Hooo, boy. This little fellow I waited a while for. Some reason when I saw the original colour version of this guy from the EarthriseKingdom (all those lines blended together there...) line, I just had a feeling that there was a white version on the way eventually. Thus I held off buying and bided my time; lo and behold! I was blessed by the news that the toy coloured version (this one) was planned.
Kingdom is the purple one. I decided to not link to the TT page, as it'll eventually disappear.
Woot! Now I just had to pray to the Plastic Gods that Taktom saw fit to release him here. And they did, as a TT Mall exclusive (which there was a lot of going on at the time). While the exclusives were a pain, it did mean that I just had to be on the internet ball to get one.
Obviously I did. And here we are now.
More preamble to follow:
Why was it so important that you wait for the toy version Tets? - That my unknown chum is a very good question.
Well. I kinda fell off the G1 cartoon as a young'un for season three. The Transformers started forgetting they were robots in disguise and just robots. So a lot of the appeal left. Plus Galvatron in the cartoon just wasn't as charismatic as Megatron.
HOWEVER comics came to da rescew
I did have access to some of the UK Marvel comics randomly, which I devoured. And Galvatron in that is a total badass! And happens to be coloured like this toy. I had a few of the comics leading up to the Fire on High story (I think Times Wars was it's name) and they are what made me think Magnus, Rodimus, Galvatron and DEATH'S HEAD were cool.
Specifically #120 you see there. The art was great and made all the characters look ace. Not to Mention the story being pretty awesome to my child-mind.
I want that Deaths Head Marvel Legends figure GAWDAMIT!
So that is why I wanted this guy over the other guy. Let's go.
The BAWKS
Okay, let's have a look see at how it is packaged. The Selects figures came in these kind of plain mailer box things, which I've never really liked. It was difficult to tell what toy you wre looking at if you found one in a shop. Admittedly, they were mostly only available through online retail, but you know second hand Y'all. It's a thing.
Luckily TT wised up to this a bit and started giving them slip covers. Sexy!
Once we manage undress that baby, you end up with a box (just like in real life!!). Admittedly it does have some cool printed stuff on it. But the only thing indicating what's inside is the little sticker on the bottom.
Interestingly you can still see the rank sign they used for Earthrise toys in there. Rank, or something anyway. If you wanna check it out more: Cybertronian military insignia - Transformers Wiki (tfwiki.net)
The ROWBAWT
He comes packaged in robot mode and has a few accessories and the terrible coloured instruction manuals that Hasbro seem to love so much at the moment. He also comes with a sticker sheet. For the longest time I left mine unstickered as he looks fine without them. I added a few for the purpose of this post. And it was bloody annoying. More on that later.
As you can see, he looks pretty shmick! His arm cannon can come off, but why would you?
Accessories wise he comes with two(2) TF G1 Movie space ships for balance I guess. Apparently they are scaled with the Haslab Unicron. They also double as guns. On top of that, he has a comic inspired Creation matrix on a chain for hanging around his neck. The cannon can also be partly disassembled if you want to get inventive (and for Transformation).
While the space ship guns seems kind of stupid, they work all right. He can dual wield them, join them together and slap them on his back. It looks pretty cool on his back I will say. You could also have them free standing on a ... stand if you so wish. And can find one that fits.
Before we go further, here is a sticker sheet.
Normally I enjoy putting stickers on, but not with this one. The stickers are thin and have a tendency to tear when pulling them off the paper, plus adhereing a bit too well to the paper. Hence more tearing.
On top of that, some of mine weren't cleanly cut in the first place. Finally, some are veeeery thin. The belt buckle was a real PITA and tore making it even more annoying. Grrrr.
Most of my shots he has the purple crest, but there are stickers for that bit. I was wondering how they'd look as he looks fine without them. After doing these pictures I put them on.
they suck.
One tore. Another is too big. They're all annoying to place. I have a nice Chrome Gundam marker, if I want him to have a shiny head. I'm still undecided.
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| Damn this thin plastic! |
However I will say that the stickers I chose for the rest of him do look pretty good and I am pleased with my selective (ha ha!) choice of stickers applied.
You can chrome up his abs, er 6 pack? Oh, 4 pack with stickers if you wish, but I think the silver paint is fine as it is. If you look closely it his knees, the red stickers are also torn on one of the corners.
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| That cursed belt buckle sticker! |
He does look nice and beefy and does well for a Leader class figure. Especially since his foes are Commander sized Autobots.
A nice touch is that you can mount the cannon on the upper arm or forearm. This is cool, since placement often changed according to the situation in which he was drawn.
Articulation is pretty nice and you can get an incredible amount of Galvatronny poses from him. The arm tank treads are articulated so can be moved around as needed.
All the parts manage to fit rather nicely and he is an overall pretty neat little figure.
In my Legends Headmaster review, I was pretty generous. So I wondered how it held up now with this guy. I still stand by what I said. The base robot of the Legends is pretty good. However mine has gone a little floppy nowadays. Old age huh. It is very comic booky stylised in a way. Kinda interesting to compare the two.
Before we get to cannon mode, let's see how he stands with other bots.
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| Commander class Rodimus Prime |
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| Voyager class Cyclonus |
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| Commander class Ultra Magnus |
As you can see, he seems to fit well with respective Transformers of recent years.
Now let's have a look how he sits.
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| Pretty nicely. |
You may notice that he has a throne, well it wasn't always his (spoiler alert)
Oddly Galvatron has a pee flap. Starscream has one too.
Naturally, Galvatron's is better.
What a curiosity. There is some nice little details hidden away as well. When you get around to transforming him, you'll see this little area all line up nicely, the back plug plugs in to the cannon 5mm joint really smoothly:
Ok, let's get blastin'
Kanun mode!
I could've sworn I took some normal pictures of the cannon, but maybe I didn't. Anyway the cannon is a faithful version of the G1 style laser cannon we all know and love. You can angle the back struts and the treads to make it nice and low standing. It's really nice. You can also plug the spaceships into the cannon for some extra blam, which I negelcted to take a piccie of. So here is one shamelessly stolen from TT's site:
And makes the Legends one look a bit on the naff side now.
I do suggest adding some of the stickers on this. I rather like the red line on the purple front struts and (even though it was a pain to do) the silver circle bit at the end of the grey before the laser cannon. It just adds a touch more needed interest.
For your movie-ness, the matrix and chain can be left on him as well. I love this look! It's so good. You can also fudge bits here and there to make a really crap looking laser pistol mode. Or not. I would not recommend it. What I do like though is the heat activated rub sticker.
Gawdamn these things tickle my fancy so goddam much!
The astute among you may have noticed blast effects work with him as well. They do. Slap some in the end of the laser bit, or show how touch he is by having him shrug off some wimpy ass attacks from his enemies. You can shoot him, but he doesn't care, he'll just laugh and whisper in your ear "That all you've got?"
We're getting towards the end, so I'll add in this picture of him in cannon mode, with fellow robutts, because, well... we all know that we want Galavatron to be a real menace to other robuts and that means being a terrifying size for a gun.
I think he does that rather well. Remember this is the guy than can go and kick Ultra Magnus' arse for him, give Rodimus and Death's Head a damn good run for their money, and can only really be beaten by trickery (and it still didn't completely work as smoothly as they wanted).
So to summarise this little baby up, Generations Selects Galvatron is a damn fine figure, just you know, burn them stupid-ass stickers because they are terrible. Damn I hate them.
So my final superfluous rating of this toy is:
What'd he say his name was?
Godaamn GALVATRON!
All hail GALVATRON!
(I like him)
Bonus pics:
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