I am not growing up with g1, i recently pick up some IDW comic. And i feel it very weird for him to transform into a gun.
what do you think ? Why They pick gun as his Alt mode ?

I don't think its fit the image of a tyrant or very practical when you think about how Decepticon's system work when the like of Starcream always waiting to overthrow his thrones. And can he even move on his own in this form ?
It's also don't make sense in the lore. I don't know if G1 is the same origin, But in IDW he is a miner right, and then a gladiator. With the Autobot's system before the war, he wound't be a miner. Or change their cog to something only in the hand of other as gladiator !

 

Cuz that's what the toy Hasbro picked to become Megatron turned into.

 

Yup, he's only a gun because that's what he was in G1, and he was a gun in G1 because that was the toy chosen for him.

 

A toy like Blitzwing would have been better suited for the Decepticon leader, but it was too small. The Decepticon leader required a large toy comparative to Optimus Prime and the gun with its accessories fit that criteria.

The toys came first and the fiction came second. All toys for the first two years reused existing toys. Making new toys for Transformers was not an option until 1986.

 

Yep. Microman Gun Robo happened to be the same height as Diaclone Battle Convoy, who was already slated to become the leader of the good guy car faction. F-15 Robo (Starscream) was too short, Cassette Man (Soundwave) wasn't intimidating enough, and Astro Magnum (Shockwave) was far too tall, so it was more like a process of elimination than an active choice if anything.

 

when i think about it. If they exchange their alt mode for each other, it would be fit the lore so much better. Orion Pax is a police - gun. Megatron is a miner - truck

 

History lesson. unlike all other Transformer series that were created by Hasbro (fiction and toys), G1 wasn't.

In the 80's every toy maker in the west sent toy scouts to Japan. The hope was to pick the new hit toy line (after Star Wars). A toy scout for Hasbro noted that there were a lot of toys of vehicles that could change into human operated robots. Hasbro then got the idea to create a new franchise about a war between two groups of transforming robots (living robots that turned into vehicles, instead of human operated vehicles that turned into human operated robots). For this they made a deal with every producer who had a nice figure. The biggest producer was Takara (diaclone and Microchange) with whom they already worked before. (Hasbro then approached Marvel Comics to create names and characters for these robots and a basic story -- this work was the basis for the cartoon and the Marvel comics).

The leaders had to come from the Takara lines (since Takara was a partner) and they wanted the leaders to be the most expensive figures from those lines. That meant the truck with trailer for Optimus Prime (since all the cars were Autobots) and the gun for Megatron, since the gun game with extra parts similar to the trailer. There was no choice: Megatron had to be the gun or a) he would be too cheap and small compared to Optimus, or b) they had to design/make a new figure (what they didn't want to do).

 

yeah it must have been weird for newcomers to get into the franchise and be like "the great and mighty megatron is a gun?"

 

That wasn't a thing back in 1984, and a truck is more heroic than a gun which is a symbol of violence and deathl

 

Well, they are about giant robot at war so...

 

The only use of the alt mode of the leader of the bad guys is to intimidate, threaten and kill. Thematically, it works.

Toy wise, he had the most extra bits so his price could be comparable to prime.

 

Considering IDW is based on G1, why wouldn't he be what he was in G1. They've had him as other modes as well so they don't keep him as a gun.

 

A very powerful gun at that haha
I think it be really cool if it actually was like when he transformed and condensed is mass and energy, his gun form was a one hit kill type of blast. Making anytime he transformers and there is a fellow Decepticon near by to wield him, it becomes a terrifying situation for the Autobots.

 

That's pretty much what happened with in one of the "-ations" story lines. Jazz, Wheeljack, and Hot Rod trying to outrun a human wielding Megatron as a gun and OP sees a thermal image of Megs transforming from robot to gun and the heat scar against a cold back ground from him transforming and firing is huge.

 

Well thats awesome. Sadly I havent read every transformers comic, theres just too many to catch up on right now. But currently I have started from the beginning, the marvel and im working my way up.

 

Don't forget the pilots! They originally all came with little drivers. And there were like three gun models to be chosen from. Megatron's design beat out the Smith and Wesson Magnum 44 and the Browning 1910 designs.

But, by the end of G1, Megatron was associated with tanks in the toyline - his action master figure drives a tank and two of his three G2 toys are tanks, which seems to fit a little better.

 

Ah, there's the Christmas Day flashback, playing with my new Action Master Megatron toy (finally, I actually had Megatron), having him plow through assorted Autobots and leap into hand to hand combat with Powermaster Optimus Prime, in his super robot form... well, more like hand to kneecap combat, as it turned out. The feared Decepticon leader had forgotten his fusion cannon, and shrunk in the wash  

Still, the scale discrepancy irritated me a lot more than the lack of a gun mode did; the tank thing seemed far more appropriate, albeit not as much so as Galvatron's 'Space Cannon' mode had.

 

Galvatron's original alt mode was a lot like a space howitzer.

 

I am probably among the minority of kids who grew up in the 80s who found the gun mode unbelievable in the cartoon but believable in my friends' hands. It just made more sense to me back then that that was the entire reason behind him being a toy gun. For the cartoon, I was never comfortable with it. Present day, I am of the same mentality.

Today, he's among one of the Decepticons with what I like to call "swimming alt mode syndrome". It means that unlike other characters who keep their alt modes between various interpretations with minor variations, Megatron is almost assuredly going to go through several alt modes because of the whole gun controversy in the beginning. This means that Optimus is going to always be a truck or a truck inspired alt mode, whilst Megatron is going to be a jet or helicopter or truck or car or whatever. That always annoyed me.

From another point of view it's creative because he gets to be a "True Transformer" in that he can keep viewers guessing (because it's no surprise to anyone in the given fiction he's in) that he is Megatron with a new alt mode. But if you had to ask me, I would rather Megatron be a tank consistently (which is already happening hurray!).

I love Megatron despite this.

 

I like to think that Megatron's gun mode was chosen by the Autobot computer Teletraan-1 (or Auntie in the Marvel comics) in an effort to weaken him. It couldn't defy its programming of reformatting everyone with Earthen alternate forms, but it could throw a spanner into the works to help the Autobots.