Dave's Transformers Legacy Rant: Leader Class

Armada Universe Megatron (tank)

Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Legacy/LArmadaMeg

The second toy in recent years to be an update of Armada's Megatron,
although the Combiner Wars toy was really just a head-swap on neo-G1 tank
Megatron.

While this is not a retool of any sort, I compare it to the original
Armada Megatron enough that I'll just drop that link here for reference:
https://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Armada/Ultra1

CAPSULE

$55 price point. (The original $25 cost of a "GigaCon" like the
original Armada Megatron would be $42 today just from general inflation,
ignoring the specific upwards price pressure on plastic toys.)

Armada Universe Megatron: Yes, it's missing almost all of the gimmicks
that defined the 2002 toy, but it has all the articulation that toy was
lacking, and is slightly more animation-model-accurate. Recommended, but
more for people who don't have fond memories of the original toy.

RANT

Packaging: Same size as previous Legacy Leaders, with the Evolution
trade dress. As usual, it's easiest to open from the bottom.

DECEPTICON: ARMADA UNIVERSE MEGATRON
Assortment: F7217/F2989
Altmode: Tank
Transformation Difficulty: 23 steps
Previous Name Use: None (Combiner Wars had just "Armada Megatron," and of
course the Armada toy was just "Megatron." Note, the online bio just
has him as Megatron.)
Previous Mold Use: None
Function: Leader
Special Unit: None
Origin Universe: Armada
Signature Weapon: Fusion Cannon - Launches powerful blasts of concentrated
energy with devastating results.
Evo-Fusion: (not described in online page, but package shows an homage of
the original toy's "swing the turret around to the front as a belly
blaster" deal in the Evo-Fusion inset)

STR 10 INT 10 SPD 10 FRB 10

Megatron will stop at nothing until he is the most powerful being in the
universe.

Yeah, original Megatron in Armada had all 10's. And I suppose his one
sentence bio is a decent distillation of the original's, with the Mini-Con
references left out.

Important note, the original was all about Mini-Con gimmicks. This toy
has none of those, although there's molded surface details that evoke some of
those gimmicks. I'll get back to this point later.

Packaging: Packaged in tank mode, with a second square of corrugated
cardboard on the other side of the tray to strengthen things where the five
strings are attached. The rattan strings are twisted, not tied. The barrel
tip is held into the lower left corner via a tray flap.

Tank Mode: So, it's an H-tank. What's an H-tank? It's what you get
when you make a tank, but leave out most of the chassis in between the treads
in front and back, leaving just enough to support the turret. The front
chassis is where most of the crew goes, but it's not like Megatron wants
squishies crawling around inside of him. The rear chassis is usually the
engine, but Cybertronian drive trains tend to be purely for aesthetics...the
wheels run themselves or something. So, it's a fantasy vehicle that can't
really work but saves the hassle of finding places to put all the extra
chassis bits (Siege Megatron just has a shield piece that fills in his rear
chassis, and a big-breasted chest to make up the front chassis).
In place of the front chassis is a pair of beetle-like jaws made from
the horns of the robot head, which in the original toy could grab onto
Mini-Cons. The only action feature these have is a tendency to fall off.
There's immobile trapezoidal armor panels on top of the left front fender
that evoke another Mini-Con trap gimmick of the original. Instead of having
5mm posts to attach Mini-Cons, there's 5mm sockets to attach weapons and
Weapon Masters. The main gun barrel does have details that evoke the spring
mechanism of the original, but there's no missile to launch and no spring to
compress for launching. The fold-out secondary launcher on the left side of
the turret is molded and can fold out, but the missiles are remolded as
cannon barrels. Now, even as a fantasy vehicle, it has a few problems,
mostly the gaps in the sides that show the robot shoulders. There's a
conveniently placed 5mm socket on each front fender that could be used for a
third party accessory to cover the gaps, I guess.
The H part is 7.5" (19cm) long, the main gun turret pointed forwards
extends the total length to 8" (20cm). The main color is olive green, with
accents in black, silver, and bright orange. The treads, the root of the
main gun, and a bit of the stuff visible in the gap between front and rear
genders are made of black plastic. The front side fenders are made of
faintly metallic gunmetal plastic, as are the little wheels under the treads.
The face cover on the underside is also gunmetal...it's normally not visible
except from underneath, but it's completely out of sight in robot mode. The
parts that are gunmetal here were more of a blue-gray on the original toy,
but the animation had those bits in more of a neutral gray. A softer
gunmetal plastic is used for the rest of the main gun barrel and the
horn/jaws. The folded back toes and heels at the rear of each tread are
light gray plastic. There's other light gray plastic and purple plastic
visible through gaps, but that's all properly robot mode stuff. The purple
plastic robot shoulder fronts kinda fill in part of the gap in the treads in
the middle.
There's bright orange paint on the not-springs and side bar of the main
gun barrel root, on the secondary cannon barrels (which were safety orange
missiles on the original), and a detail on the right front fender. If you
count robot bits, there's more orange on the outer edges of the horns/jaws
and the front of the mini-chassis (top of robot torso). There's dark silver
on the gunner's hatch (okay, maybe one squishy?), the smoke dispensers on the
right rear of the turret, a strapped on box on the right side of the turret,
the grating and raised symbol pad in the right front of the turret, a couple
of greebles on the secondary gun body, the front ends of the front fenders,
and various panels and greebles on the rear fenders. There's three dual-lens
lights which matte black bodies and bright yellow lenses, one on the front
top of each fender and one on the front left top of the turret. The front
left face of the turret has a bright yellow panel that might be a window.
There's a purple Decepticon symbol printed on the "home plate" raised shape
on the right front top of the turret, and a purple border around where the
body of the secondary guns meets the barrels.
The turret rotates from 90 degrees left to about 45 degrees rear of
right. Why not all the way around? That seems to be due to robot mode
considerations, so I'll address that later. The main barrel elevates all the
way to straight up, and can depress far enough to touch the ground in front
or to either side. The secondary backwards-pointing cannons can elevate to
straight up, and rotate along their long axis, but can't point forwards.
With all the tabs in place, the chassis is solid enough that the four little
wheels on the underside roll well.
The main gun barrel ends in a 5mm socket, an the secondary cannons each
end in a 3mm stud. There's a 5mm socket on the top and outer face of each
front fender, the outer face of each rear fender, and one on the right rear
of the turret top. Technically the sole-of-feet sockets are accessible, but
somewhat blocked in my the folded down toes and heels. The barrel tip can be
removed, revealing a 5mm peg on the end of the barrel root, but that's for a
robot mode gimmick and there's really nowhere to store the piece in this
mode.

Transformation: Important note! One of the nerfed/altered features is
the face cover, which is molded to look like it slides down, but instead for
some reason you need to fold down the entire chest and fold it back into
place. I guess it was a little cheaper to manufacture that way?
Otherwise, it's an H-tank, not too complicated. Arms come out of the
shoulderpads (I had to use a knife, my fingernails aren't long enough to pry
them out), rear treads separate from the front treads and the robot
un-squats, various panels open and close along the way. The front treads do
separate and settle down a bit, so that some parts that filled in gaps along
the sides now fill in the upper torso.
Going back to tank mode is easier, although the horns tend to fall off
and they're really hard to get back on in tank mode, so I kept having to
untransform one of the shoulders to get mine back together. I'll probably
just glue the horns on, their detachability is purely a safety measure...if
there was more to it, those functions were removed before production.

Robot Mode: As with the tank mode, a lot of molded detail here is meant
to copy the look of gimmicks on the original toy, such as the nonfunctional
chest slider mentioned above. There's also the matter of the left hand,
which is in a semi-open claw shape that serves no purpose here (I tried, it
can't hold a detached horn as a weapon), but merely echoes the look of how
the original's left hand needed to be open for the holdout dagger gimmick
(that this toy does not have). All that said, it's slightly closer to the
animation model than the original toy (which admittedly got pretty close for
all of its brickishness) and really only needs a few small spots of paint to
be a perfect match.
7.25" (18.5cm) tall at the head, 8.25" (21cm) tall at the top of the
horns, and 8.75" (22cm) tall at the tops of the tank tread shoulderpads. The
tank colors are mostly on the back now, with light gray and Decepticon Purple
being a much more dominant part of the color scheme. Really, from the front,
the only green plastic is in the boots, while the front treads are now the
fronts of the shoulderpads and add to the black. Black palstic is also used
for the chestplate and the head. Purple plastic is found on the shoulder
front flaps (more on that in a bit), the upper arms, the elbows, the hands,
the abdomen, the hips, and the thighs. Light gray plastic is found on the
shoulder roots, the forearms, the pelvis (including the inner waist bit
visible when you lift up the torso to spin the turret around to the front),
and the feet/heel pieces that were visible in tank mode. The black plastic
chunks between front and rear treads are now the undersides of the upper
chest.
Silver paint on the pecs, the face, the middle of the abdomen, the
shoulderflap fronts, the right kneecap, and shin details on both boots. The
forehead of the helmet is more of a metallic blue-gray. Deep gloss orange
paint is used on the outer edges of the horns, a sort of collar area, a few
greebles on the upper torso (which were orange plastic on the original), and
round details on the pelvis front. The eyes are red, and there's a purple
border around the fake slider pentagon on the sternum. The tops of the feet
and a vent on the left shin are matte black, and purple Decepticon symbols
are printed on the shoulder flaps. (The original had molded symbols, I'm not
sure if this was a cost- cutting measure or if they were going too much with
the animation model that just had a flat symbol.)
The neck is a restricted ball joint, and the waist is a swivel and can
also extend by 1.5cm on a telescoping bit. The shoulders are like G2 Laser
Prime's in that the tower shoulderpads are attached to the torso rather than
to the arms. This is basically how the original had the shoulders (although
those were ratchets and these are smooth, but the purple flaps on the fronts
of the shoulder towers are hinged so that the arms can actually be lifted
straight out, giving full range to the universal joint shoulders. Without
raising the flap, the arm can still lift forwards about 30 degrees. The
towers can also swing apart, but that's more because there isn't a strong peg
or ratchet to prevent it, not because it's an intended or aesthetically
pleasing point of articulation. There's bicep swivels, hinge elbows, swivel
wrists plus transformation hinges for stowing the fists. Universal joint
hips, upper thigh swivels, ratcheting hinge knees. The ankles have instep
hinges to let the feet stay flat on the surface when the legs are spread
(they snap into place, so you need to exert significant force to free them
up). The toe and heel joints are just hinges to bend down for
transformation, not really useful for posing.
Both hands can hold 5mm pegs, although the partial-claw left hand looks
a little weird doing it. There's additional 5mm sockets on the outer face of
each elbow, the outer face of each shoulder tower, outer face of each boot,
sole of each foot, back of each shoulder tower, and one on the turret on the
back (which is where Leader-1's Mini-Con peg was located for the original).
Weapon barrel attachment points as noted above.
Now, I've spent a lot of time pointing out the loss of gimmicks, but
it's worth noting that a lot of them were part of a play pattern that
requires Mini-Cons of a style that hasn't been made in over a decade (weird
redecos and Japanese Arms Micron aside). Yeah, the missing dagger didn't
really need a Mini-Con, but it was an action gimmick that used a live
Mini-Con hardpoint to deploy. So, if they'd tried to keep all the original
gimmicks, not only would that have pushed hard on the budget, they'd probably
have had to just make it a Commander and include a few Mini-Cons. I'm okay
with the gimmick being "not a complete brick." If you really want him to
have some Mini-Con action, take the Star Saber from Armada Starscream and
give it to him.
The tank turret coming around the front remains something this toy can
do, although there's no crank action to make it spin. The lifting torso
makes it easier to get the turret around to the front, but it's not
necessary. Also, the turret can't spin all the way around anyway, I think
they wanted to make sure there was no way to position the main cannon over
Megatron's groin. The swivel joint on the secondary gun does work as a sort
of half-assed crank, I suppose. The range of motion, by the way, is just
enough to let the barrel fit under either armpit, or hang down at his lower
right as seen in some animation scenes.
Now Legacy does have its own line-wide gimmick, and if it's not as
involved as Mini-Cons, at least they implemented it here. Evo-Fusion means
rearranging weapon bits, and in this case it means removing the muzzle half
of the main gun barrel and attaching it to either wrist stump. Y'see, when
the fist is folded away, there's a 5mm peg on the other side of the wrist
piece, so you can put the barrel there for Shockwave-style cannoning. Or any
other Evo-Fusion weapon that has a socket at its back end, like Shrapnel's
main rifle.
With all the times the horns fell off during transformation, I kinda
hoped they were an undocumented feature and could be held as weapons on
purpose. I can get one jammed into the left hand, but it doesn't really look
like an intentional weapon. It'd have been nice if there were holes in the
forearms so that the horns could be attached to them as arm blades, the pegs
appear to be 3/32" diameter if anyone wants to take a drill to their
Megatron's arms. I'll probably just glue mine into place on the head,
though.