Bot Reviews: Transformers: Generations Selects Voyager G2 Megatron

It’s once again time to prattle on for a bit about how I love Generation 2, the early 90’s iteration of Transformers where I first became a fan, mostly known for a selection of figures with bright, gaudy, garishly neon color schemes. But it was also an era of transition for the franchise, where a few important milestones made their first appearance. One example: Re-inventing Megatron’s alternate mode as a tank, instead of the handgun he could no longer legally change into.

One of the first new-mold toys in Generation 2 (which, in its first year, was almost entirely made up of G1 reissues with brighter color schemes and extra missile launchers), this was a new take on Megatron, changing from a gigantic for-the-time robot into a big combat tank, and decked out in an implausible bright green and purple camouflage color scheme. A smaller Deluxe-ish take on the design, now mostly purple, would follow….

and a white repaint of that one would be planned, but cancelled.

Since so much of Generation 2 was “the characters you know, but in different, louder colors,” it’s a frequent source of inspiration for exclusive repaints of modern figures, to my delight. Sure enough, the last few Generations Megatrons with tank modes have gotten Generation 2-themed repaints. First off, the Titans Return Voyager got a repaint in purple through Takara, complete with a wonderful “Megatron Rules” chest sticker. Then, the Siege Voyager got repainted and retooled into the cancelled white version as the very first Generations Selects figure. Now, the Generations Selects line’s done it again, having taken the just-released Earthrise Voyager, and repainted him up as a homage to that first green tank.

The normal Earthrise Voyager, meanwhile, is kind of an odd figure, in that it takes the Siege release, which was already a slavishly G1 Megatron, and extensively retools him, replacing a lot of his parts in the name of…making him slightly more slavishly G1, and making his tank mode look a little bit more Earthly.

I didn’t have much interest in the base mold, but paint him in G2 colors, and I’m all over it. So, consider this to also be a look at how the Earthrise Megatron tooling works in hand.

Robot Mode

I have to start by talking about these colors, because they demand your attention with how purely 90s they are. He’s mostly a bright lime green, with Decepticon purple camo spots. A small amount of bright safety orange dots a few spots on him for accent colors, and he’s got a bit of metallic silver-gray where he isn’t being gaudy, including a nice silver finish on his helmet, above a blueish face, and orange eyes.

You either love or hate this colorscheme, and I absolutely love it. It’s G2 in a nutshell, straight out of the early 90s. I have a few nitpicks, though. Namely, it doesn’t slavishly replicate the layout of the original figure the way Combat Megatron did, remixing it a bit, instead of copying it closely. Also, I feel like stickers that say boastful phrases are an important part of the G2 Experience, and unlike Legends Megatron’s “MEGATRON RULES” and Combat Megatron’s “(lighting bolt) MEGATRON (lightning bolt),” I’m missing the fact that they didn’t try to replicate the original’s “BIG STICK” and “EAT THIS, AUTOBOTS” details. Still, these are nothing more than nitpicks, and nothing about them changes how absolutely lush he looks in-person.

Sculptwise, despite the paint, we’re once again looking at an attempt to slavishly translate G1 Cartoon Megatron into plastic, just with some tank treads on his backpack, and they managed to get it pretty close, again. He’s got the bucket head, the buttons on his abdomen, the gun-handle-shaped feet, the broad, flat chest, the fusion cannon, the works.

At first glance, aside from the head, it doesn’t look a heck of a lot different from Siege Megatron, but upon closer comparison, you realize that almost every part of him has been changed, even things that look nearly the same, like his upper arms, hands, and chest. Doing a quick inventory, it looks to me like he shares his feet, thighs, and forearms with Siege Megs, but literally every other part is new, unless there’s some innards I’m missing.

Here’s the thing that makes it feel really odd: There doesn’t seem to have been much reason to do all this retooling, since Siege Megatron was already slavishly G1, and the new bits don’t seem to do much to change the small things that were different. In particular, the new head, despite having all of the important G1 details, feels less accurate than the old one to my eyes, which already hit the G1 Megatron Mood really well. It’s not necessarily a complaint, though, because, outside of an accessory (more on that below), it doesn’t make anything worse, and actually fixes his ankles up (see below, again). Heck, if you wiped my memory of the Siege one, I wouldn’t even notice it’s a retool, it all comes together so well.

One thing it DOES do well, though, is wear those G2 colors, particularly that less-accurate head, with its generous chin and comic-book-cover scowl, feels like it suits the G2 mood more than the Siege one. In fact, I feel like it wears them better than a straight Siege repaint would have.

For handfeel, this guy still feels pleasantly chunky in-hand, and I’m pleased to report that all of his joints are super-tight. In fact, they took the opportunity to fix his ankle tilts! To recap, the Siege version had weirdly loose ankles that were supposed to peg into a neutral position when not being used, but the pegs often didn’t work, making his feet flop around. For the Combat Megatron repaint, they reinforced those tabs. And on this guy, they just did away with the tabs entirely, and tightened those ankles right up, instead.

That’s good, because he’s still really bendable for a bulky guy. He’s got the full suite of Siege Articulation, minus wrist swivels, due to transformation. He still manages to be stable, poseable, and thanks to his colors, really expressive. The only construction point that gives me trouble are the transformation joints his shoulders are attached to, which have a habit of popping out of place if you move them around a lot. Still, they pop right back in.

So, his accessories are another weird point on this guy. On the normal side, he has his trademark fusion cannon, which is another almost-identical-but-actually-new sculpt that’s marginally less covered in tech detail, but more importantly, is now solid purple. He can arm-mount it as usual.

It’s his second one that’s strange. Instead of the transforming sword of the original, he basically comes with a long spear of tank parts. It’s a cannon, the front of a turret, and a tiny blade on the end, loosely styled after the same G1 sword as the Siege version’s accessory. Also, it’s got a removable panel stashed below the turret, that’s meant for the alternate mode, but just kind of hangs out there.  It’s a bit hard to explain it, which is why I’ve got pictures.

I’ve messed around with this thing a lot, and honestly, it only really looks good if you mount it on his other arm as a second gun. He can’t hold it like a sword, or a spear, despite a movable peg on the bottom, and most angles where it’s a blade have the problem of the tank barrel getting in the way. After the coolness that was Siege’s transforming sword, this feels like a downgrade.

Another tiny nitpick only I care about: He can’t shoulder-mount either of his cannons, to imitate the original toy’s weapon, like the Siege and Titans Return retools can. The best you can do is point it upwards on his back, or place it sideways on his upper arm. Still, it wasn’t built with that kind of visual homage in mind, and the previous two G2 repaints felt like they could just do it out of serendipity. If you want to throw in bits of some Weaponizers, I’ve seen a few good modifications to add that shoulder-mounted feature. Still, it works just fine as a second arm cannon, and “having two big guns” is pretty 90’s on it own.

Outside of that, Megatron’s got plenty of weapons ports on him, with mounting points on his upper and lower adms, lower legs, feet, and two on his backpack. And I must say, decking him out with a billion guns certainly fits the 90’s motif.

Oh, and remember the Energon Mace included in the Centurion set that doesn’t fit very well on Siege Megatron? It was obviously meant for the Earthrise mold, and while the connection is still a bit tight, it slides over his hand perfectly.

Transformation

G2 Megs pretty much the same transformation as the Siege release, which is to say there’s enough going on to feel satisfied, but I still have trouble remembering the tricks with his lower legs and tank treads to get them both lined up. But once I re-figured them out, they were still pretty clever. There is one wrinkle here, and it’s that once you sink his head down into the space it hides in, it requires a bit of force to yank it back out on the way to robot mode, so watch out.

Oh, also, that tiny panel that attaches to the bottom of his tank-parts-spear is used for some parts forming in this mode, namely to clip onto the back of his body to hide the gap between his legs. I suppose it’s a consequence of their mission to hide that he used to change into an H-tank.

Tank Mode

The other mission of the Earthrise retooling was to remake Siege Megatron’s Cybertronian tank into something more Earthly, and on those grounds, it actually does work, mostly. Both the body and turret are a lot more cohesive-looking, thanks to the tank treads each being joined into one unit on each side (with sculpted tank treads, above squeaky little wheels), and the turret having a more cohesive shape (thanks to that weird tank-parts spear).

That being said, he still has his robot mode feet hanging out of the back of him, and the turret itself is still really clearly folded-up robot arms with a Fusion Cannon jammed down the middle, so it’s really about halfway there, and requires parts forming and odd accessories to accomplish. Still, as far as meaty slabs of tank go, it’s an impressive, hefty one.

Thanks to the G2 camo pattern, if I ignore that it’s bright green and purple, with orange bits, the deco almost looks Earthly, again. But why would you want to ignore that deco? I particularly appreciate the little orange dots to the right of the turret, which resemble missile pods, and the retro Generation 2 Decepticon symbol on his side.

For gimmicks, he rolls nicely, and the turret rotates just fine. Unfortunately, he can’t do the crazy turret acrobatics the Siege version could, but you can still give him some extra accessories via the four weapons ports on his sides.

Overall

I almost worry I spent too much time criticizing this figure. So, let’s set the record straight. I love this figure to bits. It’s an amazing homage, a lush set of colors, and a really good mold all combined together. If you vibe with this kind of intentionally neon 90’s reference, get it ASAP, that’s all there is to it.

If I remove the color from my vision, and consider the Earthrise Megatron figure that this is repainted from? Taken on its own, pretty great, a solid Voyager that’s fun to mess around with, and happens to come with an odd accessory. Compared to Siege Megatron, though? Aside from the fixed feet, it doesn’t improve on him, and might even be an extremely tiny bit of a downgrade, thanks to that strange tank-parts-spear replacing a better accessory. The thing is, if you’ve been collecting the past few years, you probably have some version of him already, whether it’s the original, the cell-shaded cartoon version, or the shiny Netflix release, and it’s not really any kind of big upgrade if you have that one. But if you don’t have one, and you’re looking for a Generations G1-style Megatron, the Earthrise one’s still really good, but if the Siege tooling is available cheaper on the aftermarket, you might be better off grabbing one of those previous releases.

But, none of those come in this lush set of colors, which this specific tooling wears so well, and it was genius of them to do the new tooling in these colors. So, this guy? Get this guy. He demands it.

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