Shattered Glass Megatron was my favorite toy from BotCon's Shattered Glass year.  And because BotCon simultaneously hates me while loving me with great booth real estate, here comes a toy to replace him.  Curses!  I don't want to replace my Megatron!  My Megatron is great!  That is a dumb idea!

But, see, a while ago Fun Publications scribe Jesse Wittenrich painted up his War Within Springer to be Galvatron, and it really really worked.  It was a pretty amazing idea that you have to see to believe, because, dude, who'd believe it otherwise?  A helicopter guy?  Meh!  But it does work.  And I guess it was such a great idea they decided to off Megatron and bring him back as that Galvatron design.  And now there's a toy of it.  A toy of it that came with something I really wanted, Shattered Glass Thundercracker, so it's not like there's any skipping it.

So here he is!  Galvatron's admittedly a very pretty toy, but his prettiness isn't my problem, it's the kicking of Megatron's toy the curb that's my problem.  Evac's always been a good toy, no matter who he's been redecoed into, and Galvatron's no exception.  Galvatron's probably even the prettiest of all of them.

(It's been noted that SG Megatron's Rumbler tank arm cannon thing can still attach to Galvatron's arm.  There's a 5mm peg on Galvatron's right arm and a 5mm screw hole on the underside of Rumbler.  So there's that continuity of arm-cannons going on as well in Galvatron's favor.)

So what I think I'm gonna do, since I'm not prepared to put my Megatron away, is use SG Galvatron as... Galvatron.  The "real" one.  Universe Galvatron's way too tiny and Energon Galvatron, the guy who I'd been repurposing as G1 Galvatron before, is way too big.  SG Galvatron's the right colors (sans the eyes) and he strikes the middle ground, size-wise.  He's neither a midget nor a giant.

Thus, I have not wasted my money, nor have I spurned one of my favorite toys.  Everyone's happy!  Kind of!

There's been a new Voyager Megatron for each live-action movie, and this is the first one I've bought.  I always stuck with the Leader Class Megatrons, for good or ill.  Why did I buy this one?  Apparently we're not GETTING a bigger Megatron.  I will be very happy if the Hasbro folks at Toy Fair had misspoken, but for now I'll have to make do with this smaller guy.

I'd stay with one of my older, larger Megatrons, but the design of this new Megatron really appeals to me.  After movie 1's Cybertronic jet and movie 2's Cybertronic tank, this is live-action Megatron's first Earth mode.  He transforms into a big tanker truck.  A big tanker truck with a tarp over the back.  A tarp that becomes a hooded cape in robot mode.

Hooded cape!

Judging by the way Megatron's face is sculpted, it seems he retains the physical damage Optimus Prime (plus Jetfire corpse) inflicted on him at the end of Revenge of the Fallen.  So, vain creature that he apparently is, Megatron covers up the wrecked side of his face with his  hooded cape and has retreated to somewhere on Earth as a tanker truck.  Which is pretty bad ass.  How many Transformers come with articles of clothing?  Articles of clothing that TRANSFORM?  During the transformation from robot to truck mode, the hood rotates into the interior of the rest of the cape and the resulting shape fits nicely over the back end of the truck.

Another awesome thing about the toy: in truck mode, his trailer is somewhat articulated, even though that area is Megatron's thighs.  You can wiggle the trailer half of the tanker truck to and fro, independent of the cab.  I forgot to take a photo of this because I am a dumbass.  Maybe I'll rectify that later.

It's nice to have a movie Megatron with vehicle mode parts.  That's just satisfying in itself.

Like the rest of the Deluxe-and-larger Dark of the Moon toys, Megatron comes with a MechTech weapon.  His is his arm-cannon, of course, and it's formed from the front half of his tanker.  Plug it into his arm, yank the ladder, and the cylinder opens up into a claw.  Unlike the Deluxe MechTech weapons, the Voyager MechTech weapons can retain their open configuration.  Play with the ladder a bit and the claws will stay deployed.  If you want to put the cannon away, you can plug it into his back.

The transformation is complex but not annoying.  There's lots of twists and turns, and it's pretty satisfying to have to break up vehicle mode kibble here and there on a movie Megatron toy.  The prior movie Megatron toys didn't really have to do that sorta stuff since they transformed from one pile of detail into another.

It's just too bad that he's not bigger.  I hope  Hasbro changes their mind, or were lying or whatever, and we get a big-ass Leader Class toy of this design later down the road.  For now, though, this Megatron will have to face off against Twilight Prime and his moon nipples.

Transformers Collectors' Club

My Straxus wasn't shipped alone.  His new casemate is War for Cybertron Megatron.  This is funny to me, because as I mentioned yesterday, he and Straxus shared bodies for most of the comics, and some believe it was actually Straxus-in-Megatron that became Galvatron in 2005!  So, hell, maybe my new Megatron toy is Straxus, too.

The previous two WFC figures, Optimus and Bumblebee, were kind of annoying messes.  Megatron thankfully does not follow this pattern.  In fact, he's pretty friggin' great.  He's by far the best of the video-game based dudes so far.  (With only Soundwave and Cliffjumper, that we know of, to eventually follow.)

It's pretty neat how he works.  In robot mode, he doesn't even feel like a Transformer.  Instead, he feels and plays like a cohesive robot action figure.  He seals up perfectly, with practically no visible transformation joints.  This might mean that his transformation is going to be on the pathetic side, but this isn't the case.  He splits up and folds into himself pretty amazingly.  Sure, his tank mode is really made up, which helps, but it's not like it looks like a Megatron robot rolling around on his stomach or anything.  His robot mode form is well hidden.  In fact, most of it is hidden beneath his fusion cannon and the undersides of his feet.  His forearms split open and form treads in a way not really seen before.

The forearm transformation is one of the few weak links, however.  They're not very sturdy in either vehicle mode (you can also fold them under the chassis to make a hover-tank).  Another is the missile launcher button placement on the cannon.  It's right above the connection point for securing the weapon to the arm, so if you want to apply the right kind of force to the weapon to snap it on, you definitely have to push down on the button.  I've lost the missile so many times already.  At the moment, I keep it in my pants pocket.  (I should make sure I find a safer place for it.)

Anyway, these grumbles aside, he's fantastic.  I've extolled the glory of open-sculpted palms before, but Megatron's are the best I've seen.  They're sculpted perfectly for aiming and firing his cannon arm.  They're in that relaxed pose you'd expect, with the cascadingly-curled digits.  It helps the toy come alive.

Yesterday I mentioned that Soundwave was the first of five nominees for the Transformers Hall of Fame.  Nominee number 2 is Grimlock, who is equally unsurprising.  I mean, yeah, once voting opens, Soundwave has this locked up, but Grimlock is the only guy who could possibly ever steal it from him.  Even though he won't.

Just like Soundwave's Hall of Fame bio, Grimlock's also drops some new information about him.  His speech impediment has been explained various ways before.  In the Marvel stuff, he didn't talk right because talking right was for prissy losers.  He talked badly because he wanted to.  In the original cartoon, he didn't talk very well because he was a primitive creation of Wheeljack.  (In fact, one could say that without a trip to Vector Sigma to endow him with life, he wasn't actually truly alive, but merely a complex machine.)

The Hall of Fame bio claims that his speech is fucked up because Scorponok damaged his voice processor during a battle.  Well, okay, let's add that one to the pile, I guess.

Hopefully, Dinobot will be tomorrow's nominee.  If not, I may be kind of fucked (I'll explain later), but if he is revealed to be a nominee sometime this week, I wonder what crazy retconned trivia we'll learn about him.  Is he Megatron's son?  Did he earn his rigid grill structure for pulling off a successful heist?  Will we finally learn what a steses pod is?

Who knows.  Other than us, potentially sometime tomorrow morning.