MP 36 Megatron Review

       Hello again boys and girls, ladies and gentleman, its been a while since I did any TF review, and today I'm gonna do a review for an official product - MP36 Megatron from Takara Tomy. All these years after the release of MP 5 Megatron, fans have been screaming for a new Megatron, or version 2.0 because honestly speaking, MP 5 is quite.... well, aesthetically unpleasant (truthfully disappointing for me with his chicken legs). The need for a new Megatron is even more pressing after the release of MP10 and subsequent MP series follows MP 10's scale (Its all about the scale baby!). 3rd party companies had been taking advantage of the fan's need by producing their own MP scale MEgatron, namely X-transbot Apollyon , DX9 Mightron, and Maketoys Despotron. They all have their pros and cons and before the release of MP 36, they have been on top of TF collector's shelf side by side with MP 10 (including myself). I've only owned Apollyon and he is a great substitute until an official Megatron arrives. I found this interesting picture where they feature and compare all MP scale Megatron we have up till now. Honestly for me, I think DX9 has done the best job ( From this picture alone, I've never own all of them, just MP36 and Apollyon).

       Finally, its a dream come true for TF fans and masterpiece collectors, the day has come..... a new Megatron release by Takara Tomy, in scale with out beloved MP 10! Ladies and gentleman..... I give you----- MP 36! BY the way, if you want to have a look at my X-Trasbot Apollyon review, you can click at the link below. :)

http://clskywlkr.blogspot.my/2015/07/x-transbot-apollyon.html

Prime :" Shit is about to get real......"

Prime:" Come on man, why do you have to buy him? "

Here he is in all his glory. Megatron, the tyrant! His box design is like any leader class MP figures, black box....... I like it, featuring him in his alternate mode and of course, his robot mode. The only new thing that you might notice is the label which says "Long life design"

I went and read up about it, and it seems that Takara Tomy's Transformers Masterpiece toy line has been awarded the Long Life Design 2016 prize by good design award. Kudos to them! It is actually a design evaluation and commendation system in Japan since 1957. ( Who says playing with transformers don't give you knowledge lol )

Just a close look at the box. Man, He looks just damn awesome. Menacing, cunning and check out that face sculpt. Holy!

Here we have the back of the box. Features the actual height of the figure, his accessories and his alternate mode of course.

Just a little close up at the back of the box

He does come with a collector's coin, like the previous masterpiece. I'm not sure why they stop giving the small metal figure like they did with MP inferno and the beast wars series, I don't really mind either one. Will happily take any free gift they throw at me lol

The coin's design is designed to look like Megatron's chest, which is cool.

Flip it up, and you can see the coin with Megatron's head sculpt on it.

He does of course comes with his instruction manual. The front page design looks OK to me, probably will look nicer with Megatron pointing his canon at me. Just a senseless nit pick, ingore it. LOL

ME also comes with his collector's card like any other masterpiece characters.

FLip it over and you have his stats. Stats look correct to me I suppose.

Here we have him out of his box. His plastic cover has 2 layers and the top part features non other than the Tyrant himself and the bottom layer features his accessories. The moment I pull this guy out from the box, man oh man. He looks absolutely stunning! Its like he literally jump out from the G1 series. He look so so good, so animation accurate. This guy is gonna cause nergasm all over the globe.  ;p

A thing that you will notice if you are a masterpiece collector is that we can see Takara Tomy is giving more accessories compare to last time, probably because 3rd party gave them pressure, or they are probably striving to please their fans, but whatever is the reason I certainly welcome it. Gives the figure much more replay value. 

Here we have his extensions and his silencer for his gun mode.

The key to Vector Sigma and also his helmet to control a duplicate Optimus Prime.

His Laser sword ( can't use the word lightsaber, SW fans will go crazy, how to I know? because I am one myself :) )

Blitzwing's gun that he use to fatally wound Prime. 

You can detach the top part of his laser sword and attach it to Blitzwing's gun to give it a shooting effect.

He comes with 3 other face sculpt which I think its very thoughtful of Takara Tomy. Lately they have been very diligent in providing different face sculpt with different expressions for collectors and I'm loving them. Give you so much option to play with it and pose it. It greatly increases the replay value for the figure. Good for photographers/toy collectors too.  Good job!

There is also an extra chest piece featuring his damaged chest after his final dual with Prime at Autobot city. Love the details, especially with what they did to the Decepticon logo. Looks impressive.

And who can forget his dual with Optimus on top of a dam with his Energon mace.

Takara Tomy even went the extra mile to provide an option for the mace, where you can swap it and pose it however u like, not just a mace hanging there fro it's chain. It's a very interesting feature and very thoughtful.

Next we move on to the figure itself. The leader of the Decepticons, Megatron.

My first reaction when I got this figure is WOW, just WOW. Takara Tomy has done an amazing job, I mean a really really amazing job in this Megatron 2.0. The details on this guy is simply amazing, the design, the color choice, the paint job, everything is top notch. They even solve the main problem for any other Megatron figures, and that is his body ratio - they look stunning, and to top it off, they give is a good body ratio and yet he is cartoon accurate. That just blows my mind. A very nicely done figure. Love it so much!

Some may add that he looks like a granddad who wore his pants a little to high, He does gave me the impression a little initially, but if you look back to the original G1 design for Megatron, it is almost 99% cartoon accurate. I love the choice of grey they used for this figure, I think it really suits him. The parts painted red, namely his biceps and hips is also very cartoon accurate. I don't think I have any paint blemishes for my figure, but I'm not sure if there is any over the right side of his nose. But it's nothing serious. Plastic quality is great. He does have die-cast parts, Hooray! The obvious ones are at his feet and it does help a lot on his stability. He has a great feel in your hand and better weight because of his die-cast parts. 

I saw this on the internet and quickly download it. See what I mean with cartoon accuracy?

I don't have much complain design wise because he is near perfect, but he would probably look a little better if his waist can be slightly elongated, probably half a centimeter. That will have him look much better. 

Just a little close up on the figure.

The lower half of his body looks amazing, it looks so clean, everything is tucked away nicely and there are no kibbles, unlike Apollyon. 

His side view. Looks clean as well from the side in this position.

People do have some complains about his back, looks a little messy, but hey, there is no perfect figure. At least from the waist down, he looks very clean.

From this angle you will notice the small back pack on his back. Not a big issue, not too bad.

His face sculpt looks absolutely stunning! so G1 accurate, Initially I thought Apollyon's face sculpt was good, but Takara Tomy really show what attention to details mean. His helmet, his menacing evil red eyes, his cheek, and his lips. Everything, down to the last detail, looks fantastic.

You will notice the line over the right side of his nose. Paint blemish I guess.

From the side we can see the original G1 bucket-head design for Megatron LOL. Very accurate.

You change his face sculpt by sliding it upwards and you can see the inner designs for his face. They even did it so that it looks like what you see when Unicron redesigns him into Galvatron, as he scans him.

Shouting face design

Evil smirk face design

Bashed up face design LOL

To change the chest plate, you just slide it up and just slide the other one down to insert it.

The battle damage design for the face look awesome and real, just like in the movie.

His head rotates a full 360 degree with ease

Head tilt is about 50 degrees

well he can't really look down without so adjustments

You will need to flip part of the head to allow him to look down 

His Fusion canon is elegantly design as well, again, attention to details and even included the red button on the top, just like in the cartoon. There is sound effects from his canon and man oh man, it made me feel like a kid again :) Be gentle while attaching or removing his fusion canon as it can cause some paint chipping.

You can flip it around if you want, but doesn't really serve any purpose. 

His shoulders does rotate a full 360 degrees.

Shoulder abduction is about 110 degrees

His shoulders can move forward on a hinge allowing him more posing possibilities

He has biceps swivel, a full 360 degrees of it.

He has nice elbow flexion, about 150 degrees

Wrist can rotate a full 360 degrees.

And finally, Takara Tomy finally decides to do something about their figures' fingers. How hard is it for your team to design a robot that can point properly? after so long, finally a decent pointing finger! Yes! They have improved their design over the hands for MP series and the newer series ( I think after MP Wheeljack) are able to hold their weapons securely. MP36's hand design is much improve for masterpiece series, and they also make it more circular and organic like. It's the first masterpiece with a movable thumb, but sadly, not all fingers can move freely. His 3rd, 4th and 5th fingers move as one unit. Hope sometime in the near future, we can have individual moving fingers for Masterpiece figures.

His hips can rotate around fully.

A cool feature about MP 36's articulation is his ability to bend forward, about 80 degrees.

He is the 2nd figure I own that can do a decent sit up pose. First one would be Perfect Effect's Warden.

He can almost do a perfect split

Hip flexion is about 110 degrees

Hip extension is about 40 degrees

Knee flexion is about 100 degrees.

He has about 90 degrees thigh external rotation.

Foot tilt upwards to about 50 degrees, but he can't really tilt his feet downwards.

You can choose to extend part of his foot and make his heel longer, but does not really help in his stability.

He has good internal rotation of his foot.

Transformation for this figure is quite complex, but fulfilling at the same time. For me, I take my time and as usual, I look through YouTube transformation 1st before I transform mine. I don't really fancy using the instruction manual as I do find them sometimes confusing. You should be careful while transforming this figure as there are several parts where you have to use some force to push and pull it to place, and there are parts where you have to snap 2 pieces together and therein lies the danger of getting paint chips. Just the right amount of pressure and counter pressure will prevent any mishaps, and there are a few parts where I applied too much force and there are scratches and paint chipping. Some collectors accidentally broke their figure while transforming thus making me quite careful while transforming this guy. I guess with all Masterpiece series, we should take extra care while transforming as they are made of plastic after all. I took off Megatron's face-sculpt before transforming him as there is a change to get the paint over the face scraped off. The are a lot of interesting transformation sequence, and the legs transformation intrigues me the most. Here we can see he is about 1/3 transformed and it is interesting to see his chest and abdomen transform into the front of the gun. 

A closer view of the front of the gun

A view from the front. Here we can clearly see where the head is located, and I do wish there is a way to cover it up.

Leg transformation is quite interesting as you have to slide one side upwards and the other side downwards to make it slimmer before you combine both the legs together, thus solving the chicken leg problem for MP 5. YOu should be careful while transforming this part as there are steps which require you to rotate and fold a part of his outer leg into his leg. Saw a collector broke the piece off during transformation.

I got this picture from the internet and it shows part of MP 36's arm got broken during transformation. Again, careful with this guy during transformation. He is not that fragile, but you do have to be careful while applying force on a plastic. No harm in exercising caution. Its exciting to transform a new figure for the first time every time, and I did broke part of my Apollyon while transforming as I was impatient and applied too much force on it.

Well I finally manage to transform mine without any mishaps thankfully and here we have MP 36 is his alternate mode. His trigger is movable on a spring.

Here we have a closer look at the grip for his gun mode

HE does have a movable safety pin. 

The hammer part of the gun is movable too. Making it even more realistic.

Back view 

His altenate mode is a Walther P38 handgun. Well honestly I know nuts about handguns but it does look like a cool gun to me. All the parts does snap in together nicely, but do not apply too much force if you are having trouble putting 2 sides together, remember to readjust and double check on the instruction manual or YouTube reviews. 

As Treebeard would say :" Don't be hasty" ;p

Here we have him with his silencer and grip extension on, and he look pretty G1 to me, and quite big. I didnt push the silencer all the way in as other collectors say it will have paint chipping around the gun barrel after you remove it, but sadly, I do have minimal paint chipping although I was very careful while removing the silencer.

A little size comparison with MP 29 Shockwave.

We can clearly see Megatron's bucket head below the gun and it's one of the things that I don't like about this figure. 

I'm not sure why, but I am unable to straighten the gun barrel fully as it always looks like its pointing downwards a little. 

Here is is with MP 28 Hot Rod 

Here he is with his arch rival MP 10 Optimus Prime.

Here he is with MP 33 Inferno

Here he is with MP 20 Wheeljack.

All in all, I would say he has a decent and accurate gun mode. You can transform him with his fusion canon on or off, a personal preference. I did mine with it on. 

With his silencer, we can actually play around with it a bit and attach it to his gun barrel and make him look like he has a huge canon on his shoulder. I cool feature I would say, but I don't think this mode appear in any of the cartoon series.

Megatron about to fire his shoulder canon

You can even attach his fusion canon and make it into a scope? In-Your-Face?

Well he does look like Lockdown in AOE LOL

A picture I got from the internet

Honestly, this is just weird LOL

His extension can transform into a stand and his silencer can be use as a canon.

Next I will move on and talk about his other accessories.

Here is Megatron with the key to Vector Sigma. It is die-cast though, but I was really hoping they use the die-cast in his other accessories , maybe the Blitzwing gun or the laser sword.

Here he is with the gun that Blitzwing drop and so happen to appear in front of him conveniently  during his duel with Optimus.

The helmet where he used to control the fake Optimus. I'm a little sad about this, as you can clearly see mine has paint blemishes on them.

Oh well, at least it still works, despite the paint blemishes.

Dance my nemesis! Dance like you never dance before!

And here we can see Megatron happily holding up the Laser Sword  that wounded Prime

" I got the power" 

Remember that song? LOL

To attach his energon mace, you simply slide his hand out.

And it fits right in nicely. Here he is with the normal chain.

And here he is with the stable adjustable one

Come on Prime! Meet your doom! 

P.S. I'm just lazy to put on Prime's Energon axe because he is on KFC's articulating hands. 

Since I'm on the topic of accessories, I would like to show comparison between MP36 and Apollyon's accessories. (MP 36 on the right, and Apollyon to the left)

On the left we have the smaller but easier to hold Key to Vector Sigma from Apollyon and the other we have the bigger version with Die-cast from Takara Tomy

Apollyon's energon sword or laser sword is taller but MP 36's sword is more cartoon accurate.

In terms of Blitzwing's gun, Takara has the cartoon accurate version.

As for the helmet to control Prime, the Takara one is larger and more details. 

For the energon mace, Apollyon have metal chain while MP 36 has plastic ones and an adjustable posable chain.

While the Takara version did not supply us with the cosmic rust gimmick, they do have the battle damage gimmick

The 2 Tyrants having a show down. One shall stand, one shall fall

Will leave you with some pictures to compare both of them and see which one you prefer

MP 36 gives us a very clean looking Megatron from the front as Apollyon has kibbles most noticeably on his legs.

Apollyon somehow has the more menacing look and look a little more bulkier than MP 36, with his broader chest and longer and wider abdomen. And Apollyon does have the bigger canon :p

Apollyon has a cleaner back while MP 36 look a bit messy over his back.

It's posing time! Smile!

Up Up and away.......

HAIYA! Meggy KICK!

"Autobots, the dumb owner just bought another Decepticon, this time, we destroy him before he has a chance to cause havoc in the room like all the other Decepticons!"

" Destroy who? "

" Peace through Tyranny!"

Just have to re-enact this scene once more :)

" Prime!"

" One shall stand, one shall fall"

" Why throw away your life so recklessly?

" That's a question you should ask yourself Megatron "

" No....I'll crush you with my bear hands!"

" I've got to help Prime!"

" Stay away lad, that's Prime's fight!"

( Sorry, cant fine an orange pointy metal ;p )

" I'll rip out your optics..."

" No more optimus Prime, Grant me Mercy I beg of you"

" You! who are without mercy, now plea for it......"

" I thought you were made of sterner stuff..."

" No you don't Megatron!"

" Out of the way Hot Rod!"

" Fall..... Fall!"

" Ahh.... I would have waited an eternity for this......"

" It's over prime...."

" Never!!"

" Optimus... forgive me...."

" How do you feel Mighty Megatron"

" Hiiiyah! Astrotrain! Transform and get us out of here!"

And off to other scenes.....

" Welcome Laserbeak, unlike some of my other warriors, you never fail me"

" And here we have Megatron promoting his own product" LOL

" Buy this within the next 24 hours and you will receive a laser sword for Free, call +03 C-Y-C-B-E-R-T-R-O-N now!" 

"Took you long enough"

" The show we starred in 30 years ago is still milking transformers' collectors' pockets till this day"

" We can buy all the energon we need!"

" There will be no need for war between the Autobots and Decepticons, after we milk the earth's collector's wallet dry"

Arch nemesis or business partners? LOL

Just some size comparison.

Here he is with MP 13 Soundwave.

With MP 11 StarScream

With MP 22 Ultra Magnus

With MP 30 Ratchet

With MP 20 Wheeljack and 28 Hot Rod

With MP 32 Optimus Primal

Here he is with MP09 Rodimus Prime

And here he is with his Decepticon buddies.

Such beautiful scale....

This is a picture I got from the internet. We really have come a long way

Pros : Most G1 Accurate Megatron to date

          In scale with MP 10 

          Excellent paint job

          Great Plastic Quality

          Has Die-cast

          Super posable

          Lots of accessories

          HE CAN POINT! ( In Takara Tomy's point of view, its a great achievement )

          Interesting transformation

          Has sound effects

          Worthy Transformers Masterpiece collectible

Cons: Paint Chipping

          No light pipping

          Exposed bucket head in gun mode

          slightly bent gun barrel 

          No Kremzeek? LOL

          The gun barrel may flop a bit when u fiddle with the toy as there is no peg to secure it 

          Hefty Price tag 

          

And before we go, Megatron would like to say...

" Such Heroic Nonsense... "