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Dave's Transformers Age of the Primes Rant: Leader wave 1

Megatronus the Fallen (flaming tank)

Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/AoP/LMegatronus

Wavemate is G2 Universe Grimlock, and as nice as that mold was I don't really want more of it. And yes, "Megatronus the Fallen" is his proper name
on the box. Versions of this character has been sold as The Fallen (Titanium Series, Revenge of the Fallen) and as Megatronus (RiD15), as well as being
part of PotP Bomb-Burst, but this is visually an update of the original Titanium Series toy, and the first time it's been "Megatronus the Fallen" all together. (The Megatronus in TF One is dead, but never Fell, I guess he was spared that fate, unless the plan was for him to have survived and gone evil
as the antagonist of a future movie.)


CAPSULE

$55 price point.

Megatronus the Fallen: Good robot mode, but while the transformation
isn't overly difficult it also fails to result in a stable tank turret. They really didn't play-test this toy. Can't really go over mildly recommended
for a toy that absolutely needs a 3P accessory of some sort to make the
vehicle mode work.


RANT

I'm just gonna call him Megatronus except in the info bit going
forwards.

Packaging: Big ol' Leader class window box with Age of the Primes trade dress. Appropriately, the right side panel includes the section of the Hall
of Primes that has Megatronus himself in it. The back of the box has an
inset showing the cannon mounted on his arm (the main robot pic has a sword
and axe), and another inset has his relic, named in Cybertronian glyphs as "Requiem Blaster," because I guess that name's gonna get recycled forever.
It does not split into Mini-Cons, though.
As usual these days, the instructions are loose behind the inner tray.


THE THIRTEEN: MEGATRONUS THE FALLEN
Assortment: G0486/G0471
Altmode: Cybertronian tank
Transformation Difficulty: 38 steps
Previous Name Use: None exactly as used here
Previous Mold Use: None
Origin Universe: Aligned/G1/Dreamwave

Packaging: A double tie across the chest and five more single ties hold the robot to the inner tray. The sword is secured very tightly in a corner fold flap in the upper left, and in trying to push it free I actually
launched it so hard it nearly hit the ceiling. The axe/naginata haft is in
the upper right corner but I managed to slide that out without projectile motion ensuing. The lower left has the Requiem Blaster held in by two ties, while in the lower right is a tissue bundle with the trident head, tank
cannon barrel, a small rocket launcher pod (annoyingly using a 5.5mm socket), and flame effects. Interestingly, the trident head is more rubbery than the flames.
The render of tank mode on the box back is mirror-flipped, which can be
a problem if trying to use that picture as reference for transforming the
toy.
And yes, I've already seen an accessory kit with Moar Flames, a bigger sword, and a chain weapon.

Robot Mode: As noted above, this goes back to the original Fallen design from the Dreamwave/IDW transition comics, which in turn was based on an abandoned Megatron design (hence becoming a tank). In addition to the usual tank mode design elements, there's numerous sets of "furnace grate" slits to showcase how his internals are a raging inferno. The helmet design is meant
to look plausibly like it was the inspiration for the Decepticon symbol, and
it does get a little closer to that than the original Titanium Series toy
did, but the furnace grating on the faceplate does tend to interfere with the effect. In some ways, he looks more like an evil Optimus Prime, albeit with
an "evil eyebrows" sort of helmet crest. And, of course, because he's Evil, there's numerous spikes and extra weapons, including the shoulder weapons (a five-warhead missile pod on the right shoulder, a weird cannon/camera/
whatever on the left shoulder) and a pair of hip-flap double blasters on top
of all the accessory weapons. Some of the spiky details do make it a little uncomfortable to transform the toy.
A respectable (for a modern Leader) 7.5" (19cm) tall and fairly bulky,
in mostly very dakr geay, dark purple, and some gunmetal with yellow and metallic purple accents. This coloration is a bit of a departure from the Titanium Series version, which was black and silver/light gray with orange
and yellow flame motifs. I wonder if the change here was to somehow justify purple being the Decepticon Color, or if they were directly homaging Tarn. A slightly metalflake dark purple plastic is used for the body of the Requiem Blaster (but not the grip peg or a strut inside of it), the palm/thumb parts
of the hands, the pelvis front, the feet, and the haft of the trident weapon.
A less glossy purple plastic in about the same shade is used for the shoulder struts, the fingers, and the buttplate. A dark warm gunmetal plastic is used for the shoulder weapons, the bicep/elbow parts, the hip flap weapons, and panels on the outer faces of the calves. The flame pieces are made of
slightly rubbery clear yellow plastic, while the trident head appears to be made of the same rubbery clear yellow plastic but it feels a lot more
flexible than the flames. Everything else is a very dark gray plastic that looks functionally black except under very bright lighting. I think there's two very slightly different shades, but it's not worth trying to establish which piece is which shade.
There's metallic purple paint on the top of the sternum, the top edges
of the shoulder fronts, the kneecaps, the barrels of the right shoulder
weapon, most of the helmet crest (the vent detailing on it is left
unpainted), and the central spike of the trident head. Gunmetal paint is
used for the faceplate, the thighs (like, total coverage), the toes, the
barrel end of the Requiem Blaster, the warhead cones on the right shoulder weapon, and the outer tines of the trident. There's silver paint on the
sword blade and the spikes on the backpack. Lots of yellow, mostly on the furnace grates (faceplate, shoulder fronts, sternum, flanks, belt, pretty sloppy on the belt), as well as the eyes, panels on the kneecaps, the shooty bits on the fronts and backs of the hip flaps, and stripes along the sides of the Requiem Blaster. Megatronus's personal sigil is printed in red on the
top of the Requiem Blaster. There is naturally no Decepticon symbol, since
the Primes mostly predated those factions. There are furnace grates molded
on the thigh fronts and lower shins, but they are not painted. Similarly, there's some launcher barrels of some sort on the fronts of the hinges for
the gunmetal panels on the boots, but they're not painted.
On an aesthetic note, the "furnace grating" shapes would work a lot
better if they weren't just painted solid yellow, but instead faded to orange at the edges like they did on Titanium Series Fallen. As they are, it looks more like light strips than internal fire. I'll probably go through and add some paint, I have practice from painting all those Warjacks in the
Warmachine miniatures game. I'll probably do the "missing" grates and those boot blasters while I'm at it.
The neck is a ball joint with the socket in the head, with a decent
amount of nodding range but very little head tilting. The waist is a smooth swivel, and none of the backpack gets in the way. The shoulders are hinge
and swivel joints, plus the transformation struts are hinged to let them bend backwards a bit for expansive gestures. Bicep swivels, hinge elbows, restricted ball joint wrists, and a knuckle hinge on each hand so all the fingers move at once mitten-style. Pinned swivel and hinge hips, although
the hinges are a little above the axis of the swivel. The hip flaps are
hinged to get out of the way. Thigh swivels that are less impeded by armor panels than you might think, and mid-thigh transformation hinges that can be used to simulate a broken leg. Another swivel above each hinge knee (it's a transformation thing), instep hinges and front-back hinges on the feet. The shoulder-top weapons are also on transformation hinges. The left one isn't
too useful in this mode, but the missile pod itself is attached with a peg
and can swivel. The right one has a combination of a ball joint and a hinge
to the side, so it can be positioned more freely.
The fists have 5mm sockets that are just slightly more than halfway around, so when you open up the fingers you can snap a 5mm haft into the
hand, you don't need to slide it in from the top or bottom. Two 5mm sockets
on the outer face of each forearm, one on the outer face of each shoulder,
one on the back of each shoulder (kinda close into the backpack, so not too useful), one on each side of the top of the backpack, one about the middle of each backpack half (they're folded up tread fenders), one on top of each backpack half (for attaching the smaller flames), but none on the rather
hollow undersides of the feet. There is no 3mm socket on the back of the pelvis, but the smaller of the two barrels on the right shoulder weapon is a 3mm socket. As groused about above, the left shoulder weapon attaches via a 5.5mm peg and socket, so you can't even put the launcher onto the side of the Requiem Blaster or one of the melee weapons. All the weapons have lots of connectors, detailed below.
The melee weapons are based on what the RiD15 Megatronus used, the
trident is based on the Spark Fuser staff and the sword/machete based on his long-bladed spear or naginata. (Warrior Class got a sort of assegai that became a tank cannon bayonet, Mega 5-Step Changer had a double ended version
of the Spark Fuser.) There are three parts: the sword, a haft, and the
rubbery trident tip. This gives a few assembly options, attaching the haft
to just one of the two ends or combining it all together.
The black plastic sword piece is 3.5" (9cm) long with silver paint on
the blade. There's diagonal grooves on each side of the blade that resemble the furnace grates, I might paint those too. The crosspiece has 5mm pegs on either side for storage in either robot or tank mode (sticking out along the directions of the flat of the blade, not the edge), and the hilt is a 5mm rod with a pommel at the end, so only a figure whose hands can let the rod snap into place can hold it on its own. The pommel ends in a 3mm socket for attachment to the haft.
The purple plastic haft is 3" (7.5cm) long with a t-bar of 5mm pegs
about a third of the way down from the end with the 3mm peg. The other end
has an irregular peg that is only meant to go into the socket on the trident head. Most of its length is more than 5mm wide, only the bit at the 3mm peg end and a very short bit behind the crossbar are 5mm in diameter, but you can let non-snap-in-hand figures use a sort of short spear by sliding this bit up from underneath their fist and then attaching the sword on top. The total length of this is 6.25" (16cm).
The rubbery Spark Fuser head, which I've been describing as a trident,
is more liuke two blades around a spike with two smaller back blades as well
as tabs that stick out on the sides (they go into shallow slots on the sides
of the feet in tank mode to stabilize storage). I suppose it's closer to a "Man-Catcher" weapon in shape, and IIRC is meant to be a spark extractor.
1.5" (3.5cm) long on its own, attached to the haft the weapon is 4.25"
(10.5cm) long. In robot mode, this is how it's meant to be stored on the
back, with the sword in the other back socket. In tank mode, the entire
weapon is assembled and stuck on whichever side you prefer, a total of 7.5" (19cm) long. I suppose you could also store it in halves on both sides if
you preferred the aesthetic, but the polearm on one side references how the
RiD Megatrons that came with the Spark Fuser staff stored it.
According to TFWiki, the Requiem Blaster is based on its design from the Power of the Primes cartoon, which I didn't watch because I didn't have the relevant service and found the few eps I did acquire by Other Means were so
bad I had no desire to see more. (The Netflix Siege-trilogy cartoon looks
and sounds amazing by comparison to the Prime Wars trilogy.) In its robot
mode configuration, it's 3.5" (9cm) long with a fat 16mm diameter barrel that has a 5mm socket at the muzzle. There's a 5mm peg grip on the underside
about a third of the way from the back, and 5mm pegs on either side just slightly rearward of that. None of these pegs is long enough to get into Megatonus's hands, the bottom one is meant to go into one of the forearm sockets, while the side ones are for connection to the turret in tank mode.
The bottom one is on a hinge, which I initially thought was for letting it elevate, but there's nowhere on the toy where that would be helpful. Rather, the idea is to get the peg entirely out of the way in tank mode. I guess making a hole in the turret plate for the peg didn't work out well. As I discovered after my first attempt at transformation, the cannon has an
internal hinge to let it lengthen, although it's hard to get it started and
the longer version doesn't hold together well. Elongated, it's 4.75" (12cm) long on its own.
The last weapon is really more of a bit of vehicle kibble, which turns
the elongated Requiem Blaster into a proper tank cannon. Well, sort of
proper. It has a pistol-style iron sight on the end, not a feature tanks are known for (tank sights work differently). It has a 5mm peg on a hinge at the back end, and a 5mm socket muzzle, a total length of 2" (5cm) including the peg. The suggested robot mode location is to bend the peg 90 degrees and attach the barrel to one of the backpack side sockets, making it a shoulder cannon in the Soundwave style. If you want to attach it to the elongated Requiem Blaster to give the robot mode a sniper cannon, the combined length
is 6.25" (16cm), although the grip peg is too short to go into one of the top of backpack sockets to get the Guntank vibe.
There's four fire effect pieces. Two larger ones that wrap around the shoulders in robot mode and around the turret sides in tank mode, and two smaller ones that are meant to just peg onto the top of the backpack in robot mode. They're all unique molds, no mirror imaging.
The bigger ones have a 90 degree bend in the middle and 5mm pegs on the backside for attaching to sockets on the toy. Clear red paint (and maybe orange, but that might just be a thinner layer over top of yellow plastic) is used to make the flames more colorful. They're about 1.5" tall, and do partially get in the way of the shoulder weapons.
The smaller ones are flat flames with 5mm peg roots and 5mm sockets on
the back sides, same clear red paint treatment. Each is about 1.25" (3cm)
tall including the pegs, and they can be used in the Requiem Blaster or tank barrel sockets, although they look more like post-attack flames dying down.
The 5mm sockets on the backs are used to attach to either side of the purple spear haft piece, they store on the weapon in tank mode. If you put them on either side of the sword/spearhead instead, though, you get something like
the "spear with tassle" weapon common in martial arts movies.
All of the weapons can be stowed on the back when not in use, although
it can get a bit crowded around the side where you store the Requiem
Blaster.

Transformation: Despite the deceptive mirror-flip of the box render
(which made me waste some time trying to figure out how the arms could
possibly make the turret differently), I was able to get it transformed
without needing to check the instructions aside from a quick look at the completed tank picture to confirm that the box picture was wrong. Well, almost. I could tell the Requiem Blaster needed to be longer and even had an obvious seam, but I avoided forcing anything before checking that part of the instructions. It doesn't slide, it has an internal hinged strut, but it's
hard to get a grip with good leverage to get it started. Checking the rest
of the instructions, I found that other than starting by stowing the fists inside the forearms, I did almost everything in the "wrong" order...which is good! It certainly would've been easier in the right order, but the fact it wasn't nigh-impossible to complete if I switched some steps around means this is a relatively forgiving design. Well, procedurally. Physically it's a bit painful, thanks to all the spiky bitz and stiff joints, my fingertips needed some time to recover after getting tank mode finished.
Basically, though, if the joint can move, it probably needs to move for this transformation. The waist and thighs both need to swivel, so that the shins can end up staying the same way but with the thigh hollows kept on the inner facing and the butt plate can go up between the calf panels, for instance. If I have a substantive complaint, it's that the robot forearms
just sort of sit there. They're not locked or tabbed onto anything, so the elbows are free to bend accidentally. If not for the flame placement, I'd rotate them to put the hollow parts of the upper arms facing inwards, but
that makes the flame placement on the turret look worse. I wouldn't mind losing the ability to elevated the cannon if it meant the turret was more solidly connected together, especially since it might also keep the barrel
from bending (it doesn't really lock in extended mode the way it does in shorter mode).
Going back to robot mode was relatively simple, although the better you get things connected in vehicle mode, the harder it is to pull them apart. Remembering that the front bits of the tread actually fold inside the chest took me a moment as well.
Trying it in the instructions order was a bit easier in places, but
there were still several sections that did not hold together well until everything was done, where tabs and slots were more a sort of guide than an actual connection. And it remained difficult to get everything lined up just right so that the turret base could tab into place, given that it was another of those "tabs you can't see go into slots you can't see" designs that they seem to love these days.

Altmode: The folded up chestplate and the calf plates give something resembling a proper deck, so this isn't totally an H-tank, although the
middle third of the chassis is pretty much "if we make it dark enough, no one will notice it's just random robot parts." Additionally, the fact that the treads don't quite continue from front to back (the gap is about an inch/ 2-3cm) does make it an H-tank in spirit. The main gun sags with very little provocation, they just didn't make it lock into position very well at all, I suspect they were trusting to hinge friction that is largely absent on my
copy. Keeping the cannon in shorter mode looks a little chibi, but it's a
lot more stable and doesn't suffer from "bent carrot disease," if you will.
The hull is 7.25" (18.5cm) long, although with the combined spear
attached to the side the blade sticks out the front a bit and extends total length to 7.75" (19.5cm). The black is much more dominant in this mode, with most of the purple folded under or inside. The front and rear fenders and treads are black plastic, but the middle third on each side is just the robot thighs (painted gunmetal). The spikes and blades of the backpack are now
front fender details, so the silver paint on them stands out, and the purple-painted sternum furnace grate is now at the center front of the
chassis. Still, that's just a matter of emphasis, nothing is really revealed in this mode, paint-wise, it's more a matter of what's being hidden (head, sides of chestplate, that sort of thing).
The turret turns smoothly, but it doesn't actually hold together very well, so tends to warp unless you're really careful turning it. Technically the barrel can elevate because it is connected by 5mm pegs and sockets, but again...the whole thing tends to warp. This really needs a piece that can connect to the forearm sockets on the underside to stabilize it. (Sadly,
none of the weapons can be used for this, it'd need to be a 3P add-on. A
rack with four 5mm pegs, pairs 46-47mm apart center to center, with each pair being 11mm apart center to center would do nicely.) The tank rolls decently
on four little wheels under the treads.
In addition to the four sockets under the turret mentioned above,
there's two usable 5mm sockets on top of each arm of the turret (one on each side is intended for the large flame effects), one on the top of each front fender, one at the rear of the side of each front fender (a bit blocked by spikes), and the cannon barrel. No 3mm stuff, and nothing on the underside
of the hull...not that tanks really need flight bases that often.
Hm, if they'd sacrificed barrel elevation and just put two more pegs on either side of the cannon, rotate the forearms inward, and the whole turret would be a lot more solid. It wouldn't even require sacrificing the flames, since they could go on the other 5mm sockets which would now be on the outer face rather than the underside. It really feels like someone just dropped
the ball on the turret design, figured it LOOKED okay and didn't bother to
make sure any part of it was actually stable. A form of WIRNIR (Worked In Renders, Not In Reality), I suppose. It can be *displayed* in tank mode, but actually playing with it is another and more frustrating matter. And yes,
now we're starting to get into, "But it's aimed at adult collectors, Dave,
not little kids!" arguments. Be that as it may, a toy that can't be played with has still failed at one of its core jobs. Transformation is a play pattern, articulation is a play pattern...not falling apart when you try to
use the articulation should be just as important. Otherwise, just go back to G1 style designs and make stable bricks. Usually when I decide I'm probably never putting a Transformer in vehicle mode again it's because the transformation is a massive hassle made worse by WIRNIR stuff, but here it's just...not really worth the couple of minutes it takes.

Overall: Good robot mode, reasonably interesting and not too frustrating transformation, but the vehicle mode stability is lacking. Also, they really should've done the "inner fire" paint effects like the Titanium Series one, pure yellow just doesn't cut it.


Dave Van Domelen, gonna test whether an orange wash is enough to do the trick, otherwise it'll be orange base and then carefully painting thin yellow lines down the middle.

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