Hey ratface! What's the good word?
Look at that! It's late October already, so grab a beer and let's snack on some fear.
Now, I think we can all agree that it has been... a year.
We're really takin' a pounding!
But as a useless internet man who gesticulates in front of collectibles,
it's my job to sit here and kick up a big stink about one of 2020's least important issues.
That's right, it's time to address the summer of botched Transformer reveals
which began as a series of well-intentioned official livestreams
but quickly degenerated into an extremely wearing barrage of blurry screengrabs
and hastily-photographed prototypes T-posing on dust sheets
which did feel kinda cool in a rude way, but it definitely deflated a lot of the pomp out of proceedings.
But miraculously, and very fortunately for an unusually leaky good ship Hasbro,
none of that managed to spoil the unveiling of a breathtaking new Leader Class T.Rex Megatron
just a year and a bit after his massive Masterpiece figure tore everybody a new finance hole!
So it's official: Beast Wars is back, and it's time to break out the old purple monster!
And also review Beast Wars Megatron.
Whaaaayyyyyy!!!
So here we go with the original Beast Wars Megatron!
Well, not the ORIGINAL original one, but like, the main one?
THIS one.
Now, this is a 'bot that I've been trepidatious about reviewing because he is SO loved!
People worship this guy, and I totally get it, but like, part of me feels like I'm faking?
I just wasn't there for Beast Wars, because I was what, 13 at the time? I was totally checked out of Transformers!
I was laser focused on learning fatalities and Metallica lyrics and failing to make friends! Y'know, 13 year old shit.
Cultivating acne. I was great at that!
So there is part of me that just feels like I missed Beast Wars, but I'm trying to catch up! I'm several discs in,
Kingdom's bringin' back the vibe, I'm into it,
and I sit before you today undaunted by the task of talking to you for a minute about the purple dinosaur man who says "yes".
Sorry, who says:
(Steven Toast voice) Yes!
So check out this fabulous Tyrannodickhead!
Now, this was one of the first Beast Era figures that ever landed back in '96
and looking at it with a degree of detachment, you can kinda see why Beast Wars might have been a tough sell at first.
This was such a departure from the Transformery norm, plus you can really taste the Kenner in this.
Like, as I understand it, after G2 came wheezing to a halt,
Hasbro pretty much scraped up the remains of the brand and binned it off to the Kenner team
to zap it back to life with some fresh ideas,
and zap they did, raisin' a rabble of bangin' new beastie bots with much more of a sinewy, organic flavour!
Like, look at Megatron's fleshy figure - he's all rounded He-Man limbs and pachydermal reptile skin
with almost no hard edges or square corners, or really anything that says "this is a robot".
I mean, the torso definitely sings in smooth metal style with a pure black carapace and a smattering of roundy ridges
that really read more like fantasy Hordak armour than an actual mechanical bod.
I mean, it does still kinda sell the "robot in disguise" idea but it's more of a contrast thing,
like how the smooth Dairy Milk underpants and hard endoskeleton capris just smash cut into these massive scaly shin boots!
He's barely out of the disguise!
He could honestly just be some mad warlord who blew up a dinosaur and then put it on like a coat.
Anyway, size-wise, he's an Ultra Class so probably like a Leader in 2020 dollars,
which makes him a mighty match for Primal
but for group comparisons and that, I have no other high-level Predacons
so here he is with Spittor
and a second Spittor.
Head's a hoot and a half, with a distinctly non-show-styled shiny silver helmet.
You gotta presume that this figure pre-dates the show design - it's clearly doing the play-it-safe G1 homage thing
albeit with an extremely 90s face. Love me some mad red supervillain eyes and bodacious Ninja Turtle scowl!
And dig if you will this bonkers back-of-head batarang that encases his whole head in a
owl iguana merman unicorn balaclava?
Definitely suffers from a lack of paint but it's still a neat feature!
A Friedrich Neature.
All right, look - we gotta talk about the arms. It's time to have the talk about beast Wars Megatron's arms.
'Cos yes, the dino-head-for-a-hand thing is a thing, it's his thing, we know this,
but cleanse your mind for a second. Imagine, if you will, pretend with me that this is the first time you're seeing this.
It's a lot.
I mean, this whole Timmy-No-Hands situation was initially a big problem for me,
speaking as a reformed hardline G1 blowhard, it was a big leap to accept this level of limbf**kery
but now I just think it's hilarious!
Like, you haven't got a right hand, like a normal person's hand,
but you have got the entire face and neck of a prehistoric apex predator?
That's a power move!
And the other arm's just an enormous cone of ass with some extendo snatch 'n' reach action
which, honestly, still a stickin' point.
Like, how are you gonna be an effective leader without basic digits to deal with day-to-day admin?
The answer is, shut up nerd! It's a cool toy and it goes grabby-grabby-grab.
But if you'll allow me a bonus Halloween tangent, this also looks like a creature I saw in a nightmare one time
that was chewing on a live horse which was sobbing like a human and also singing Amazing Grace,
helplessly rolling in the jaws of this brainless devouring organism and devolving into filthy tendrils of darkening gore
so I wonder what repressed memory THAT represents.
Anyway, having such extravagantly useless hands, ol' Gnasher here
was instead forced to mount his weapons on these massive floating hip humps
and he's naturally gone for the classic spring-loaded saddlebags that fire these
...anchors? Horseshoe crabs? Euros? I dunno.
Ahh! Classic Thew.
But despite having a function, the hip haunches do also form part of a front of flabby biokibble
that's so outwardly egregious it's frankly obscene!
Like, however you feel about the hands, he's still got most of the skin of a dino hanging off his back like extremely cursed angel wings
so it really is staggering how little that bothers me.
'Cos there's so much of this toy that is pure nonsense but it's so difficult to mind when the character just dominates it!
Much as we love somebody like Triceradon, he's so saturated in his own flaps that it's quite easy to forget there's a bloke in there
but Megatron is HERE, he is VERY present, and he is runnin' shit!
(Churchill voice) Ohhh yes!
Alright, Megatron Terrorize!
But backwards, so,
!ezirroreT nortageM
Yeah. That. Do that.
Transformation's almost admirably haphazard!
It's so weirdly violent! You like, rag the body open and twist it super hard and slam it back in!
Everything clanks and crunches and crashes closed!
It is cretaceously cacophonous!
And check out this dino...
...dude? I dunno. I got no dinosaur puns left. I used 'em all up on those Gigapower things!
And weirdly, this isn't what I picture when I think of Beast Wars Megatron.
It is him, clearly, but my brain always prioritises the CG model's oddly misshapen magentasaurus.
Honestly, this just feels more like a standard, store-bought, white-label plastic toy T.Rex.
Welcome... to Generic Park.
Like, after that awesomely enrapturing robot, this beast mode really is quite a Dryrannosaurus
with a much more traditional head in the shrink-wrapped skeleton style with like, visible bone ridges and some vague moss colouring.
Is that even purple? It looks more grey to my eye!
But then it is very old, and so am I.
And real talk, there's not that much action on the go!
That is, it used to have a water squirty gimmick where you could pull out his entire throat and fill it up
which I was gonna show you, but it's perished.
Still, removable tongue and throat!? That's pretty raw!
But in terms of actual movement, he's just got knees but no hips, fairly low-impact ball-socket micro-arms, and a bit of bitey action
but isn't that all you really need? 'Cos there's a lot to be said for the inherent awesomeness of just a dinosaur!
Despite how much the palaeos keep making it progressively lamer by updating the lore
the T.Rex is - and will always be - the daddy, so just having this warty old wazzock around makes you feel so powerful!
Which I guess begs the question - are dinosaurs scary?
I mean, I don't wanna live in a world where being eaten alive isn't scary
but like, I don't know if dinosaurs are Halloween appropriate. They're a fun kind of scary. They're a spectacle fright!
'Cos if I'm watching something and a dinosaur comes on, I'm not like:
It's much more like, "hell yeah".
Or should I say, "Hell...
Yee!
And that's pretty much him!
Gotta say, this feels like a very humble and heavily mechanical larval version of the megastar that old Gnashed Potatoes would become!
Every legend's gotta start somewhere, and while this does feel pretty clunksome, all the ingredients are there!
Because dino Megatron couldn't not be an ostentatiously impressive megamonster, and look how far he's come today.
He is bona fide 90s kid royalty and you know he ain't goin' anywhere.
So dino-sized thanks to good old Brentosaur for donating this thing so many aeons ago
and here's to the President of Predacons, the true lizard king, the terrorizing tyrant that is Beast Wars Megatron!
The best of the bestial!
Was that scary? No. Thanks for watching anyway! Hope we're all having lots of spooky fun! Oooooo!
And mad Patron shoutouts this time to Mr. Jacob Kitchen! You the man, dawg.
See you later! See you next time! Tories out!
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Limited appeal, keeping it real.