Megatron Megabolt

Color Scheme:

Shades of purple with quite a bit of red and silver (well, a grayish dull silver, but I think it's supposed to look silvery anyway), with some black parts (spider legs) and other accents. To me, it's a good color scheme overall, but I could deal without the entire spider legs section and a change from red to more black, silver, or purple. Also, like Air Attack Optimus Primal, this toy is really from the Beast Machines part of the Transformers mythos. He never stepped a toe into Robots in Disguise, but they put him in RiD packaging because he came so late. It was probably just cheaper for them to do it this way, but oh well, let's move on...

Robot Mode:

While this robot mode was never depicted in the Beast Machine cartoon, I think they did an amazing job taking the "big floating head" Megatron from BM and making it a great robot. This is easily what many people would have imagined for him, and I don't think anyone has complained about it (though I don't read A.T.T. "the complainer's forum" anymore ;-). Honestly, it looks so great that I can actually ignore the giant bakcpack and spider legs sticking out of it. If the spider legs backpack could come off though, I'd never put it back on. Anyway, and great looking robot mode.

Vehicle Mode:

This would be BFH or "Big Floating Head" mode. It's more of a vehicle as the toy than in the show, because the show depiction did NOT have a giant tank thing with spider legs moving it along. In the cartoon it just floated, and I honestly think this toy would be 100% cooler without the spider legs gimmick and sold as a basic, or sub-deluxe of some kind. Anyway, the head section is spot-on accurate to the show, right down to the beasy little slits-for-eyes and jets in back. Then they had to go and gimmick it up with "walking action" spider legs and the section that makes them work. They don't look so bad in this mode, but they just don't need to be there in the first place.

Transformation:

Very complex for a deluxe toy. This one is on par with Prowl and Sideburn of the RiD line. It's no walk in the park, and there's a lot of folding in just the right way and rotating things around and such. I won't even try to explain it with words, so if you get this toy, don't lose the instructions!

Gimmicks:

He's got quite an arsenal (hehe) of gimmicks for a deluze toy. First off are those stupid spider legs. OK, I know some people like them, but I don't. They're hard to force to work, and they don't really add anything meaningful to the toy, but I digress... When you press firmly to avoid wheel slippage, and move the toy along a flat surface, the spider legs move in a very convincing manner, and the jaw of the face drops and raises. Woo. In robot mode, you can press his spark crystal in to firstly trigger his BFG (big freaking gun) that flips up over the top of his head, and continue pressing it to make the spider legs wiggle some more. So forget the spider legs for now, the BFG is cool! Not only does this massive missile launcher flip up over above his head, but an accompanying helmet comes down on Megatron's head to go with it. Consider it targeting and blast protection, but it's cool. A quick press of the trigger atop the BFG, and the red missile within goes flying off into the distance (halfway across the room ;-). Ok, so that's all the gimmicks, but the BFG makes up nicely for the spider legs thing, anyway. :)

Pros/Cons:

Very cool robot and vehicle (BFH) modes, and the big gun is a big plus, but I wish the spider legs thing didn't exist.