Ultra Magnus' G1 form gets an update, and this time with the straight "vehicle to robot" transformation as seen in the TV show-- no white-Optimus-in-armor robot mode here! In vehicle mode, Ultra Magnus is a pretty faithful recreation of his G1 self, in terms of overall proportions and construction. As a side effect of the simplified, straight-to-main-robot transformation, however, the robot chest and waist behind the cab are painfully obvious from pretty much any angle except a full-on frontal view. The pieces that form the rear portion of this mode also don't peg together well at all, and come apart far too easily. The gun doesn't have any obvious place to peg into to stay out of the way in this mode, either. Some people have noticed that there's a small tab in the robot chest piece that will just barely let the gun's trigger slide into it, but this ends up having the gun stick upwards from right behind the cab like a sore thumb, not to mention that I worry about the paint on the gun rubbing off from the tight fit in the tab. The biggest problem with this mode, however, has to do with the fact that his roof pieces do not at ALL mesh with the pieces that form the rear part of this mode. There's a HUGE gap between the end of the roof pieces and the slots that it looks like they're supposed to slide into on the rear pieces-- the end result is there's absolutely nothing for the roof pieces to peg into, so they tend to just sort of hang there (good thing the ratchets that hold them up are fairly tight). Instead of following the instructions that create this problem by pushing the middle robot leg pieces all the way downwards on their slides housed in the rear pieces, instead I leave the middle robot leg pieces slid all the way upwards on their slides. This closes the gap considerably, but this also makes the vehicle mode a bit less level, as the back wheels are on a slightly lower plane than the front wheels. I think this is the lesser of the two evils, however, so I keep it this way. Otherwise, this mode look spretty nice-- some very nice mold detailing, especialy on the rear and front parts, and there's a decent amount of paint detailing as well, especially on the truck cab and on the part that becomes the chest in robot mode. A little more detailing on the roof pieces wouldn't have hurt, however. The actual white and blue color scheme is certainly very Autobot-y, and goes together very well-- the shade of metallic light blue looks especially nice, and the red and yellow highlights are great contrast colors.
    In robot mode Magnus looks much better, with few downsides. His only real problem proportion-wise is that his head is a bit small (with an odd sculpt-- what's up with those large optics?), and his arms are way too far back on the sides compared to the placement of his head. Also, his missile launchers on his arms have rather shallow pegs, so they tend to fall off of the arms too easily. It's a pretty faithful recreation of G1 Magnus, however, and quite a feat considering that the middleman "white Prime" is bypassed entirely. He's also pretty big for a 6" Titanium which is always a good thing. Ultra Magnus has decent articulation-- he can move at the head, shoulders, elbows (at two points), wrists, waist, hips (at three points, though the side-to-side movement is rather limited), and knees. His backwards knee articulation is very limited, however-- this is due to the fact that his middle leg pieces were actually assembled backwards. Unfortunately, this is very hard to rectify, as you have to take apart the entire leg in order to swipe the parts, so unless you're very experienced at this kind of stuff (and I'm certainly not), I strongly suggest you just live with the reduced articulation and leave it alone. Also, if you're curious, Ultra Magnus' diecast parts are his lower legs and chest.
    Titanium G1 Magnus is a very interesting update to the character, given that there's no white Prime component. It's a real cool update to the character with very nice colors and proportions, but some fairly major QA problems and the huge gap in the roof near the rear of his vehicle mode keep him from getting into the 9.0+ "must buy" category, unfortunately. Still a fairly nice toy, but be aware that he's not as good as he looks from a casual glance.

Review by Beastbot

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