Transformers War For Cybertron Siege Voyager Megatron Review (seriously Hasbro choose shorter line names next time)

So, for the last couple of weeks I’ve been wondering which toy to review next. I wanted to review a Megatron toy but had a choice between either MakeToys Rioter Despotron, or Hasbro’s new Siege voyager class Megatron. Eventually, I just asked Twitter and the results came back in favour of Siege Megs, so here we are!

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Siege Megatron is the latest toy of Robo-Stalin from G1, and let’s not mince words here, he’s the best mass retail version of old Buckethead around. The Titans Return had its charm but was always meant for Blitzwing, and the Combiner Wars lader figure certain had some things going for it. But this guy has it all, great articulation, great alt mode and…well just LOOK at him.

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Siege Megs carries the look of the original Decepticon leader well and he looks dangerous. Part of this is down to the battle damage that the Siege line uses. I’m in two minds on it. On the one hand on his legs which become the out armour of his tank mode, it looks good. On the chest? Not so much. In fact, you can see I’ve placed a silver backed reprolabel over his normal logo. This was because on mine the logo was off centre enough to be noticeable and seem to have scratches rather than paint applications. Others I’ve seen pictures of don’t seem to have that, though my Siege Optimus does. Guess it’s just random.

Megatron comes with two accessories, his standard fusion cannon and a massive hunk of metal that he claims is a sword. It’s reminiscent of his sword from Fall of Cybertron…except with a sniper scope. The reason for this will become clear.

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Megatron’s articulation is some of the best the character has gotten from a normal retail voyager. Ankle tilt, waist rotation, though still to name a few, and it all allows him to pose quite well. One thing with the ankle title is that you can lock the feet in place if not using it, but for some reason, my right foot requires me to slide the foot off its clip, then lock it in place if I’ve used it. The left is fine, however. I assume this is some sort of clearance issue but just be aware as I’ve seen others with the same minor issue. Other blemishes include the way head just sits on a plate of plastic in bot mode and doesn’t peg otherwise lock in anywhere for example. However, the plastic tolerances keep it in place enough to get the job done. Minor niggles like that aside it’s an excellent bot mode.

As a Siege toy, Megatron also comes with weapon ports all over his body, meaning you can kit him out with the various weapon micromasters and weaponizers in the line. Or with anything that has a five-millimetre peg really.

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Alt mode meanwhile, hoo boy. I know a lot of people have issues with H-tanks but the transformation leaves us with one of the best. You’d assume that such a simple vehicle would have a similarly simply transformation, but the way the thighs rotate and collapse in on themselves and how the arms become a fully rotating turret in a completely different way to other tank Megatron really shines. This is always where the scope on the sword comes in to play. After doing the transformation you rotate the blades down and underneath it becomes the actual fusion cannon for the tank. As weapons storage and implementation goes it’s bloody brilliant. Honestly, while the Combiner Wars leader tank is maybe more detailed and nice looking, but this guy still ends up being my favourite for all the great ideas

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And of course, a good chunk of the weapon ports from the bot mode carry over too.

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All in all, Siege Megatron is so far the definitive voyager version of G1 Megs, and beats the recent leader toy by a mile. Now all I need for them is to release it in G2 neon green I can die happy.

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Studio Series Dropkick Review

So, with the Bumblebee movie due to drop within a few weeks, and looking like it’ll be bloody good (but then didn’t we say that about the first movie and its sequels), the toys have started dropping. Most of these are in lines that are catering to the younger audience that the movie is aiming for, rather than whatever the hell audience the other movies were trying to hit. These means a good chunk of the toys are simpler designs. But luckily, we have the Studio Series where the older collectors can get more complex and screen accurate version of the characters, and the first Decepticon from the Bumblebee movie in this line is Dropkick, one of three triple changers featured in the film.

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Dropkick the toy is noticeably not a triple changer, or even very screen accurate. I think I know why, the lines that have triple changers tend to be G1 inspired, so you can take a tank, which is essentially a block with a turret, and then stick some wings on it to make it a jet and no one will call you out on it.

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Meanwhile, the more “alien” robot modes, including g the far more G1-esque designs of the Bumblebee movie, combined with the actual licensed vehicle of the movies don’t translate well into plastic. So, while we won’t ever get a triple changing Dropkick, that does mean Hasbro and Takara can try and sell twice as many toys of him.

Robot mode Dropkick seems very evocative of two other Transformers to me, essentially G1 Whirl and movie Blackout. The alt-mode is Whirl, while the design is vaguely reminiscent of Blackout in how the engines end up on his shoulders and how he handles his rather obtrusive arm kibble, while the grey-blue colour seems to be reminiscent of both.

The one thing that he didn’t get from his parents was their size.

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Dropkick is bloody TINY. Like ridiculously so. He is apparently a deluxe and while he is as tall as some of them, he is also very slim in almost every as aspect, and due to this, he is also very light. When I first posted impressions about him, I said he felt flimsy. He’s not, the robot mode is actually quite solid and holds together well, save his engine kibble and alt-mode landing gear, as neither of them pegs in or otherwise secure anywhere in robot mode. But my brain having been deprived of enough sleep for most of the week, interpreted this as flimsy. In reality, he just feels so slight it is kind of off-putting as there’s no heft to him. I mean not every bot has to be a big chunky bastard, but they need something to make it feel like I won’t accidentally throw them to the ceiling just by picking them up. For comparison, here are some other deluxe class bots for comparison, including a movie-based helicopter.

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Articulation wise he’s average, he has an almost 180-degree knee bend, thigh swivel, and full range of motion in his shoulders and hips. His arms can bend up to 90 degrees and no further, and he has no waist swivel. He’s perfectly serviceable and can get some cool poses, yet he is lacking compared to a lot of recent deluxe bots.

However, when you get to transforming him, you can see where the budget went for this guy. The transformation is a blast and incredibly involved for such a small toy. One a first go it’s a little bit fiddly, mainly because you end up doing a lot more than you expect to do. For example, you see his cockpit chest? So, you’d expect it to be a typical “tuck head away in the cockpit and build the robot around that” sort of deal like with most jet and chopper Transformers. This is still true to a degree, but you also flip his entire torso and leg assembly 180 degrees while unfolding the legs and arms before snapping everything together (though this can take a couple of attempts for everything to stick). It’s fun and quite impressive once you get it down, and the result is a very nice rendition of a Cobra….

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As I was saying, he transforms into a very nice rendition of a Bell AH1 SuperCobra, aka the best-named attack helicopter of all time. The colours work a lot better here and you get to see a lot more details, including the nice skull and crossbones logo…which seems to replace any form of Decepticon badge, something that has popped up in other Studio Series releases. His guns store as missile pods on his side and in this mode a front-mounted mini-gun comes in to play. The rotors don’t spin freely, but that’s not a deal-breaker for me. This is my favourite mode but it still feels criminally undersized. Part of the idea with the Studio Series scale is that they’re supposed to be in scale with each other. And even though most of his form goes to stretch his length, he is still pretty much dwarfed by most car bots. I can live with that, as dealing with scale issues is something you have to learn to accept in Transformers lest you go mad with trying to figure out how the hell G1 Broadside works, but I know some people take umbrage with stuff like this.

Good news is that he works with G1 Bumblebee if you’re so inclined!

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All in all, Dropkick is OK. His transformation and alt-mode are great, but if you’re like me keep your Transformers in robot mode 90% of the time, this may feel like a little bit of a letdown in that area. I think this would have worked much better as a Voyager figure where he would have had a bigger budget and probably would give him more mass. At least the lack of Con symbol can be easily rectified thanks to Reprolabels!

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Iron Factory Lord Scorpion Review

This review was done on the back of giving good bloke @EvoChanger on twitter some info on a toy he’s interested in. Check out his video reviews at his youtube channel.

Like a good chunk of the TF fandom, I dabble in 3^rd Party Transformers, i.e. Intellectual Property violating toys made by companies that have no association with Hasbro or Takara-Tomy. They come in many varieties, including but not limited to knock-offs of Hasbro/Takara toys, original designs for characters, knock-offs of other companies designs and so forth. They used to be a contentious subject, but they’ve become far more accepted in recent years, usually because these companies will do things like making toys for characters who haven’t had any easily obtainable versions for years. Like this helping from the Legends, size class focused company Iron Factory. Lord Scorpion, aka Generation 1 Scorponok.

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Scorponok, the city bot and headmaster, are one of those characters I’ve wanted a toy of for a while. However, since his one official toy is massive, rare, and expensive even if broken, I never thought I’d get one. There’s the Energon version who is similar, but the aesthetic never really worked for me in that series save for a few toys. There is the rumoured Titan class coming from Hasbro sometime during the War for Cybertron, but if true that thing will be way too massive to easily play with. Won’t have that problem with Lord Scorpion though, as this guy is just a bit bigger than a Hasbro deluxe, as seen here with my spare Titan Returns Quake body with the Scorponok head you get with Titans Return Grotusque I had as a stand-in.

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In terms of quality, Lord Scorpion is leaps and bounds above a standard deluxe, as he should be considering he regularly goes for £65 or more in most places. I got him for £53 and the build quality is fantastic. He has pretty much everything articulated, including waist, ankles, biceps and so on. The turrets can even swivel. Hell, the only thing that he can’t do is swivel his wrists, but they can bend inwards in his two main modes. Hell, his hand-claws even have individually articulated fingers, similar to Reveal the Shield Lugnut actually.

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The sculpting and colours for this guy are based on Scorponok’s first IDW comic appearance and the amount of details Iron Factory has put in is quite staggering. I’ve seen masterpiece level toys with less detailing. Admittedly this design won’t be for everyone, but in bot mode this guy is gorgeous. It’s nice to have a really well done, easily playable version of the character in my hand. Mainly because other, more recent Scorponoks haven’t scratched the itch.

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Lord Scorpion doesn’t come with much in the way of accessories. He includes one relatively large gun, and a shield, the gun can only be securely held in his right hand as it’s designed to fit in a groove in it though it’s possible to simply have his fingers grip it in his left hand. The shield can be pegged on either arm and includes pincer that actually moves. So essentially, you’re putting a pincer on his pincer so he can have triple pinching power. Guy is invaluable on St Patrick’s Day.

His third accessory is a little round cup-like piece that slots into his hand and allows him to hold most other transformer weapons that fit in a 5MM hole. Along with the gun turrets and deploy-able tail, this makes him look ready to kick the absolute slag out of things.

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Of course, if you know anything about Scorponok, you know that not only is he a triple changing city bot, he is also a headmaster, Lord Zarak. Or since this is IDW Scorponok, I guess Abraham Dante? Anyway, because of this Lord Scorpion’s excellent head sculpt as turns into what is frankly, the smallest bloody headmaster I have seen in my life. The thing is just barely two centimetres, or less than an inch tall.

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Transforming him to Scorpion mode is relatively simple but satisfying. It’s more complex than say your average voyager toy, kind of like a mini-masterpiece in places. And the results for scorpion mode are brilliant.

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(Above joke stolen from @Urluck_Ur on Twitter. Follow him, he’s a fun guy and runs The Nottingham Robot Company.)

I love this mode. Sure if you leave the headmaster in his robot mode face is looking up constantly, but the original toy had it riding in a little seat, so I like this. Amazingly he still has great articulation. His arms still remain all their movement and the tail has a decent amount too. But each one of the eight legs are also fully articulated and can amazingly hold him up with no issues, even on just a few, really lets you get some good scuttling poses in.

There are two things I have a problem with this mode. Towards the rear of the scorpion, you see the two silver pieces that come from the legs of the robot mode? In order to transform him between modes, you have to remove these pieces. Yep, it’s parts-forming. This is one of the few things I don’t tend to like about Iron Factory toys. They had a similar thing with their IDW Overlord with his shin coverings/base mode ramps. Except those had nowhere to go in the alt mode., so at least these ones can go somewhere in all modes. However, the gun has nowhere to store in scorpion mode, while the shield handily pegs in underneath. I like good weapons storage, so this turns me off a little, but considering the size and complexity of the rest of the toy, it’s understandable.

And now we come to the worst mode of all base Transformers, in my opinion. The base mode itself.

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It’s as successful a base mode as any I guess, just smaller. I’ve never really liked these, so I don’t have much to say about it aside from that it looks like a good representation of the one from the G1 toy. At least you can store all the accessories in this mode.

So overall, I’d recommend Lord Scorpion. While his third mode is a typically lacking base mode, the other two make up for it. Combine that with his great detailing, building quality, and articulation, this makes him the guy to beat for Scorponok toys going forward.

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Introduction & Power of the Primes Nemesis Prime review.

Welcome to Robot Revolt, a website where I will review, post photo-comics, and type things I find funny about Transformers.

Why?

Shits and giggles mostly.

Anyway, I’m Lothar, aka Garry. Some may know me as one of the writers of the webcomic www.exterminatusnow.co.uk. If any of you figure out if this is a step up or down, let me know.

My review style will be very casual. I’m not going to go into great detail on some stuff, because hones7tly while I care how a toy looks, I don’t feel the need to exclaim how every little panel line accentuates the detailing or whatever. Plus, unlike some people who buy the toys and stick them on a shelf, never to be touched again, I like to transform my guys constantly. Sometimes I do plane and car noises.

How the hell am I still married?

I also won’t be giving numerical scores or lettered grades because I feel like I should be able to express in words if I like a figure or not, and not have people simply look at a subjective number. So, without further ado. I present my first review. Presenting Power of the Primes Edgelord Prime.

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This guy was touted as an Amazon Prime exclusive for Prime Day 2018 (geddit?). He became available for pre-order in the UK in April. He came out on the US store for all of three seconds on Prime day. Then nothing. He literally became available on 24^th October 2018 in the UK store, six months after I had initially pre-ordered him, cancelled it. By that point I had used the vouchers I had put aside for him towards a Studio Series Blackout. Still, I know several people who ended up paying up to twice his eventual £37.10 price I got him for from third-party sites. Guess patience and constantly checking the TFW2005 UK Sightings forum pays off.

Anyway, Edgelord Prime is a recolour and slight retool of the very nice Power of the Primes Optimus Prime. Following a grand tradition of taking an Optimus Prime toy, painting it the colours of Shadow the Hedgehog, and adding an extra few quid on the price. And we TF fans lap that stuff right up.

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If you own the POTP Prime mould you already know that it’s a pretty good toy, but there’s something about this paint scheme that works for me. Of course, that might be because I’m the most unoriginal person who ever lived, but there you go. I think my favourite part of the mode is that head. While most Nemeses have Prime’s head in a different colour, this gives him a head that has some cues from the actual Decepticon logo. My least favourite part is the stickers because Hasbro has been replacing the tampographed detail and logos with stickers on it’s bigger toys and they’re all horrible and usually not set properly. The stickers on mine seem OK for the most part.

The Prime silhouette and design is iconic, and seeing it turned Decepticon has a certain cool factor to it. Essentially, Optimus Prime is your dad, while Edgelord Prime is your cool uncle who doesn’t have his own kids. Probably for good reasons.

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So, this brings us to Nemesis Prime’s accessories. This guy comes loaded with stuff, most of it referencing other versions of the character. In addition to his “Dark Matrix of Leadership” which is compatible with the line’s Prime Masters (if you care about that sort of thing), he has his dual-arm cannons and the Dark Starsaber from Armada, the latter of which is coloured like Scourge’s sword from Robots in Disguise 2001. He also comes with a mini-con, Giza, which is from the Japanese Arms Micron version of the character. Giza turns from a sword to some sort of cyber hawk that has a wingspan that is a smidge ridiculous.

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He also comes with Prime’s gun, which can be split into two smaller guns. It seems a bit of overkill considering the original toy came with the gun or nothing else. I prefer to stick it in his back and use it as a shoulder cannon, so he can hold both swords.

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His articulation is functional, but due to his transformation, there’s no waist swivel or wrist articulation. But there is a nice ankle tilt which lets you gets him into a decent set of generic action poses.

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So, like Prime, this guy has three modes. His main robot mode you see here, his alt mode, and his SMALLER robot mode. Say hello to Nemesis Pax!

No, I don’t know either.

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Essentially you take the central torso out of the main bot and move some stuff around to get this guy. Again, he’s essentially the same as the Optimus Prime/Orion Pax versions of the toy, but with a new head.

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Jokes aside, the Nemesis Pax bot is fun. Decently articulated and simple transformation, He probably won’t spend much time in this mode, but it’s a fun little extra and I do like his new head as well. He can also hold most of the weapons Nemesis has except the arm cannons.

And now the weakest mode, the alt-mode.

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The transformation to this involves turning the rest of the robot mode that isn’t Nemesis pax into the cab. Again, like the original prime, this is fun, but I feel this is both better and worse. The Prime trailer is more colourful, but the truck mode definitely feels like the weakest mode as you can see very clearly see where sacrifices had to be made for the sake of the gimmick. Here, the darker colours make it harder to see the imperfections.

For one thing you can tool this up to a murder truck that wouldn’t look out of place in Mad Max.

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The transformation between the three modes is fun, the figure looks great in both bot modes, and while the vehicle mode isn’t the best it’s functional and fun to change back and forth to. I prefer this one over the original Power of the Primes Optimus Prime, but I’d say either of the toys are good fun, but this one edges it. Is it a must-have? If you like Nemesis Prime and can get it easily, I’d say yes. He was worth the £37.10 I paid for him, but I wouldn’t have paid more than £50 for him.

Altogether a fun toy with a good paint scheme and transformation and I’m glad to have him as part of my collection. Now to get him integrated…

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