to take that into account when gauging your expectations, but even that said... they could've come up with a better tank mode than this. It's just very weak. The mold detailing is fairly sparse even by RID standards, primarily because of the size of the toy. You've got some of the RID2015 signature "trio of divots" here and there, and somewhat detailed tread wheels, but that's about it outside of the bare minimum. Even the whole turret just has a couple of basic details on it. I do like the "missle pack" details on the top of the side sections, though. The color scheme is almost entirely charcoal black and purple. Although I think a "pure" black would've worked better with the purple, the black still looks pretty decent as it's got quite a lot of glitter in it, so it looks semi-metallic. The purple is a fairly straightforward shade and contrasts fairly nicely against the black, though I wish it was metallic, too. Only the melee weapon is a semi-metallic plastic for some reason, but that's it. There's also some silver paint that can be seen on the front of the tank, but it's much more prominent in robot mode. The silver looks great against the black, though I wish it was used more liberally-- there's wide sections of the toy that are just unbroken black. The robot mode weapon sort of sticks on top of the turret rather oddly, not blending into the mode at all, but at least it stores somewhere.
    A special note here about the transformation-- it's only on a small section of the box and it's not entirely clear in what order the steps are. Apparently you have to turn and pull up on the cannon first and then right afterwards transform the legs. If you don't you WILL break the toy. In addition, gears in the chest can become misaligned very easily and break regardless. The parts that break are in or are connected to interior parts in the chest, so there is no way to correct this issue if it happens-- you're SOL. This is an absolutely HUGE oversight by Hasbro. I mean, I'm in my thirties and despite being careful, I broke the toy the first time I transformed it back from tank mode. (Hence the stock images used for this review.) This toy is meant for young kids, and to have something absolutely ESSENTIAL to the toy break SO easily and without any clear instructions on how to avoid it is a failure from Hasbro on the most basic level. The entire point of this toy is that a young kid can transform it without help. But with it breaking so easily even when carefully handled by a man in his 30s, what chance do little kids have of having this toy for long without it breaking!?
    Anyways, onto the robot mode. This mode actually looks prety good, with some fairly good proportions. I love the tank/shoulder sections that make for pretty bulky shoulders, and the arms, chest, and legs are pretty proportional. (The legs are just a touch long/wide, but it's not too bad.) The turret is a pretty big obvious piece of kibble behind his head, but with that being it for a simplified changer in terms of kibble that's actually not too bad. The colors are also broken up much better in this mode, with plenty of silver paint on the chest, abs, and upper legs, along with purple on the arms, lower legs, turret and weapon, and tread wheels. Again, the mold detailing is very minimal with only a few decorative details, but the black is certainly less prevalent. Unfortunately because of the transformation gimmick, his articulation is quite limited even by the standards of much of this simplistic gimmick size class-- his arms can move forward at the elbows. That's it. If you even move the elbows back much they spring-load back behind the shoulders, so he really can't pose much at all. The cannon nozzle comes off and can mount on one of his arms like a fusion cannon, and his other arm can hold his melee weapon-- a shame he can't use/aim them that much.
    The 5-step version of Megatronus has a pretty nice-looking robot mode, but that's about as much praise as you'll get out of me about this toy. He has basically no articulation, his tank mode is VERY weak, and worst of all, it's DIFFICULT TO TRANSFORM HIM WITHOUT BREAKING HIM PERMANENTLY. This is always a bad thing on ANY toy, but ESPECIALLY on a simplistic toy meant for young kids-- and one that's $30, no less-- this is an absolute failure. Not even completists should bother with this train wreck. Get the Legion class version if a kid wants an easy-to-transform version of this character.
 

Review by Beastbot

(Pics from Hasbro.)

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