The early 2000s was a time of renaissance for the Transformers franchise, or at least it was in this part of the world. In Japan, the franchise continued even when we had gaps in our time line. After Robots in Disguise was a hit, the Armada Trilogy was brought over and dubbed. While people had fond memories of the first and third parts, Energon (or Superlink in Japan) didn't quite have the same warm fuzzy feelings, as the Autobots mostly were misshapen blocks due to the linking gimmick, though the Decepticons were OK.
Energon Megatron was an interesting figure. In Japan, I believe he was a Voyager sized release, but here in Hasbro land, they decided to oversize him into a Supreme class figure, as in the show Optimus Prime is only equivalent to the height of Megatron when in combined mode. This increased size was great in theory but they didn't up the articulation or anything, so you ended up with a giant sized brick. I think they might have introduced electronics into the Supreme version, but my memory isn't that good, and I never got the Voyager version despite searching for it.
Anyway, he's back, this time as a tiny ass Core figure.
So I don't get many Core Class figures, but truthfullly, they have a pretty large fanbase, and rightfully so Voyager and up, they have to cram in articulation and features to make their value propositions there, Deluxes they just coast by, but Core Class, because they're so small the expectations are pretty low so it's amazing to see what kind of crap they can cram into one of these. I mean, they're not going to have the same play value as the larger figures, but they're also not meant to break the wallet.
In this case, it's hilarious that the once big bad has been effectively demoted.
I didn't grab a photo, but I'm quite happy they managed to find budget for the figure, the two shoulder cannons (modified to an extent) and his arm weapon, the corpse of Armada Megatron with a blade on the other end.
Here he is, out of box. As mentioned, much of the frills of the larger version has been removed, leaving you with the essence of the character. Most of the automorph stuff along with the other bells and whistles, they did nothing for me (except get stuck occassionally) so yeah, this is honestly just as good as the larger one is, at least it is for me. The shoulder cannons are modified in that they no longer rotate (understandable, given the size) but rather require you to pull them off and reconnect them appropriately. The detailing on the Tank is actually pretty nice and faithful to the full sized figure.
Head sculpt wise, again, the name of the game is recognizable and yeah it's definitely that. I like how they opted for his anime colours rather than the artbitrary colour differences Hasbro put in order to "differentiate the product". Like anyone was going to mistake a giant sized Megatron for the Japanese Voyager sized one.
This figure has the fundamentals of Articulation, which given the size of this figure, is actually very acceptable. Due to the small size, you lose a few things, like a proper bicep swivel (replaced by a ball jointed elbow) but you know what what this figure DOES have? Freakin' thigh twists.... SUCK IT, WINDBLADE. There's no waist but you know what else didn't have a waist? The big one. So yeah, overall you're not missing much from the Supreme sized figure.
Paint, well, it's there. Not much of it, but you're not gonna be looking for it when you're at this size point. I feel a few more detailing paint apps for the vehicle mode would have been nice. The Blade on the tank should have been a lime green, like the underside of the wings, but not a deal breaker at this size point. As for Build Quality, there really isn't much to go wrong here.
Transformation into vehicle mode is simple and quick, but it does the job. Having fewer moving parts to deal with naturally results in a much swifter conversion experience. Vehicle mode looks proportionate as the larger size versions, as I don't recall there being much wingspan on those either.
Overall, it's a neat little figure. There are probably people out there who are upset that the character was only made into a Core Class figure and not larger, but for me this is a good size for him. The only unfortunate thing is that getting an Energon Optimus in this size will be almost impossible, unless they don't do the combination gimmick.. Otherwise, if you're looking for some relatively cheap fun with a neat looking alt mode, I'd strongly suggest this figure.
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