Another dragon for the new year.

So I have been thinking about my previous post about TM2 Megatron and colours and a lack of dragons, when really, there are quite a few dragons in Transformers.  Slowly but surely they are making their way from the deep dark (occasionally dank) recesses of my mind and a really obvious one is of course, Beast Machines Megatron.

There is also Scourge/ Flame Convoy from Galaxy Force.  I have also dug up another. Pics soon.


But enough of what may come in the future, let’s have a look at the dragon at hand!

Beast Machines Megatron.  Hang on a minute, that isn’t a dragon!  Oh starting in robot mode hey?  After all this talk of dragons, tricky.

This Megatron is the one that continues the tale of the Beast Wars series.  At the end on BW, Megatron (in his dragon body) was captured by Primal and strapped to the front of their spaceship as they headed back to Cybertron.  Something never explained happens and the Maximals wake up sans space ship, a couple of pals, their robot forms, their robot modes and worst of all, sans Megatron.

Oh dear.

Megatron has managed to be a very busy boy and has removed the sparks from all inhabitants of Cybertron and created a Vehicon army.  He is the main controller of all of Cybertron and spends his time plugged in to the planet via a big cape.  Hence his rotund robot form.  Megatron is however still trying to purge himself of his organic parts.  The pictures above are meant to represent Megatron as he is plugged in and interfacing with Cybertron.

There are times when he reveals himself from within the cloak and we discover that he is still a dragon.  Revealed! The robot mode! With a size comparison.



You may note that he is smaller than Lugnuts.  To refresh on his TM2 body…



Ok.  He is officially classed as a Mega size. Hmm.  Moving on. 

I got this guy before I got the TM2 version, foolishly thinking if I had this one it would suffice as both Beast Wars and Machines Megatron.  It doesn’t really, and I should have known my addiction better.

It’s fairly accurate, and it follows the body form fairly well with the dragon head arm and the other normal arm.  This time the tail is attached to the arm, as opposed to the head.  The joints in the arm are still a bit bung but this time the dragon head isn’t ridiculously long for the robot body.  I actually really like the wing spread for this Megatron a bit, as they really fill out and have no holes, but then they do lack the colour.

As you can see, there is no pretty chrome, but the paint work is competent enough to get the feeling across.  The legs have some pretty good articulation in them and the feet are huge.  But for some reason the angle of the heel spur, this being the rear claw is too high up, so making him stand can be pretty tricky at times as his feet lean backwards.

The paint is nice and crisp and most of his hinges have metal pins in them.  Due to the size drop, his transformation has become a lot simper, but still pretty good.  I really like the way that in robot mode, his dragon arms form his robot abdominals!



His tail arm is again, only capable of fist shacking in anger.  I do like that even though the asymmetrical nature of his TM22 mode has gone, there are still ‘organic’ details in the sculpting.  His arm for example and the wings have veins sculpted on them.




The blue part on his chest hides his spark crystal.  Man I live spark crystals almost as much as I love run signs!

This time though it has changed from a Predacon symbol to a Vehicon symbol.  His head is fairly well detailed and the light piping feature works pretty well due to a large bit of orange plastic in the back of it.  The head isn’t very Megaton-looking, but that is down to it being encased in a helmet for him in his joined to Cybertron form.  I guess it works well like that.



It does have a somewhat Hannibal Lecter mouth guard look to it and is a bit put of shape when compared to the cartoon, but considering how it has to slide away into the chest for the dragon anyway, I guess that is fine.

Ok, now for the dragon mode.  the cartoon doesn’t show the dragon mode until quite a way in.

The basic shape of the dragon is much the same as the TM2 body, but the wings are obviously a LOT larger!  They are quite heavy and are prone to slowly folding forward and closing around the body.  Each part is connected by a pin through it making them very solid. 

His dragon neck has a play gimmick, in that if you pull his head back and release it, it will spring forward and attack anything in it’s way.  It works well, the dragon’s mouth opens when you pull it back and its springs efficiently.  Perhaps it works too well, as it is hard to get Megatron to stand without his head leaning all the way forward, unless you crank it all the way up, which would work for a flying pose.  The neck actually has a fairly decent sculpting of scales on it, in between all the joints anyway.

The head is nicely sculpted and the horns of the dragon are opaque plastic and almost glows in the light.  He still has the little beard and the general shape is the same as TM2.

The horn plastic even extends into the top of the dragon’s mouth, so it looks like he has a bright laser in his mouth.  About the flame something up!

The body of the dragon works well enough and despite it’s small size, the wings manage to make up for that.

The spark crystal is still there, although it is now sideways if opened up.  Even though all the colours are the same as the TM2, the lack of chrome makes it have less effect.  I guess with the size as well a lot of the colours and shine that impressed so much before are gone as well. Still at the very least they are functional.

The balance is till a bit bad, and you will have to have him lean on his tail to stand up. mainly due to the wings.  The wings have some nice sculpting on them as well.  On the inside, veins are sculpted and the outside has circuit details on them.  The yellow opaque plastic that forms the centre of the hidden robot mode add some nice variation to the grey of the plastic.

Trying to pose the dragon can be quite tricky.  the wings have a tendency to flop about and one thing that I find really annoying is they don’t clip in anywhere, they just flop all over the place.  The arms are connected to this piece as well, so they float next to his chest.

I did find that letting the wings close around the dragon made him look like an old man in a dressing gown, which I found terribly amusing!

If you press down on his horns, his mouth will open and close, really easily too.  I like this.

The dragon mode is a bit taller due to the long neck, but even then it is a pretty small figure, even next to a deluxe sized figure.



Finally, I managed to grab a shot of the TM2 and BM Megatron next to each other at home.  The results speak for themselves…



Even from that admittedly poor photo, BM is no match in terms of coolness with TM2.

Despite this guy being a poor brother to his predecessor, I find myself liking him quite a bit.   The smaller size and easier transformation makes me fiddle with him more and I can see that in play terms, I would probably opt for BM as the leader of my Predacons.  Both of his modes emulate BW Megatron well enough, except for the helmet of course which I would overlook.  It is probably a cheaper alternative on the secondary market due to the lack of popularity of the Beast Machines TV show and the popularity and all round awesomeness of TM2 Megs.

The size class confuses me somewhat though, as he looks smaller than a deluxe, yet is in the class above.  Probably due to the impressive wingspan of the toy.  I would have hated to have paid the Mega dollars that he would have been priced at as the box is small and so is the figure.  Beast Machines was a strange sized series though.  Despite Optimus and Cheetor having multiple sizes, Nightscream being a MASSIVE toy and Rattrap, probably the smallest character getting a huge toy there was odd sizing all over the place.

So I guess, despite the flaws, as long as it’s cheap enough this is a pretty fun figure.  Go Megatron! 

Only one more dragon Megs to go now, which I happened to dig out since they were in the same box.  Kudos if you can guess who  is…