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Series: Legacy United
Year: 2024
Allegiance: Decepticons
Class: Core
Prelude: Energon, the cartoon, is the unloved middle child of the Unicron Trilogy. Energon, the toyline, however had quite a few great toys, and none better than the Decepticon leader Megatron. So when the Legacy line selected its sole homage to the Energon line, it was clear that it would be Megatron. In the Core Class, though? A former Leader-Class figure? Well, no accounting for scale. Let’s say go!
Robot Mode: Let us start by saying that, yes, Megatron is Core Class, meaning he is very, very small. Seeing as the original Energon Megatron was a Leader Class figure (and an Ultra Class figure, too), this seems a very strange choice, really. Then again, we haven’t really seen much in the way of Energon homages, so even a tiny Core Class figure is better than nothing, I guess.
Size issues aside, this Megatron figure here is a very good likeness to the original figure. The smaller size has naturally led to some simplifications, of course, but overall this is clearly meant to be Energon Megatron, no doubt. He’s got the wings, the shoulder cannons, the tank drone on his arm, the works. Thanks to ball-joints he is almost as well-articulated as the larger figures.
A few things fell victim to the size reduction, of course. No electronics for one, but that’s not something I will miss. Also, the shoulder guns are actually just plugged-in extra guns. They cannot swivel, you can just either plug them in vertically or horizontally, no in-between. Megatron can also use them as hand-held guns if you wish. The wings are solid pieces and don’t open up into a “hyper mode”, either, but still look pretty good.
And then there is the tank drone, really the vehicle mode of Armada Megatron. The larger figures had separate sword blades that could plug into the back of the tank drone, but here it’s all one piece. You can attach it with the gun facing forward or the sword, but no separating it. Doesn’t much matter when attached to the arm, but looks weird when set down as a vehicle.
So bottom line here: a pretty nice scaled-down version of an excellent robot, the only drawbacks being those that were necessary due to the size reduction.
Alternate Mode: Megatron transforms into the same science-fiction style space ship as the original figures did and with a nearly identical transformation, too. The only real difference is the arms, which don’t fold into the torso, but are instead stored somewhat weirdly underneath the wings. It works, but looks a bit weird.
The resulting space ship looks very close to that of the original figures, just a lot smaller. The tank drone can attach on top just like in days of yore, but no opening wings or extendable landing gear, either. Still, a nice transformation into a nice space ship that closely resembles the original. No complaints here apart from thinking that the arms could have been stored away a bit better.
Remarks: After his seeming demise at the end of Armada, Megatron’s essence was trapped inside Unicron, until he managed to build himself a new body and escaped. He took back command of the Decepticons from Scorponok, took control of Unicron’s remains, received a power-up from a pool of Super-Energon, and grew to Unicron size before being defeated by Optimus Prime once and for all. Well, until he returned once again in Cybertron, but that is another story.
As mentioned above the Energon toyline was pretty great for the most part, but the cartoon is in pretty much everybody’s Top 5 of worst Transformers cartoons ever made. Which might be the reason we have not seen much in the way of Energon homage figures in recent years. It might also be reason that the sole Energon homage figures in the Legacy line are Core Class figures, a size class since abandoned by Hasbro. However it happened, Megatron is a very nice small-scale figure and definitely worth looking at for fans of the original toys or just cool space jet Transformers, too. It’s just too bad that we will probably never see any other Energon figures in compatible scale to go with them.
Rating: B+
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