Review: #890
Name: Megatron
Brand: Transformers
Allegiance: Decepticon
Line: Generations - Studio Series
Year of Release: 2025
Size Class: Leader (Wave 19)
Mold Status: new
TANK MODE:
While this Megatron is based upon the G1 character (specifically his appearance in the 1986 movie), given the original transformed into a gun and that is a sensitive matter nowadays, Megatron transforms (expectedly) into a tank now.
It's a grey tank that looks fine from the front. Although the turret is a bit iffy, as well as the back, where you can see the robot shins, given that they're a different color.
While he may look like he has proper treads, he doesn't. There are small plastic wheels underneath that allows him to roll on a flat surface.
The turret can rotate, but cannot lift up.
The robot weapons can peg onto tank mode. The gun next to the cannon, and the sword on the side.
This is the weaker mode but it is still a decent tank mode, even more so when you see the robot mode and understand how much they managed to achieve in this mode.
TRANSFORMATION:
Megatron has a neat transformation, and it is satisfying complex, without being frustrating. There is a lot happening and the transformation relies somewhat heavily on panels folding up and shifting around to hide all the tank pieces. The sides of the tank mode fold up to form his legs, and the turret are his arms. The rest of the tank forms the torso. There is a minor bit of partsforming as the cannot detaches, and it is in two pieces, one for his arm cannon and the other as a replica of the gun barrel that you manually attach to his back.
ROBOT MODE:
Simply put, Megatron's robot mode is astounding. The designer did such an amazing job at hiding all the tank pieces that you'd be hard pressed to know that Megatron actually transformed, if you hadn't already known.
You might think that maybe all the kibble is hidden in his backpack but this is a super clean robot mode. There's absolutely no kibble at all, and the only tank elements that you can see are the treads that's folded into his legs, and even then, you can only see it from the behind.
The head sculpt is great, with a painted white face.
He is bigger than a typical Voyager in robot mode, which is what you'd want (given that he is a Leader), but he is still somewhat small (you'll notice how much empty space there still is when he's in the packaging), but he makes up for it with his more complicated transformation.
He's very posable, with nearly everything being a hinge joint. He can move his head, shoulders, elbows, wrists, waist, hips, knees and ankles.
He comes with two weapons, a miniature replicate of his original G1 gun mode, and a laser sword.
He can hold the gun in his hand, and it looks good, although a bit small (but then again, the gun is only a pistol).
And same goes for his sword, which he can hold in either hand. They opted to paint the sword rather than cast it in transparent plastic, so that the colors pop out a lot more.
Both weapons can peg on this back if you don't want to use them.
Of course he has his arm cannon as his biggest and more powerful weapon. It's perfectly scaled and not unwieldy at all.
Looking at Megatron from the side, you'll come to see just how clean the robot mode is.
The gun barrel on his back is actually a separate piece that was the tip of the tank's turret. It's only there for screen accuracy, and given it detaches, does felt like it was cheating.
The shade of grey used is fantastic, and nowhere near the usual boring "Hasbro grey" that a lot of figures use.
Given his transformation, Megatron feels really good and solid in the hand. There are no visible hollow parts, which makes his feel a lot more premium that some others in the Studio Series line.
It truly is impressive how well this robot mode was designed.
OVERALL:
Megatron is an astounding feat of engineering. We haven't had such a well designed figure in the Studio Series for a while (especially given the recent lazier efforts we've had). It's like all the budget went to this one figure, and what's more, there was enough left over to give him a dazzling amount of paint applications. The robot mode is simply amazing with the lack of kibble, and level of screen accuracy. It's just a shame that given such a popular character, and such a wonderful toy, that he was relatively hard to find when he was released.
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