Finally got my Convobat from HLJ this morning after a long delay caused by an umptieth Canada Post screw-up (was supposed to be delivered on Dec. 28... ugh).

Really nice set. Triple tribute treat here: BW Optimus Primal (bat), BW Megatron (Headmaster) and TM Optimal Optimus (Targetmaster). At least that's how I see it.

Paint apps are fantastic (even the inside of the bat's mouth is painted), joints are nice and tight (including no loose neck joints when the heads are on). The only minor flaw: the pegs on Optimal Optimus (that's how I call him) in gorilla mode don't hold the Headmaster partners really well by the feet, they're slightly too small it seem.

The green used on the Megatron head is exactly the same as the one used on Skullsmasher body, so they look really good together. Also included is a comic, going to read it tonight.

 

Great pictures, looks great !!! Can't wait to get mine if BBTS every ships mine.

 

really nice of them to color match skullcruncher like that  

 

Btw, bat legs are mistransformed. Sorry!  

 

Are those the swords from the Prime Wheeljack mold? What an odd inclusion.

 

It makes sense to me - Bat Primal had swords.

 

Yes.

 

This looks so good that it hurts! I never owned or wanted Bat Primal nor Gator Megatron but this concept of this set just sings to me. The Optimal Optimus nod really seals it as something strongly attached to Beast Wars and creates an interesting take on the scale, if the bat body is considered a "normal" size Headmaster!

 

You'd think they'd mold new swords for him lol.

 

For a mainline release, maybe. For a limited exclusive? Generally not.

 

Legends Convobat and Megalligator (Optimus Primal and Megatron)

The latest exclusive Legends toy from ehobby is finally out and it's without a doubt my favourite of the bunch: a redeco of Titan Returns Mindwipe as Optimus Primal's original bat form! As a Takara release he uses his Japanese identity of Convobat.



Seeing as both the Titan Returns Mindwipe as well as Legends Wipe have already been available,most people are probably pretty familiar with the mold. This is, however, my first time handling it and I've got to say that I really enjoy it! Generally speaking I've liked every new mold that the Titan Returns line has offered up so far and this is no exception: the mold is posable, solid and fun to play with and it's transformation is intuitive but not difficult.



This toy has specifically been redecoed to resemble Optimus Primal's very first toy. He's best known as turning into a gorilla as his show counterpart, original Ultra-class toy (and every subsequent toy for that matter), his original toy was in fact a Basic-class that turned into a bat in a one-step transformation. I especially like the yellow on the chest to replicate the bat's eyes. In order to increase resemblance to this toy Legends Convobat forgoes the clawed-shield-gun-thing that Mindwipe was armed and instead comes with the dual swords from the Prime Wheeljack mold. This is the third in the tradition of ehobby exclusives coming with other toys' weapons that is to be continued with the next exclusive, Magna Convoy.



As his robot mode is based on the original Optimus Primal toy, his bat mode is based on said toy's beast mode. It's a little harder to make a strong resemblance given that the original toy was mostly comprised of a single-piece bat with the entirety of the robot mode folded up underneath, but it's still a grey bat and the way that the torso is blue kind of resembles the mostly blue robot mold folded up underneath. The bat mode itself is a solid toy too, with multiple articulation points on the wings for multiple poses. The faux wings for the robot mode are still in view from the back of the toy, but to me that's a reasonable sacrifice for aesthetic purposes. The swords peg (rather visibly) into the 5mm ports on the wings, which I suppose could count as another reference to the original toy.



Legends Convobat comes with two different Headmasters. The first and main one is not actually Vorath, the one that came with Mindwipe, but is instead Infinitus, the one that came with Sentinel Prime. This is especially notable as it's the mold's first release in Japan as they never got Sentinel Prime and the retooled version that comes with Astrotrain hasn't been released yet, although the Takara-exclusive Leo Prime is set to use it when it gets released later in the year.



The second Headmaster is much more interesting: It's Galvatron partner Nucleon coloured like the original Beast Wars Megatron toy's head! This is especially fitting because the original release of that toy, which transformed into an alligator rather than the character's more traditional Tyrannosaurus or dragon modes, also came in a two pack with the original Optimus Primal. The head has been coloured to match and is intended to go with the Legends Skull toy, which is what the above photo is of.



This photo is of the toy on the Hasbro's version, Skullcruncher. As you can tell, the greens are so similar that there's no real way of telling the difference and the Hasbro mold fits the mold better on account of it having no Decepticon insignia on the torso. That being said, the toy does come with a sticker sheet, featuring an Autobot or Maximal insignia to be applied to Optimus Primal or Predacon insignias to be placed on the Skullcruncher mold as well as a plain white sticker to cover the Decepticon insiginia on the Legends version. This is, of course, completely alleviated but using the Hasbro mold.



As it's using a mold and colourscheme not intended as the character, Megatron does not properly align with the original toys. It's of course disappointing that there was never a dedicated redeco of the mold, but ultimately I can understand the choice: Skullcruncher's colourscheme makes a much more passable Megatron than Mindwipe's does Optimus. As a pretty obsessive Beast Megatron collector I would've preferred them skip Optimus Primal in favour of Megatron, but I don't really feel sore about the decision.



Optimus Primal's final accessory is his Targetmaster-type partner "Ape X Arms", a redeco of the Titanmaster-class Apeface's accessory in the colourscheme of Primal's Optimal Optimus body. It's a cute little reference, considering that Optimal Optimus had four modes, two of which were also a jet and a gorilla. The first mode is the gorilla mode, which is pictured above. It can be ridden by either of the Headmasters.



The second is the jet. The smaller Headmasters are mean't to be kind of jammed into the slot on the back of the jet in order to fill the gap and actually become part of the jet rather than riding it, however both the instructions and stock-photography tell you have the Headmaster awkwardly ride it as Megatron is doing in the above photo.



The final mode is a weapon mode for the larger toy. It's simply made by swinging the gorilla mode arms forward whilst in jet mode and folding down a 5mm peg. It's unfortunate but Optimus Primal has no storage for his swords in robot mode, so if you want him to be holding the gun in one hand he has nowhere to put the sword that's not in use. I'm not really sure if Ape X Arms counts as an added accessory as such because all of the Deluxe-class Legends releases have come with one of the Titanmasters' vehicles, but it is a unique combination.



I really love this set. I appreciate any and all Beast Wars references, but this particular one, which references a more obscure side of the franchise, really appeals to me. It certainly helps that the Mindwipe mold is a solid toy and that it comes with a version of Megatron and I also really like the decision to include dual swords. That being said, this toy is not cheap... I'm ashamed to admit that it cost me an absolute fortune. If you're going to buy it you really have to consider how much an exclusive release combined of toys all available for much cheaper at regular retail. For me it is, for another it may not be.



It's not really part of a review, but I want to talk about the characters that this toy represents. As many know, both the two pack that this toy references, the comic included with this toy and the bios of the Ultra Class toys present Optimus Primal and Megatron as being the same characters as the G1 versions. This was of course changed when the cartoon came out and established them as being mostly unrelated, but with that being said the cartoon characters never took on these particular bodies. To make matters more confusing Takara renamed this pair Convobat and Megalligator whilst the Ultra-class toys (and cartoon characters) were Beast Convoy and Beast Megatron respectively and showed them side-by-side in promotional materials. Later still another two pack came out consisting of Convobat in red and Megalligator in purple and this set was firmly established as being the G1 characters. Fast forward to now and this toy's accompanying fiction established the characters in this set as being new ones that are clones of the G1 characters made by Straxus unrelated to Beast Wars as a whole. It's very confusing, is what I mean. For convenience I think I'll just consider them to be the Beast Wars characters.



My lack of Darksyde Megatron is like a hole in my heart.

 

Could we see Megalligator on Hardhead's body? I want to see if he'd make a decent base for a G2 Megs.

 

Couple of friends of mine talked me into not waiting for a 'con to pick this up. I'm glad I splurged. This baby looks great, and I've got a second Skullsmasher on the way to be Megatron's body.

I'm really impressed by how well the swords integrate into beast mode.

 

Convobat

I like repaints. Every review I write I include a section at the bottom entitled "Future Repaints" where I try and guess what the toy I'm writing about will be turned into with a few splashes of paint and maybe a couple of new/remoulded parts. I frequently include Beast Wars characters for anything animal related but very seldom get rewarded. As soon as we saw Mindwipe I thought "you might get a decent Bat Optimus Primal out of that" but seeing as the basic bat is Optimus Primal's lesser well known form the suggestion was more a shot in the dark.

Blow me if E-Hobby only went and took us up on the idea! The toy was announced on 5th August 2016 and during the period the toy was available to order from E-Hobby a number of promotional comic pages were issued :

[blockquote] Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5 [/blockquote]

In addition more promotional images were released via Twitter but it wasn't until promotional images of the next E-Hobby exclusive were released that people noticed that Convobat was missing his tail element, which is included with the forthcoming Magna Convoy.

To make up a new version of the Optimus Primal bat TakaraTomy have taken the Titans Return Mindwipe body and repainterd it a grey & blue. Blue is used for the upper arms, hands, waist and upper legs. The body is blue too but doesn't look it due to a large amount of grey paint on the chest to make it resemble the original basic toy's bat head. It's squared off but I can see what they are doing. All the rest of the toy is now moulded in grey with the exception of the clear bat chest door which is now clear orange. Red highlights on the knees, forearms and body remind you that the Optimus Primal bat was originally meant to be a new beast version of 1984's original Optimus Prime.

In order to give the toy an Optimus Primal style head, the repainted Mindwipe body has been paired with a blue version of Sentinel Prime's Titanmaster Infinitus. I'd been wanting to see this part in blue since I first same it on Sentinel Prime and it works very well as an Optimus Prime head, albeit a slightly angular one. The same Titanmaster will serve a similar purpose as the head of Legends Lio Convoy, the Japanese repaint of Alpha Trion.

The package contains a second Titanmaster head, Megalligator which is a green version of Galvatron's Titanmaster Nucleon. This is meant to to act as the head of Alligator Megatron, the toy which was originally packed in a VS Pack with Bat Optimus Primal. However here's no body for Megalligator included but his green does perfectly match Legends LG-22 Skull and his Titans Return version Skullsmasher.

The original Optimus Primal was armed with a pair of swords and in order to mimic this Convobat is paired with the swords from Transformers Prime Wheeljack which, when not in use, can peg into the holes on the wings.

Like the Legends deluxe toys which were originally Headmasters Convobat is paired with a Titanmaster accessory. His is Ape-X Arms a new repaint of Titanmaster Apeface's Ape/Jet accessory in the colours of Optimus Primal's final Beast Wars form Optimal Optimus. It's a nice repaint but it is broadly similar to Rarigo, the yellow repaint of Apeface that came with LG-30 Weirdwolf.

This is a top toy package. The deco on the main figure really brings the mould to life in a way that Mindwipe didn't for me. Love it, it's a great toy and I'm very pleased to own one.

 

Could you please upload a picture of the manga he came with? Not the one with RiD Bruticus and Magna Convoy in it, but the shorter one that will probably be in the instruction leaflet, the Legends manga to be exact.

 

What Megatron toy is that in the far right in the back?

 

2016's Botcon toy.

Megatron (Transmetal 3) - Transformers Toys - TFW2005

Botcon 2016 TM3 Megatron

 

does anyone have both this figure and Galvatron? really curious to see what the Megalligator headmaster looks like on Galvatron instead of Nucleon.

 

If I remember I'll do it this weekend. Have to find megalligator first.

Overall I love convobat. Its a lovely deluxe and its worth picking up despite its price.