Not planning to go extremely in depth here. That said, if you have a specific question I'll try my best to answer. It's kind of amazing looking at this toy in person. It's certainly not a 1:1 realization of cartoon Megatron, but it's by far the closest in appearance to that benchmark that we've had outside Masterpiece, and it works really well. Combiner Wars Leader Megatron was maybe the next closest in trying to nail the look, and while it did things I liked, it always felt stiff and restricted in what it could do in robot mode. Eventually I sold it. Siege Megatron has no such problems. My specific instance has a weak outward joint on one hip, so bearing the toy's weight in some poses doesn't work. But without that QC flaw, I don't think I'd have anything to complain about as far as what Megatron can do in posing. The face is a great take on Megatron's model, something that's always seemed hard for anyone to really get right. This one still isn't perfect, but it checks a lot more of the boxes than most of the Megatron's I own or have owned. And fortunately Megatron is not among the number of Siege toys with egregious levels of sculpt detailing over the body. Visually it's pretty well balanced. ...which I guess brings us to everyone's favorite topic: Battle damage. Megatron's damage deco isn't super intrusive, to me. It might help that it's silver paint on various greys, so it might blend slightly better than if it were over bright colors. I didn't buy Optimus, so I can't really use that as a point of comparison. But I like one effect of the silver paint: Depending how the light hits it, the damage ends up looking either light colored like bare metal under a scraped away finish, or dark like foreign matter splattered over top of the surfaces. But if even that doesn't help you let it pass, it doesn't seem like the battle damage paint is layered over any other paint, so it's probably safe to try to remove it without risk of hurting anything else. I do think some small deco elements were probably lost in favor of this. The toy seems a little light on paint cover overall when you look past the damage applications. I like the tank mode well enough. It fits together solidly, and pretty easily when you get a handle on what you need to do. The current round of instructions are garbage, as per usual, I guess. One important step, flipping up small elements on the shoulders to cover the "hammers" is vital for the tank to fit together, but while a whole step in the instructions is devoted to that, I had a terrible time discerning what was actually being required since they use a full body image to depict moving two tiny pieces. And continuing for however many years it is now, the flat paper the instructions are printed on does it no favors, dulling the contrast terribly. If Hasbro Asia continues using gloss paper for their Siege releases, China will once again be getting the far more readable paperwork. Oh, but I was talking about the tank. H-tank though it is, I like that it uses some of the robot panels to fill in the gap between the front tracks. The head also hides under all that, though you'd have to flip it over to end up seeing it. Pretty good result, all told. The weapons aren't quite what I expected. Or, well, the fusion cannon is totally fine, but the sword and rifle didn't end up being what I thought they would. The sword blades aren't intended to detach from the rifle, something that I don't think had really been communicated before. It makes it awkward to use the really cool looking rifle as a rifle since you need to dispose of the blades somehow. They're attached by mushroom pegs, so they can easily be slid off their mounts non-destructively. of course they can't be used anymore at that point, but if you care more about the rifle, it's an option. Honestly I'm annoyed they didn't set them up as 5mm peg attachments since they'd have gotten two extra weapons essentially free for zero added engineering effort. But overall, I'm pretty well pleased with this. It's not daring at all. It's almost the definition of playing it safe in terms of design choices. But while that may be a little boring to those of us well and deeply familiar with the usual bag of tricks, it does have the benefit of letting the toy focus on being a good rendition of a specific style of Megatron. It's not worth the current premium to get one right now, but if you can get it at SRP (or slightly less like I did ) I'd have a hard time seeing it be disappointing. (Images from my Siege Megatron gallery on my toy and photo blog)
I know a lot of people like the battle damage (and I've definitely covered plenty of my movie figures in scratches and scrapes over the years), but if ever there was a line that BEGGED to have differently painted Takara releases, this was it. God damn it. Going to need to see how other people go removing this shit before I buy any of them.
The ankles are weird, and I kinda forgot about it until you asked. Cause it seems very much like they intended there to be an ankle tilt, but it's just a pin joint and it has no tension, so if you try to utilize it you lose stability. It's good that they have a little nub for it to lock straight, though when I tried it I couldn't get it to lock back in because the plastic panel kept wanting to bend rather than pass over the little flange. Had to use dental tools eventually to push it from the other side. As for your specific question, I did have one ankle a bit floppy, but I since noticed that the foot on that side wasn't pressed all the way in. Having done that, it's quite a bit better.
I hadn't considered it. Though given the legs need tabs on the waist to have structural strength in tank mode, I don't think you'd find any such result particularly good in any case.
Yea..does the turret do anything...and also..no pic of megatron with the fusion cannon on his arm? Fail
My biggest gripe remains, especially seeing that underside shot, it appears that with fairly minimal effort they could a have done something with the toes to help fill in the back gap between the treads instead of him haveing robot feet sticking up out of the back in alt mode. Otherwise, he’s looking pretty great, if perhaps a tad overly boxy — he MUST have the best Megatron headsculpt ever, I’d rate it circles around MPMegs.v2s clown face. Classics might be my favorite, as a somewhat new take on him, but this is looking like the best of the classic bucket head look.
The headsculpt is great, I normally hate the look of bucket head Megatron face, but they’ve done a good job here making him look bad ass.
Maybe I just don’t like tanks but I find it so boring when a G1-esque Megatron turns into a tank. The Combiner Wars figure was at least a little involved in its transformation compared to this.
how about the neck flap, is it loose? Is there a way to lock in at all? Also the back of the box has a nice way to use the combined cannon. I thought maybe the sword pieces could be used as a tripod for the big cannon.
I assume you can, but if you remove the blades from it can you plug the thinner gunbarrel on his back to emulate where the gun barrel was in G1 Megatron's robot mode?
I have the CW figure and while it makes a nice tank, it's definitely not complicated. I doubt the CW has more steps than the Siege one.
Yep! Elevation isn't an option though. Huh. Oops. The damnedest things end up slipping your mind when you put stuff together late. I'm really happy with how the fusion cannon turned out, especially after the stock photos for so long only showing it being held like a gun. But it looks perfect attached correctly. Unfortunately not. You can open the blades and maybe pretend it's got accelerator rails, but they don't fan out to the sides. Oh, or you could interpret it as a double bayonet, maybe? Ah, now that's a good question. The neck panel is the single most significant flaw of the toy, for the simple lack of any method of securing it in the correct position for robot mode. But it also barely affects using the toy at all, so it still isn't a big deal. The hinge has tension enough to stay where you put it when left alone, and there is a little friction to resist the head sinking down in the chest, but the head will get moved around easily in the course of regular handling. I'm truly at a loss for why there wasn't anything done to help it stay secured in place in robot mode. The "NFM Particle Beam Mega-Launcher" is depicted a bit misleadingly on the box, since it makes it look like there's an angled or positionable mount for it on the backpack, when in fact it's just a flat 5mm port on top of the tread units. I found it better taking the example of the instructions and using it hand carried, though I went in more of a bazooka direction. You can. You don't even have to remove the blades, necessarily. You can just rotate them back like they would be for tank mode and they'll just drape down the back of the robot. That said, the rifle barrel sticks up a bit higher than I like. And sadly doing a toy-accurate gun barrel positioning does not seem possible at all. Sadness.
Hmm, lack of ankle tilt is a bummer; for some reason I assumed he'd have it. Out of interest, do the inward-moving joints just above the knee lock solidly? great review and pics by the way - many thanks!
