Megatron (Legacy: United/Core Class)

The Unicron Trilogy was one of my favorite eras in the past 40 years of Transformers. That time frame was a fun time for me in my fandom. The stuff that came out and went on was just great. It's kinda a dividing line as a before and after the movies came and the big boom. I'm not begrudging the movies or the big boom, just fondly looking back at a fun time. Both the Armada and Energon designs of Megatron are some of my favorite versions of Megatron to this day. Thankfully recent Transformers releases have paid attention to Armada (we'll be getting to that a little later), but today let's look at this super cool update of the Energon version of Megatron in my much loved Core Class.

Toy engineering is a funny thing, the original Energon Megatron came out 20 years ago and was a fairly large and impressive Leader Class figure. 20 years later, this MUCH smaller toy is a pretty accurate recreation of that figure. I wouldn't say it's exact, but it's close. Megatron turns from robot to spacecraft/jet in a few simple steps. It's very similar to G1 Thunderwing's alt mode, which lead to several fans hankering for a Thunderwing repaint back in the day. The original toy (and it's smaller alternate version) got released in a variety of colors as versions of Megatron or Galvatron, but never Thunderwing. It's funny how the toy looks like G1 Galvatron in robot mode and G1 Thunderwing in vehicle mode. The Unicron Trilogy toys were full of homages while still coming up with new things.

The tank/sword weapon returns in a much simpler form. You can no longer separate the sword from the tank nor does the tank fire a missile or feature any lights or sounds. It's a really simple version of the original accessory. Folks would often find ways to have their Megatron hold the sword more traditionally back in the day. There was also garage kits of swords that Megatron could hold. It was neat seeing all the cool stuff people were coming up with. Still, it was always an odd choice for Megatron's Armada body to be his weapon in this upgraded body... and they held onto it for this new toy. Somebody at Hasbro or Takara is REALLY stuck on that. A neat newer feature is that the shoulder cannons can be removed and held as traditional blasters. The orignal guns were on joints that would allow for pivoting. These are much smaller and cannot, however can be plugged in either standing straight up, or forward. Neat! This is a cool little update of a fun design and a great little figure all around. I'm very happy with it, not just because of my personal fandom for the character... but it's just a neat toy. I'm hoping some of the other recolors of the original toy get released. That would be awesome.