I didn't see a thread on this guy, so I thought I'd get one started. First up - the pics are a little dark. The brownish/bronze is more towards the bronze end of the spectrum than it appears in the pics. My bad.
Anyways.

Vehicle mode


Megatron's vehicle mode is that of a Cybertronian jet / spacecraft. I'm a little burned out on this sort of "Cybertronian vehicle" alt mode after the first 2 movies gave us such incredibly lacklustre Megatron figures, but at least this one tries to do something interesting. The head being visible as it is gives me the impression of a more utilitarian alt mode; designed for convenience and functionality. After all on Cybertron there would be no reason to hide such things.
Megatron's weapon fits on top of his alt mode. its gimmick still functions in this mode, but it rather useless. The blades won't do anything unless Megatron's opponent climbs on top of him and starts punching him.
Vehicle mode fits together very nicely; it's nice and solid. The silver/grey parts at the nose can move around, but everything else is locked into place by the legs.

Transformation is simple; fairly standard Voyager level complexity. No great surprises; basically the legs fold out from the jet's underside, the arms swing out, and the rest of the jet folds in 3 to make the upper body. The way the front armour on the jet becomes Megatron's torso armour is neat though. And this fairly cool transformation inevitably leads to...

Robot Mode

Megatron is a rather imposing and commanding looking robot character in robot mode. Every visible piece of silvery grey plastic is textured to give the impression of brushed metal. It would work better with a darker grey, or with more paint apps, but it does a good job in person of getting the idea across. The plastic is hard and solid.

Megatron's back kibble isn't anywhere near as bad as Voyager Prime's is; it folds up well and from the front it give the impression of "wings".

The face sculpt is going to be a deal breaker for a lot of people. If you're a fan of the whole TFP aesthetic, you'll probably like it a lot. Personally, I fall into that camp. If you aren't a fan of the TFP look it's probable that you'll either fall in love with the head or outright hate it.
Incidentally, that last shot shows the "brushed metal" texture on the shoulder & upper arm better.
Megatron doesn't have many paint apps but the ones he does have are effective enough; the transparent purple plastic definitely works in his case, and adds a nice leve of complexity to his appearance.

Megatron's posability is a mixed bag - limited neck movement, shoulders (balljoint), below-elbow swivel, hip (balljoint), thigh swivel. His wrists can rotate inwards, and his feet can rotate (they are not on balljoints though). He has no waist joint and, oddly enough, he has NO bicep swivel. The shoulder armour is not actually attached to the upper arms; it's on a separate pair of parts that allow extra movement for the upper arms. This extra movement does mitigate the loss of the bicep swivels to quite a degree, and it is possible to get some really nice poses out of him.



Megatron's accessories are a mixed bag. His hand held blade (held in the hand, & also pegged to the forearm) is a really nice accessory. One definitely wouldn't want to get in the way of an Angry Megatron brandishing that.
On the other hand, we have his cannon/blade/whatever that is. Pushing in the back end of the cannon will swing out 2 blade halves, and light up the clear plastic; as the piece with the light rotates it catches the clear plastic in Megatron's arm and looks pretty damn nice, to be honest. The light does not, unfortunately, light the cannon up. Pity. The blade is nice enough, but the problem is that the mechanism has no lock; let go of the cannon and it swings back again. The cannon does have some nice mechanical detailing on it, though, and as a cannon it looks VERY nice. it's just a shame that the battery cover is on the outer side of it, and VERY visible.

There is one VERY good thing about these new Voyager class light-up weapons, incidentally, that only occurred to me when I was fiddling with Megatron earlier - the electronics are NOT IN THE FIGURES. This is a BRILLIANT idea as it means that the figure's articulation and playability are in no way hampered by badly implemented gimmicks, as we've seen with other TF lines.

Conclusion
Voyager Megatron is a fairly show accurate representation of his on-screen counterpart with some nice touches, beautiful texturing, and minimal (yet effective) paint applications. I have to recommend him because although there are minor problems (weapon, bicep swivel), there's far more good to say about him than there is bad.

Nrr. I think I might pass on this guy after all. Just not impressing me as much as I'd hoped.

I'd have to agree. If I could find the FE version I'd rather have it.

Not sure yet, but he doesn't look bad. Any chance for some size comparison pics with the FE Prime figures?

There's a side by side with fe prime here. http://www.tfw2005.com/transformers-news/t...-images-174198/

You know, this mold (through pictorials) is starting to grow on me. I can live with this Megatron. I have come to actively enjoy his more realistic skull-face (as opposed to the more sharkish cartoon and Deluxe face)... why should Bludgeon get all the skully fun? His primary weapon blows his Autobot counterpart's out of the water, the secondary weapon makes some level of sense and is relatively inobtrusive, and overall the figure looks good. The light-up gimmick actually makes sense for Megatron this time around. I still wouldn't mind finding a Meg/OP 2-pack though. I still can't believe that the US just didn't get ANY of the FE toys beyond Wave 1.

well that's horrible.

Why would they add so much off model brown? not to mention making him completely the wrong colour

He looks pretty nice. Not in love with the face sculpt (looks messy) and the doofy exposed head in vehicle mode, but he looks like a buy.

I'm actually liking this one more now, after seeing more of it. Initially I thought that gold plastic looked pretty weird, but I'm actually finding the interaction of the white, gold, and purple to be very striking. It seems like one of those color schemes where there's just enough of everything showing up to make it tie together and work. I was initially skeptical about the shoulder armor, but it doesn't seem to bother you, and I like that the weapons and gimmicks are separate and not obtrusive.

Still wouldn't mind getting a peek at the Takara version before buying.

so white?

Getting both this and the (Takara) deluxe on the same day, it's hard to say which I prefer. The deluxe has more paint apps, but probably more than the character should have. Megs in the show seems to be pretty uniformly grey, not dark and light and mid grey.

The canon is more accurate on the deluxe, he can swing his arms all the way around and he has a bicep swivel. The voyager has the extending sword (which you can do manually if you want to keep it deployed), the quite cool hand gauntlet, the more imposing shoulders, a below the arm swivel (which is good for those "come to me, my Decepticons" poses) and is bigger.

I am surprised by how similar their transformations are though. Normally the different sizes result in completely different transformation schemes, but these are almost identical, save for some oddities like his wings being on the other side of his legs.

More a light metallic grey.

The Bronze hands, feet, and knee-guards don't bother me too much.
I am not a fan of that clunky gun though.

A quick question Draven; how wide across is the barrel of his cannon?
That information would help me on a project I am working on for this figure.

The grey really should have been darker.

Man, I haven't seen such a non-attempt to hide a head in alt-mode since Energon Ironhide.

Check his animation model. It's not hidden there either. So this is correct.

I knowwwwwi wish they woulda made use of that sexy darker metallicy grey plastic they use every oncce in awhile (dotm ultimate prime has bits of it used on him like his arms)would look a bajillion times more awesome than "dull gray"

Not only is it not hidden, the design actually goes out of its way to make sure that his eyes remain exposed. There's no other reason to have that hole in the top of the fuselage.

Personally, I find it to be somewhat of a creepy touch. The thought of Megatron glowering at you at all time, no matter what form he takes.

Why even transform? Just fly in robot mode. But would he be too creepy for kids?

while his ship mode isn't THAT aerodynamic, it's surely more aerodynamic (and stable, since all his joints would be locked in) than his robot mode.

My views have flopped again and now I want him a lot.

I've heard he is top heavy almost to the point that he is super floppy.

I haven't experienced this at all. Maybe somebody got a bum one. Mine is extremely sturdy.

I agree, now. I bought one this morning and it is really nice and tight. The transformation is a bit of a pain, though.