I mean it's partially that and also he's just a Transmetal, not a TMII. Optimal first appeared at the beginning of Season 3, while the Transmetal II Driver wasn't introduced until later on.

You know the usual 3P suspects are gonna be on top of that as soon as they can get one in hand.

 

True, but Megatron proves that not all character forms whose toys were released as TMIIs were created with the Driver. As a character form introduced in the third season, I had always assumed OP OP was the same, especially as TMII Meg was largely created through the same means. I guess the lava really screwed with the process... Somehow. Eh, makes no less sense than it changing his alternate mode from a dinosaur to a dragon.

 

The gimmick didn't seem all that obtrusive to me, and who really would complain about having two figures in one? That aside, it doesn't look like Optimus Primal or BW Megatron are at the level of iconic fame as G1 Optimus Prime, Megatron, Bumblebee, Starscream, etc. We're probably lucky they got as many figures now in the modern era as they did.

True, but there are also plenty of other Optimus Primes that the designers might be wanting to put in Legacy, and especially at the Commander price point. Maybe such as the Armada Optimus that so many seem to now want and the designers have indicated they are aware of. I wouldn't be surprised if a new OpOp comes out and it gets shunted into the Leader class or something. Not everything needs to be a Commander.

 

Not everything needs to be a Commander but Optimal is a good candidate given all of the gimmicks they'd be able to include. Multiple alts, expanding blast shields, pop out chest cannons....

 

Hopefully with all the alt-modes this time, since he presumably won't have himself inside him and a upgrade kit is needed (of and a Primal Prime repaint would be great).


So as long as the proportions are better than Legacy Megs or Transart's Optimal they should be good.

 

Or G1 Megatron’s spark was just that evil that it made his form look demonic.

Remember the evil brain impulses from G1? Maybe that’s what influenced TM2 Megs’s form.  

 

The transmetal 2 driver just showed up out of nowhere. We only know it's of alien origin and was altered by megatron.
We don't know long be had it or what of any kind of experiments he ran on it or himself(besides the cybertaptors).

Maybe he exposed himself to some kind of radiation or energies of the driver when he altered it. Maybe just touching exposed himself and the lava combined with the original megatrons spark was the catalyst.

Hell, maybe he had one of those transmetal 2 chip things from the cyber raptors in his "pocket " when he was dropped into the lava

Either way, the driver is the biggest question mark I feel about the whole series and I hope one day, we will get an official back story about it. I need answers lol

 

Even then, being a Commander is no guarantee that a new OpOp will have all the features from the original figure or its gimmicks intact. This Megatron figure is notably missing the "vehicle form" from the original figure, so how do we know all the forms would be included on a Commander OpOp. How do we know a Commander OpOp figure won't do the same thing as the PotP figure, like cannons that need to be manually plugged into the chest? Or blast shields like those on the PotP figure?

 

I mean, the original was also missing the vehicle form.

 

The original TMII Megatron figure did indeed have a "vehicle form" that this Legacy figure lacks, as half-assed as it may have been. I simply point out that modern renditions of certain characters may not have all of the functionality of said characters' original figures intact. PotP OpOp has the chest cannons, albeit they don't pop out of the chest and need to be manually plugged into the chest because they also double as a handheld weapon. That figure was also missing OpOp's ground vehicle form. OpOp getting a new Commander figure doesn't necessary mean these features will be present, or might simply be re-dos of what the PotP figure did.

FWIW, Dragon Megatron was never referred to as a TMII form within the cartoon proper, probably because his origins are more in line with that of OpOp (the faction leader sticking the spark of his distant ancestor faction leader into himself) than any other character that was officially labeled as a TMII.

 

I wish he was bigger, dude has to be able to hold Tarantulas in his dragon mouth to pass the scale test for me, but at least he should scale well with the power of the primes optimal optimus

I suppose I can always hope for an upsized knock off…

 

tbf aside from the asymmetrical nature of his arms he isn't really much of a TMII design to begin with, and seeing as the toy itself was delayed due to development issues (thus why he only appeared in the body for 4 episodes and why Optimal Optimus was massively nerfed till then) there's a good chance he was meant to come out around the same time as Optimus as simply a beefed-up Transmetal.

 

Nah. Everything about him is a TM2 design and he’s very much designed to have paired with Tigerhawk, another very TM2 design, in terms of play pattern, size class, etc.

 

I love everything about this, the only things I would have changed: an opening hand and including the covenant of Primus

 

I guess that does make sense. Though that being the case, I kinda question why they didn't just debut Dragon Megatron a bit earlier and just release the toy later since it was delayed. Would have been better from a narrative standpoint if both faction leaders reached their "final forms" in BW around the same time, but I suppose the hype for them would have died down if the figures came out late relative to their debuts in the cartoon.

And what even defines a TMII design in the first place? Seems like some are claiming that TMIIs come from being created by a "TMII driver", but that's not how Dragon Megatron was created. It also appears that due to the differing origin, the series itself did not refer to Dragon Megatron as a TMII for probably the simple reason that he was formed in more or less the same manner as OpOp. And if Dragon Megatron is a TMII, I fail to see why OpOp cannot be seen as an equivalent, since they are pitted against each other in most media and were formed in more or less the same way. In the end, the distinction seems more like an argument of semantics than anything else.

Well, given that Leader class figures in general were downsized between PotP and Legacy, this figure should actually scale decently with PotP OpOp.

 

First time I am hearing of the transmetal 2 driver. It sounds badass.

 

King Samlock:

Robot mode:


Dragon mode:



With POTP Primal:

 

He does have the dark red paint hit on his hips, as seen in the renders. That's good; he looks a bit better here than he did in the overly-bright promo photos. But there's still something off about his red plastic. I don't think it's dark enough and it's almost got a purpleish cast to it.


Maybe I'm just nitpicking at this point, idk.

 

Man those bot more proportions are just not good.

 

Goddamn it now I regret only grabbing the Throne version of Optimal. Prices for the original deco were high enough before this likely spikes them higher.