I finally got my Megatron today, and started messing around with the cannon/sword. Originally, I was just going to use the friction of the blade halves to keep it in place and bypass the gimmick altogether. However, I wasn't happy about the fact that you can't see a part of the blade when you do this.


So I took it apart to see how it worked and noticed that the LED box is not necessary to make the gimmick work.


Here's a top view of said box:


Now for the two step process, you'll just want to take note of the spring on the right side of the box and get rid of it.


Now for the (slightly) trickier part. On the other side of the box, you'll see the gear that attaches to it, which doubles as the trigger for the LED.


At first I thought I needed to take the box apart to get it off. Not so, just treat the screw/peg thing as a hinge...


And take it off...


Put it back together and you're done. The friction holds the sword together surprisingly well, and I highly recommend doing this.
Plus, if you don't like it (or need to resell it at some point) you can just put the spring and gear back in.

Here are some before/after shots.

Before

After


It may not look like it from these (crappy) pics, but in hand, it's a pretty big difference, and shows part of the sword that would be otherwise invisible.

 

Intresting! I'll have to do this to my megatron

 

You definitely get more length out of the blade. Very easy to do, and it doesn't kill the whole thing. I went with a different direction for mine, but that blade is one of the best things about the setup, it's too bad they decided to make it all hidden and short. Good work!