Legacy Core Class Megatron

 

Just as a heads up, this toy is called "Energon Universe Megatron,"  however, when the old Armada/Energon/Galaxy force trilogy was happening, I ended up seeing more episodes of Superlink and Galaxy Force than their English counterparts.  I also had just discovered the joys of Hobby Link Japan and the internet, which was coupled with a decent Aussie dollar, and so imported a lot of my figures.

Where am I going with this story?  Excellent question.

Well, in Superlink/Energon, the main leader of the Decepticons was missing for a while and Scorponok was the leader, then Megatron eventually returned.  However, since they carried on from Micron Densetsu, Super link Megs was called Galvatron from the start.  I also imported the JP version of Galvatron as it was a smaller size and the Hasbro one was oversized.

As a result of all this, I will probably be calling this figure Galvatron a lot of the time, despite the fact that is not it's official name.  Hasbro also have plans to release a Galvatron coloured version (With extra purple bits) later as well, just to add to the possible confusion.

Apologies for the inconvenience.

Let's check out the robot mode first shall we?

Being a core class figure, he is small.

He does come with a fair few accessories... Well I say accessories, but they are essential to the character. They are: Shoulder lasers x 2, and a tanky-sword thing.

Since Superlink follows on from Micron, we see here that the tanky sword thing is Galvatron's Micron Megatron body.  Does that mean that scale wise, Super link Galvs is just a massive gawdam dude?  I like to think so.

The tanky-sword has a hole for pegs and the lasers have little 3mm pegs for holes.  Without the accessories on him, Galvatron has a lot of motion available and looks a bit like this:

Since the shoulder lasers are no removable pieces, Galvatron (and others) can now hold them in their hands.  Is this a good thing?  I am undecided, but since the lasers can't move easily and are locked to two positions only, I think yes, it is good.  Variety ya know?

When you stick the tanky-sword on his arm and the lasers on his shoulders, you'll end up with bits getting in the way of other bits.  Unlike the original toy, the sword is always sticking out the back of the tank's butt, making it difficult for Galvs to aim his cannon straight ahead of him. If you take off the shoudler lasers though it can get there though. 

The same applies for sword swinging as the turret gets stick on bits and pieces here and there.  This was also a flaw with the original toy too.  

While I have the original Super Link Galvatron, I have not yet covered it on the blog.  I did cover the Shattered Glass Megatron toy from 2012 here though, which is the same figure, minus electronic sounds, with a new head and different colours.  The good news is that the flaws are essentially the same.

 

So overall. if you want to have him shooting anything, or blade swinging at stuff, you'll need to fiddle about with the shoulder pieces, and the wings as well, as they are large and in the way too.  However, I will say that balance is surprisingly good and he is fun and easy to pose.

As you can tell, the colouring is decent enough, it's sparse, but he is a small guy and the colours of the plastic tell all that need to be told.  One thing I do rather like on both the original toy and this dude is the head sculpt.  It's super nice.

Here is a picture of him next to my favourite core figure so far, Core class Swoop:

Okay, that about covers the robot mode, let's shift this guy into vehicle mode, which is a space plane of some nature.

Okay, here we go.  Now, I will come out and say, that the vehicle mod is kinda crappy.  Nothing pegs in securely and things just kind of move around all over the place all the time.

Probably thing that irks me the most are the hands. They just jut up and are there.  This toy is the perfect example of a folded up robot, that just uses the wings to cover everything up.

Look at that terrible folded up robot aspect.

You can slap the tanky-sword on the top of the wings, to make it look er, tougher...  But just be aware the wings will wobble about because nothing is secured.

It's very annoying.  Also, the gimmick of Superlink for the Decepticons was they had a super attack mode.  On the original Galvatron, the plane's wings split open extending some extra blaster doodads, essentially making him look like a fat X-Wing jet thing.  This little cut down version doesn't even attempt to try.  If you do, and you lift up the wings, you expose the hands and it looks terrible.

Reposting images to reiterate the poor vehicle design.

So let's finish this up shall we?  While the robot mode is decent enough, the articulation is hindered by the accessories, which to be fair is not that big of a deal.  It looks good enough and is fairly fun to play with.

Transforming it into jet mode though is not nice.  It's loose, doesn't look terribly crash-hot and every time you touch it, it will wobble about and something will move.  Admittedly the original doesn't look like the most amazing disguise ever, but at least it pegs together solidly.  This one just flops about very badly.

So, you end up with a decent robot mode and a pretty crap jet. 

My final superfluous rating is:

Only 50% a Transformer, it should've been a bit better.