It's been 20 years, and we've yet to get a good Lio Convoy toy.  The original was awkward and cumbersome and transformed into a lion with the worst rear legs, and was also extremely popular in the North American fandom at the time because it looked more like Optimus Prime than that dumb Optimus Primal who turned into a dumb monkey instead of a way cooler lion the way an Optimus Prime should.  And it was a tragedy, because for all Lio Convoy's faults, it was Beast Wars II Galvatron who was the true MVP of the two new toys Takara had created at the time.  But Lio Convoy righted all the horrendous wrongs Optimus Primal had perpetrated on the newly-adult fandom, so that dude was all the rage.

The Robot Masters adaptation of the Lio Convoy toy into a smaller form was reportedly an improvement on the design, I've heard.  And then there were roughly 30 billion redecoes of other lion toys like Leobreaker into Lio Convoy colors (which is the first time we got the "Leo Prime" moniker for the character), which were all of varying success.  And then there was Masterpiece Lio Convoy, which... honestly, I'm not sure how, but it's the worst one.  (Okay, I know how.  In the BWII cartoon, Lio Convoy's beast mode fleshy cartoon anime lion head shifted into an angular robotic head in robot mode, and since Masterpiece tries to be Faithful At All Costs, MP Lio Convoy became this clusterfuck of trying to fit two whole lion heads into that poor dude's right shoulder.)  It was so bad and we haven't gotten a new Beast Wars Masterpiece in the years since, that I've kind of assumed that it killed that portion of the line.  We might have a Rhinox by now if that thing hadn't happened.

Anyway, Transformers: Legacy: Evolution Beast Wars Universe Maximal Leo Prime (phew) has brought us a new attempt at the character!  And it's... good????  I mean, it's a low friggin' bar, but even judging it against Transformers toys in general, not just the Lio Convoys, it stacks up admirably.  It's got a lion mode without garbage hind legs and with existing forelimb biceps, it's got an interesting transformation that cleverly reconfigures that lion shape into an anime-styled robot mode, and it has a few gimmicks tucked in as well. 

The toy comes with four small little barrels which you can plug into various ports in his mane.  The two top ones can remain plugged in there while those panels fold back in for lion mode (or be unplugged and be used as handguns), and the two side ones can stow inside his back.  Additionally, as with the original toy, long X-Men Wolverine-esque claws can fold out of the lion forepaws and augment the robot mode's arms.  And, hey, the left chest panel still opens to reveal an Energon Matrix.  And it's painted!

Leo Prime is honestly painted pretty well.  The detail-less lion face can give you a false impression, but you get pretty much everything else detailed perfectly.  After taking photos of the guy stock, I added some black paint to the lion face and he's basically perfect.  (The eyes themselves are nylon and so couldn't be painted by the factory anyway.)  

I adore the more realistic lion face.  The cartoony anime face never did it for me, and the more realistic portrayal helps Leo Prime fit in better with, say, Kingdom Tigatron or any of the other Beast Wars guys in Legacy.  Admittedly the giant paws remain cartoonish.

While this is clearly the Best Lio Convoy Toy Ever, there are still some things that fall short.  The lion mode is useless in anything other than a standing pose, really.  It's not jointed well enough to do a believable attack pose.  I do miss the original's "push the forehead button in and his jaw puppets" action.  And, yeah, the lion face could have used the black lines, even if the eyes themselves couldn't have taken factory paint.  

But it's a toy that's excellent enough that I'm actually excited about it, despite my lukewarm feelings for the character itself.  It's just a nice lion toy!  We've had lions before, but, like, they're rarely any good.  And most of them are the worse toys of this guy.  A solid recommendation from me.

You know that Branson Reese meme with the "NO FEAR" t-shirt, the second panel, and then the "ONE FEAR" t-shirt?  Well, my middle panel is "MP-scale show-accurate Beast Wars Transmetals third party toys."  I was never a third party (not-Hasbro/Takara, unlicensed, illegal, infringing, etc) guy, but once you have TakaraTomy indefinitely stall their Beast Wars Masterpiece efforts, essentially signal that they're never ever going to slip into Season 2/3 Metals guys, and have TransArt (a 3P company) start cranking out screen-perfect toys of Beast Wars Transmetals folks, that's really my silver bullet.  I'm sorry.  I can't not own these.  It's impossible.

I saw on the Internet that Transart's "BWM-06 Metal T. Rex" was going to exist, saw that it was perfect, and then amassed their previous offerings in anticipation.  So I have their Transmetal Cheetor, their Optimus Primal, their Ravage, and these are basically all I ever live for now.  Well, my wife and children, sure.  But also mostly these.  

These third party toys by TransArt also avoid the pitfalls that both official Masterpieces and third party offerings often succumb to, by my experience.  Usually they're overwrought and fragile with complexities and unnecessary engineering, but so far TransArt's outings have kept things simple and robust.  These are mostly just oversized versions of the original toys, with extra articulation.  They're not literally upsized knockoffs or anything -- all the sculpts are distinct from the originals (the CGI models were very similar but not identical to the toy sculpts), but the endpoint is you have a toy that you can transform back and forth without having to take an afternoon off.  It helps that the Transmetals were pretty close to their original toys, so you don't have to change much to them to keep them accurate other than the "upscaling."  The hugest difference between "Metal T. Rex" and Transmetal Megatron's transformation is that Metal T. Rex has some folding panels to cover up his forearms in tyrannosaurus mode.  And these fold easily away.  

But it's a big, MP-scale Transmetal Megatron.  Transmetal Megatron is... probably my favorite Transformer.  Of all time.  It's a t. rex and it has roller skates and VTOL engines and it transforms into the best Megatron ever in the form he was in when he did all of that Megatron's most memorable things.  Also, unlike the Hasbro version of Transmetal Megatron, he doesn't crumble into pieces cuzza Gold Plastic Syndrome.  So that's a plus! 

But it's a Transmetal Megatron who has ankle tilts, articulated fingers, an ab crunch, shoulderpads that fold up out of the way for more poses, a head on a neck ball-joint, opening tyrannosaurus jaws and moving tongue, separate, articulated t. rex fingers for waggling, a t. rex head that can look up and down and left and right, and swappable robot head faces.  And electronic lights in both heads for glowing eyes!  Tap the magnetic end of his large effects part for his tail blaster on either head and the eyes will turn on and glow.  (Mine arrived with dead batteries, so I had to swap them out with new ones first.)

He's also got finger guns to replace the t. rex fingers for when you want the robot mode to use the tyrannosaurus arms as blasters, plus a Golden Disk shard projector that replaces the tip of his tail, for when you want Megatron to show Ravage home movies of G1 Megatron.  

The toy does include two tails, one for each mode.  There's some... size changing between modes, and so you do have to give him the larger tail in tyrannosaurus mode and the smaller tail for robot mode.  A little disappointing, but understandable when you have him in hand and see how incompatible the sizes are.  The larger tail can also store the extra faces and tyrannosaurus finger guns.  

And he's MP-scale, so he's, you know, large.  A bit taller than MP Season 1 Megatron, who's already pretty huge.  

I did have to do some customization, paint-wise, when he arrived.  Some parts of his faces aren't adequately painted, and so I opted to add some gunmetal to his helmet and around his eyes, plus separate his teeth on his smiling face with some black.  There's also a few chrome hits on his shoulders and legs that were neglected, but I haven't gotten to those, nor are they as important to me.  Maybe if Toyhax does some labels to fix those up, I dunno.  

But he's probably my favorite thing.  If our house had a fire and I could only grab one toy, he'd be in my top five.  (his size, realistically, is what'd keep me from putting him at #1, he'd be kind of a liability to have to drag around, plus, like, what, do i keep his extra tail in my pocket, or)

TransArt is doing a second run of him later this year/early next, so there's still opportunities to get him.  I think the second run will come with stickers for his various eyes, since many of him have had trouble with his electronics.  

While Transformers: Generations: War for Cybertron Trilogy: Kingdom dumped all the first season Maximals on us at retail, it was relatively light on first season Predacons!  I mean, this makes some sense.  Maximals are good guys and sell better, and they have folks like gorillas and cats and whatnot, while Predacons have two spiders and a fire ant they couldn't even sell the first time.  And so we got Megatron and Blackarachnia and Waspinator and Scorponok (and Dinobot labeled as Predacon on his packaging), but no Terrorsaur, Tarantulas, or Inferno.  Whispers tell us Tarantulas and Inferno are due in this year's (and next year's, because of covid??) Legacy toyline, while Terrorsaur is a last-minute addition to the Kingdom toyline as it goes right out the door.  

Terrorsaur's the fourth and final installment of Amazon's exclusive "Golden Disc Collection," and he's the one that comes with the titular Golden Disc accessory itself!  Well, okay, it's *a* golden disc.  The storyline and packaging tell us this exclusive set is built around the Voyager probe Golden Disc, but Terrorsaur dopily comes with the Alien Disc.  Whoof!  Great job, guys.  Wrong Golden Disc accessory.

He's a heavily retooled Kingdom Airazor, and mostly that means we get a pterosaur that perches like a bird.  Pterosaurs weren't dinosaurs, and thus weren't ever party to that whole bird arrangement, and so while part of me is like YAYYY TERRORSAUR another part of me is like HRMPH NOT BIRD.   But it's not like Terrorsaur ever transformed into a good, organic pterosaur anyway, I guess.  

At least Airazor is a pretty good toy to be retooled from, right?  Nearly all of Airazor is replaced with new Terrorsaur parts, other than a few robot parts and internal engineering bits, and so the two look completely different at a glance, albeit having similar silhouettes.   The original Terrorsaur transformed backwards from Airazor, with the beast head going on the back and the tail going on the chest, rather than vice versa, and so to bridge that gap, Kingdom Terrorsaur has a fake pterosaur butt on his chest.  The beat head folds back over his robot head and joins the real pterosaur butt on his back.  

In addition to the Wrong Golden Disc, Terrorsaur comes with three other accessories.  First, his rifle.  And second, two forearm spikes that come in a wadded up tissue paper baggie on the back of the card.  Don't miss that and throw it away.  The forearm spikes can stay plugged in during both modes, unlike Airazor's big forearm weapons.  So that's nice.  You don't have to swap them to Terrorsaur's legs after transformation to beast mode and back again.  

All three of the prehistoric animal guys on Beast Wars were pretty big on the cartoon, and Terrorsaur himself was larger than most of the other Predacons.  A Deluxe Class toy is a little smaller than would be proper scale, but a retool of Airazor is probably going to net you an Airazor-sized guy.  You can cheat his torso a little taller by not compacting it during transformation to robot mode, thus increasing his height, but it looks a little awkward and exposes an unsightly mushroom peg.  I might do it anyway.  

This guy's currently sold out on Amazon (and HasbroPulse) but there's at least two ways to get this mold in the future.  Target's reportely getting Terrorsaur in more toy-accurate colors as an exclusive at some point, and there's also rumblings of a Fractyl redeco.  And there's probably a few more ways they could redeco this toy later if they choose to.

Thrilling 30 Waspinator was pretty good!  A very good Waspinator!  Perfect, even, if you let the foggy haze of "i last touched this thing when I put it on a shelf five years ago" take over your cognition.   And it helps if you bought the expensive Japanese-convention-exclusive version with actual paint on it.  And if you didn't care that its knees couldn't bend more than ten degrees.  Or that its wings couldn't point upwards in robot mode without some fussing, or that his eyes were a glassy spooge color, or that he was weirdly a mechanical wasp of some sort, not organic, or--

Yeah, we're in Transformers' years of diminishing returns, sure.  Taking characters/toys you were pretty pleased with and doing them just a little bit better, just better enough, to realize the older one was GARBAGE actually!  THROW THAT OLDER TOY IN A BIN AND FORGET IT DOWNSTAIRS FOREVER.

That, sure, but also sometimes there's some new things that you like that you hadn't considered, like, hey, what if we sculpt Waspinator's wasp mode after an actual wasp?  It changes the eye shapes on his chest (making him less cartoon accurate), but it's actually pretty neat!  I like that!  And a wasp's stripes on its ass aren't actually a cartoonish set of perfectly horizontal stripes, so what if we shaped them more organically?  That's also neat!  I like that.

And you know what's GREAT???  Every single Waspinator until now has cast his upper shoulders in nylon plastic because they're always balljoints, and balljoints work better if they have a little texture and sturdiness to them.  So, nylon.  But you can't paint nylon with factory paint, so Waspinator never before could have had the big yellow circles on his shoulders that he did in the cartoon.  But Kingdom Waspinator's shoulders are finally not balljointed!  They're universal joints with regular plastic!  And so at long last, the big yellow shoulder circles.  Phew.

Also, the now-standard waist articulation, useful knees, and ankle tilts are also pretty helpful.

There are some things the original still does better: I miss the flip-out stinger in the singer gun.  New Kingdom Waspy's stinger gun is just the solid yellow piece with the weapon detailing lightly sculpted into the underside.  But that's not a huge deal because I like leaving that weapon stowed so as to keep the striped butt portion intact.  

And maybe you'd like him as big as he used to be?  Maybe.  I'm fine with Waspinator being shorter.  He shouldn't be a tall deluxe.  (aka the size all deluxes used to be but now sometimes some of them are shorter for scaling)  

Kingdom Waspinator is a good Waspinator!  They actually paint his head!  I mean, I had the fancy Japanese convention one for that reason, but this one cost like a third what that one did, and everyone can buy it not just a few thousand people, so.  That seems nicer.

When does Terrorsaur get here so I can do a Kingdom Predacon groupshot, huh?

(original retail version thrilling 30 waspinator pictured in the comparison photo, not the fancy japanese convention one with paint)

Hasbro's been poking at some enjoyable buttons for me this past year.  We got a new Dinobot AND a retool/redeco of that Dinobot as Grimlock.  We got a toy colors Galvatron.  We got a Shattered Glass Goldbug (who I can steal a head from to give to Bumblebee).  And this year's PulseCon exclusive is... Beast Wars Ravage?  C'mon you guys, it wasn't even my birthday.

This is the second Beast Wars Ravage toy -- the first, "X-9" Metals Jaguar, was a retool of Transmetal Cheetor, reusing only the toy from the legs down and the cheetah's forelegs, with everything else essentially being new.  The robot face became the janguar face, and the robot arms had no where to go in beast mode so they just kind of hung underneath.  You could open up the chest to reveal a sticker of your choice.  I chose a screaming, drunken G1 Megatron, because obviously.  This sold for about $30 at the time, but now will cost you hundreds of dollars if you can even find it for sale.  

So, you know, a newer one is nice!  

Covert Agent Ravage is similar in execution to the original -- it keeps Kingdom Cheetor's robot from the legs down, plus the cheetah's forelegs, with everything else once again being essentially new.  The two big differences are 1) this transforms into an organic, furry beast instead of a robotic one, and 2) the robot arms actually have a place to go!  You open up the abdomen, stuff the arms inside, and the furry backsides of the forearms poke out the top of the beast to fill in the shoulders.  A greater attempt at Beast Wars cartoon accuracy is made here, with the robot head looking more like the Tigatron CGI model as it did in the cartoon, rather than Generic Robo Cat.  Unlike the cartoon, the head is sculpted furry to match the rest of the organic beast mode, and so while it looks more like CGI Beast Wars Ravage, it does have a furry rather than metallic texture to it.  

And, of course, since it uses Kingdom Cheetor's legs rather than a Transmetal Cheetor's legs, this Beast Wars Ravage has the distinction of looking more like CGI Ravage from the waist up, rather than from the waist down.

Benefits to this newer Covert Agent Ravage include: the head can turn.  Metals Jaguar's head was completely immobile, as it was on a telescoping series of hinges to accommodate the transformation.  Neck articulation is built into this new Beast Wars Ravage, though, and the requisite War for Cyberton-era ankle tilts are also present.  Covert Agent Ravage has two show-accurate rifles that he can wield in his hands or holster on his hips.  

He comes with an original 1984 Ravage, albeit with the microcassette deco painted on both sides of the microcassette mode for the first time -- there's no jaguar side and microcassette side to this version.  Both Ravages come packaged with a cardboard diorama of the interior Ravage's Beast Wars spaceship, including a cardboard sleeve to put G1 Ravage inside.  The idea is you can pretend Covert Agent Ravage can transform into the other Ravage's cassette mode, as he did (magically and impossibly) on the cartoon.  

This PulseCon exclusive was made for me.  I like it.  It's not currently sold out (and is priced above the Free Shipping threshold), so maybe give it a looksy.

If I'm being completely honest with myself, my primary interest in Transformers: War for Cybertron: Chapter Three: Kingdom is as a vehicle to deliver me additional Dinobot toys.  Yeah, I mean, I'm not ever gonna turn my nose up at More Beast Wars Action Figures, but they're side dishes to this main course.  Cue ObiWan_thats_why_im_here.gif.

Regardless, I'm in a weird place, Dinobot-toy-wise, as we live in a post Masterpiece Dinobot world.  I already have the perfect representation of Dinobot in plastic form, there's zero chance that a $30 mass release Dinobot is going to approach that level of accuracy, and so... I'm not sure what I'm actually asking for in Dinobot toys in this moment in time.  Anything Dinobot would likely please me, because I'm here for the General Dinobot Content.  Like, any style direction for him I'm game for.  I've got Super Accurate, let's see what else we've got up Dinobot's sleeve.  

Kingdom's seeming goals for Beast Wars characters in Kingdom are "more-realistic animals with animation-accurate robot modes."  And as such, Kingdom Dinobot slots right into those priorities, with the caveat that he's a more-realistic 1990s Jurassic Park velociraptor, not an actual Velociraptor mongoliensis, which was more like a turkey with teeth.  Kingdom Dinobot is large, he's scaley, and he's got slappers not clappers.  He's pretty successful at his chosen goals, though his wrists are pretty limp-looking due to how they gotta fold up to store inside his ribcage, and he's got his robot mode's double thumbs sticking out of the back of his raptor feet.  His robot legs hide surprisingly well underneath the torso.  I mean, they're obviously there, but at the low-end of "obvious."

Dinobot's robot mode head looks like it's the Masterpiece toy's CAD information scaled down.  Which is to say, it's perfect.  It's the Dinobotest.  It may be my favorite thing about the toy itself, though it's in a bloody battle with the way his dino thighs split and become his robot mode torso.  It's an idea that solves so many problems perfectly.  Problem 1: Dinobot's robot arms don't look like velociraptor thighs, especially his big golden shoulder pads.  Problem 2: Where does Dinobot's fake raptor head chest torso come from?  Problem 3: If Dinobot's robot mode torso weren't stored in the velociraptor torso, it'd be easier to hide his giant robot legs up in there!  So, like, BAM, this elegant solution to this multitiered problem.  

It does negate any dino-hip articulation, however.  The transformation execution is more important to me than this, though.  Articulate him at the knees and below all you want in the meantime!

His sword is purple.  In the show it's often silver chrome and kinda pinkish in some lighting, the latter of which was reflected in his Masterpiece toy.  His Kingdom sword is just full-on purple, though.  I like it, honestly, if only because I see it as a reference to Beast Wars co-story editor Bob Forward's legendary "purple-headed pole of pontification."  If you don't like the purple sword, that just means you're not a cool nerd like me who gets things.  

His rotate blade doesn't rotate.  ...and considering how he transforms, it's easy to see why.  His finally proportionally-large head takes up all that space back there for any push-lever gearing.  Pretend it spins, just like you pretend G1 Megatron's fusion cannon shoots things.  

The place to be is robot mode, though.  What a fantastic action figure he is here.  His arms have so much movement, aided much by his articulated wrists that not just rotate but bend to and fro.  He's got waist articulation, which is a new one for a mass release Dinobot, and his neck lets his head tilt as he pleases.  And, of course, the now-standard ankle tilts.

My one actual real gripe is the dropping of tan/gray stripes from his chest in robot mode between the back-of-the-box renders and actual production.  Those would've really helped!  He looks kind of paintbare in robot mode because all of his dino mode stripes vanish themselves during transformation.  I feel a small need to match the tan/gray paint and put those stripes back myself, matched only by my probably larger need to have a "stock" Dinobot to display with my otherwise unaltered Dinobot collection.  I can't start hand-painting them NOW.  And, again, I already have the perfectly-decoed Dinobot in the Masterpiece, so...

Kingdom Dinobot's good.  

Since a lot of recent Leader Class toys have been Voyager Class Guys With Extra Stuff recently, it's nice to dig into one of the fewer Leaders that are just properly large boys.  Leader Class Megatron (Beast) is one of those boys.  A full head taller than the original 1996 Ultra Class Beast Wars Megatron, our new T. rex Megs is a tower of chonk.

Like Kingdom's other Beast Wars reimaginings, he marries a cartoon-accurate robot mode with a more realistic-looking animal mode.  (The animal mode doesn't try to look like the 1996 CGI but the robot does.)  Megatron's beast mode does attempt something that the smaller toys don't, however -- it tries to recreate the feeling of hide.  Much of the Tyrannosaurus skin sections are a slightly rubbery plastic affixed to a solid plastic interior.  Like an ogre, he's got layers.  Many of the interior plastic sections are cast in a bony white color, and so it has the presentation of flesh over a skeleton.  It's a pretty compelling arrangement, and it makes handling him feel different from other toys.  

The robot mode rearranges (with some parts clicking together a little too solidly) into a pretty amazing T. rex.  The trade on this is that the robot mode piles more beast mode parts on his back.  The thighs are now back there, too, since some actual Tyrannosaur thighs were wanted for beast mode rather than just the old flat missile-firing cylinders of the original toy.  There's some creative jointing there to allow the thighs to articulate with the rest of the legs while connected.  

Megatron's robot mode does have a fist sculpted into the tail arm, but the tail itself doesn't separate.  There's no water-squirting bladder in the dinosaur head arm, but there is a 5mm port inside the mouth if you want to add energy effects parts (sold separately).  

The toy tries its best to make the dinosaur mode poseable.  There's jointing at the middle of the tail and at the base, giving the tail a chance to sway how you want.  And the dinosaur neck has... lots of stuff going on to make the head be able to move around while keeping fleshy panels filling in the gaps, with mixed success.  There's a springloaded trapezoid of neck flesh on either side of the head, which more or less follows the skull as you move it to and fro, but the unspringloaded panel above the neck has to be manually moved into position each time the head moves.  But I like the effort.

Another change is that Megatron's dino torso transforms upside-down compared to other versions.  The beige tummy coloring ends up on the tops of Megatron's shoulders, rather than the green coloring along the spine.  

The important thing is that the toy has a great presence that's equal to Megatron's powerful personality.  It meets the Beast Wars Megatron of the mind's eye, and that's what you pay for and receive.

The third part of the War for Cybertron Trilogy, Kingdom, wasn't forecast to hit stores until March, and yet here we are, in November, with the initial trickle of them into one or two stores.  Amazon's even scoot up their estimate for delivery of these guys from February to next week.  Iiiiiit's happening!  Anyway, I threw my preorders in the garbage and grabbed a set of the first wave of Core Class figures from eBay.  

'Cuz if I can get a Rattrap now I'll get a Rattrap now.

Part one of WFC, Stege, was about the Autobots and Decepticons on Cybertron, pre-Earth.  Part two, Earthrise, is about them eventually getting to Earth and grabbing up some Earth alternate modes.  And Kingdom?  Apparently it's about Beast Wars!  I mean, there'll still be some Autobots and Decepticons, but we're here for the animals.  And taking the place of the $10 Micromaster two-pack pricepoint is the new Core Class pricepoint, which is some scaled-down G1 guys and some smaller Beast Wars folks.  (Presumably, the scaled-down G1 guys are for interacting with this year's Titan Class playset, which we don't officially know much about, but it'll be the Ark.)  

Rattrap is the lone returning Beast Wars character in the first wave.  (The other two are Vertebreak, a new Predacon; and a mini Optimus Prime.)  

The War for Cybertron Trilogy has been doing their best to deliver cartoon-accurate robot modes of Generation 1 Autobots and Decepticons, and it was interesting to learn how that design ethic would handle the Beast Wars characters.  It turns out that the way we're going is robot modes that do their best to ape (aheh) the Mainframe CGI models, while the beast modes are taking a more naturalistic approach.  This is versus the Masterpiece Beast Wars toys which aim to copy the CGI models in both robot and beast modes.  So Rattrap's rat mode, you see, tries to look more like your typical actual rat than it does the cute CGI rat he transformed into in the cartoon.

And, honestly, I'm big into that aesthetic.  I mean, I've got the Beast Wars Masterpiece toys if I need my Dinobot to transform into an awkward featherless duck or whatever.  I'm very happy for Kingdom to embrace better animal modes.  Rattrap's in particular is very pleasing!  It does indeed look like a little rat.  Enough so that I guess you should worry a little if you've got a-rat-nophobia or whatever.  In rat mode the toy is essentially immobile.  There is no articulation.  It's just a rat.

Which, at this scale, is fine enough.  This is a smalllllllll toy.  Maybe two inches long.  And I gotta tell you, this is the most complex toy I've ever seen at this tiny size.  He's got a lot going on in transformation.  Lots of little steps, and thankfully it all plugs in together well, mostly using various tabs that fit into the cooling vents in his balljoints.  Very economical.  It has to be, at this size.  

The perfect rat transforms into an unreasonably-well-proportioned robot mode.  Other than the more-realistic rat head on the chest, it achieves the look of the lanky CGI model.   The only real compromise is the robot feet, which become the rat's rear feet.  The was a choice to make them fully robotic or fully rat feet, and the choice was to go with a creepy midpoint.  Rattrap's feet are an organic redesign of his three-toed metal robot feet.  It's a compromise, again, but this is the scale we're working at.  Two inches.  

A friggin' incredible Rattrap at two inches.  

Hey, did you know that Masterpiece Blackrachnia's boobs are actually smaller than original toy Blackarachnia's boobs?  Hard to believe!  I mean, technically they started out being Tarantulas's pecs and looked more like a pair of golf balls, but it's somehow true!

Anyway, here's MP-46 Blackarachnia.  She's about the size of a large Deluxe Class toy.  (She's practically identical in size to Animated Blackarachnia, for example.)  I mean, you can tell she costs more just by looking at her -- she's ... a lot of paint and her parts count is massive.  But this is what size Blackarachnia's gotta be if she's gonna be in scale with everyone else in the Beast Wars Masterpiece range.  She wasn't a large gal!  The shortest character on the show, actually, ranking below Quickstrike, Rattrap, and Scorponok.  

Her size is relevant insomuch as she has to transform from one thing into another thing, and the two things share essentially zero parts.  Masterpiece Dinobot was also like this, and what he did to get from velociraptor to robot was... turn entirely inside out.  He was a Popple.  But he could do this because he was massively large.  There was enough of him that he actually could turn inside out.  Blackarachnia, though, uh.  She be small.  There's not enough of her to do what Dinobot does.  

She tries, though.

Obviously, by looking at her, the robot mode's accuracy was emphasized.  In robot mode, she's a perfect action figure of the CGI model.  The only thing that's even a tiny bit off is the exact curvy shape of the spider abdomen stuff on her back, and even that's getting picky.  It's hard to tell that she even transforms into something, at a glance.  She's got spider legs on her arms and that's it.  

The spider mode is definitely where all the compromises landed.  Her tiny head and thorax sit atop a massive pile of robot mode arms.  Her robot mode legs are too large to tuck entirely inside her spider mode abdomen.  The thing is, there's just not anywhere for all this stuff to go.  Her two modes are largely incompatible, and she's too insubstantial to be as creative with the transformation as one'd like.  Cramming all the accuracy into the robot mode seems like the best idea between "favoring robot," "favoring spider," and "making both look bad."

Blackarachnia comes with one stand square (Dinobot came with two squares), a support arm for the stand, four web parts that combine with each other to form a complete web and attach to the support arm, and an attachment piece to help you connect Blackarachnia to it in various ways.  This stuff is larger than the toy itself, so even though Blackarachnia is pretty small, you get a big chunk of plastic.   

There's also two alternate heads (nigh-identical smiling and laughing-while-green-eyes-glowing), a harpoon that attaches to the harpoon weapon that forms out of part of her abdomen, a second harpoon attached to a string which you can use to swing or hang Blackarachnia from, and a VR mask attached to a wire and a separate extra wire.

Masterpiece Blackarachnia is a small but incredibly intricate toy that transforms from a 100% perfect robot mode (which is extremely poseable) to a spider-mode that looks okay if you haven't put your contacts in yet, comes with a few extra faces, a large diarama stand, and some weapons.  How much you want this for the price she asks depends on how much you dig Blackarachnia.  

gonna get this out of the way first, but the rubber ducky is a season two thing, and this is a season one megatron toy, so no it wasn't gonna ever come with a rubber ducky and no it's not weird or wrong that it doesn't

Many people assume Dinobot is my favorite Transformers character.  I do like him a lot, and I collect him religiously, but he's not actually my Number One.  My favorite Transformers character is actually Dinobot's nemesis, Predacon Megatron.  Megatron's an intellectual and physical powerhouse whose only weakness is he loves being evil with style and class.  He's not just a jackass, he also enjoys being a jackass, and he wants you to know he enjoys being a jackass.  It's fun to watch him fail, it's fun to watch him succeed -- it's just fun to watch him, which is rare for a Megatron.  

So the Masterpiece toy line has finally gotten to my favorite Transformers character, and... it's a big'un.  He's not the biggest Masterpiece toy so far (Ultra Magnus and Star Saber are larger), but he towers a bit over the G1 and Movie Optimus Primes and G1 Megatron.  Masterpiece toys have long maintained a strict robot mode scale, and if you want Megatron to be in scale with Masterpiece Optimus Primal and the nearly-as-large Masterpiece Dinobot, you're going to have a giant-ass Beast Wars Megatron toy.  

Like the other Beast Wars Masterpieces, Megatron is meticulously decoed.  He's got metallic paint and/or plastic to match the look of the mid-90s CGI.  He's got texture-mapped deco across his dinosaur skin surfaces.  The color matching is meticulous.  There's no places where the paint runs out because it goes around a corner and the budget's thin.  He's painted from every angle.  

He's electronic!  Batteries go into both of his heads.  The batteries in his robot head make his eyes light up.  The batteries in his tyrannosaur head play speech clips.  They're all in Japanese, of course, but there are quite a few of them.  

For the reasons listed above, he's also pretty expensive!  Amazon.jp has pretty good discounts on preorders, but without them, he was the most expensive Masterpiece toy thus far.  That is, until the third Masterpiece Optimus Prime comes out this fall.  (Prime's shorter, but he comes with, you know, a trailer.)

Megatron comes with a handful of accessories.  He's got two extra faces in addition to the neutral one.   There's the trademark grimace, which should remind us of the original toy's expression.  And most importantly, there's the Grin.  Some call it the Triangle Grin, some call it the Eric Cartman Grin, but it's the Grin.  I love that face.  It's the "Yeeessss!" face.  It's the "I love being an evil jackass" face.  And finally it's in plastic.  

There's also a toothbrush.  Yeah, there's a toothbrush, so you can replicate that scene in "Before the Storm" where we catch him with all his extra parts off brushing his dinosaur hand's teeth.  ...the extra parts also all come off.  You can yank off the hip guns, the tail itself from the arm, the kibble piled on his back, and the shoulderpads.  This leaves you with a pretty skeletal Megatron robot that's only got the dinosaur hand, his dinosaur boots, and the dinosaur taint.  And it's all so you can more faithfully replicate that time he brushed his dinosaur hand's teeth. These Transformers folks at TakaraTomy are madmen.  

Megatron comes with the shotgun he carries in "Call of the Wild."  He also comes with an adaptor for Dinobot's stand so you can mount Megatron on the stand's arm so that Optimus Primal can stand under Megatron's raised body -- also to replicate a scene from that same episode.  (There are also stand adaptor pieces for both robot and dinosaur modes.  There is no stand itself included -- you've gotta use Dinobot's or get a second Dinobot.)  There's also a weapon blast effect that you can plug into one of the shotgun barrels or into Megatron's open tyrannosaur mouth.  

Transforming him the first time isn't fun!  The instructions actually come with a second, smaller sheet of... corrections, so that you transform him properly without breaking him.  Some of his hinges -- especially within the pile of tyrannosaur hide that bunches up on his back -- feel a little fragile.  The instructions want you to fold them in the proper order.  It's also difficult to pull the tyrannosaur hide parts apart the first time.  They're locked together pretty well, and you don't know yet where the connection pieces are and where the hinges are.  It's a pretty large web of interconnected thin plastic sheets.  

The second problem area is transforming his torso.  Most of it pulls out along a slider, and that sucker is, like, paint-locked or something.  It requires excessive force to pull out the first time, and you're not really sure what you can leverage against without breaking something.  I recommend... pushing with your thumb against the inside of the top of the pelvis while yanking back?  I dunno. 

It's all much easier the second time around.  You know where the tabs are, you know where the weak points are, and everything stops being so hard to yank out as it was the first time.  Which is good, because both modes are excellent (unlike Dinobot's) and so you're actually going to want to spend time with both of them.  

Some people have reported problems with the purple swirly plastic in the crotch.  A handful have reported cracking, and a few more have reported fear of cracking.  It's swirly plastic, and there are already some carved grooves in there, and so once you hear about splitting, every facet looks like breakage.  Mine, so far, doesn't seem to have any problems.  It's been suggested that the problem is not actually weak plastic, but that those few handful of cracked crotches were because of a rarely-occurring gear misassembly inside the crotch.  Meaning, hopefully, that it's not something inevitable that will happen to everybody's Megatron, but something that will happen immediately to maybe five people once they move a hip in any direction, and everybody else's will likely be fine.  

Since mine seems to be okay, really the only downside to this fucking gorgeous toy is that my kids expect me to transform it constantly, and also transform it immediately.  Like, children, okay, but come back in half an hour, all right?  This is not a satisfactory answer to them.  They want dinosaur mode right now.  

I hand them Rescue Bots T-Rex Optimus Prime.  You just twist that guy's waist and he's done.