AFHUB’s resident expert on Japanese Super Robots, Goldrich Castillo, shares with us his unbiased review of his latest acquisition – the Takara MP05 Megatron.

The Good:

• There is some diecast.. but generally it’s limited to the feet (and just the soles, not the whole feet), the “Spine” (the shiny parts are diecast) and crotch section of the toy. The rest is plastic.
• The scope/fusion cannon lights up.
• Good move packing Megatron in his bot mode, as opposed to him being in gun mode and running into trouble with customs.
• No huge quality control defects (unlike the MP04, that one had a lot of QC problems like the misaligned windows, major crappy paint bleeds). Pretty much the one I got is decent. The silvery finish is very nice on the toy. However, the chromed parts are somewhat tarnished (typical of Takara QC now.. tsk)
• Ratchet joints galore! Moving/posing the toy actually takes some effort.
• The gun’s “safety” switch flips up and down.
• The gun trigger can move but don’t expect the “clicking” sounds that the G1 toy had.
• Megatron’s face sculpt is pretty good.

The Bad:

• Somewhat hard to balance at times, thanks mainly to the heavy fusion cannon and the semi-loose ankle ball joint. Better pay close attention to prevent falling accidents.
• The gun is definitely oversized. I think the G1 toy is closer to the actual size of the real Walther P38 gun.
• Missing gun attachements like the extended barrel and shoulder rest (?) do hurt the “cartoon accuracy” of the toy. I expect customizers to start cranking out the attachments down the road. :)
• Transforming the toy can be a pain, what’s worse is transforming the toy back into it’s robot form, since the crummy black and white manual leaves you high and dry there (their Masterpiece Exkaiser manual was colored and illustrated the transformation both ways.)
• Some of the pieces pop off too easily (like Megatron’s shoulder pads, hip panels and other parts with ball joints.. then again, it beats having them permanently break off.)
• The scope looks off somehow, I’m no gun expert, but the big, wide hole at the base of the scope looks wrong to me. It takes Megatron’s “coolness” factor down a notch IMHO.
• The skinny legs. Though in fairness, I can’t imagine how they could’ve done it without employing optional add-ons to thicken up the legs.
• Trying to find a good box. Thanks to Takara cutting corners on the studiness of the freight box (the cardboard’s really thin), I ended up settling for the least damaged box I could find (still damaged, nontheless).

The Ugly:

• Scratches and tranished markings all over the chromed parts. I guess it’s standard issue of Takara products now.. sigh..
• and ..Transforming the toy….

It’s a real pain, the manuals orientation can be confusing at times if you can’t read Japanese. Anyway here’re a few pointers (sorry I don’t have any detailed pics, I didn’t have time to take additional photos):

Transforming to gun mode

1. When pulling Meg’s head out of the chest, just hold the sides of the helmet and tug as hard as you can. It’s stuck pretty tight in there.
2. Check inside Megatron’s “sleeves” first, there’s plastic packing material inside, take them out before you compress the “sleeves”.
3. When pulling the shoulders out, the correct way is to pull them downward, not sideways.
4. The thighs are the hardest part to transform, a lot of rotating and folding inside out.

When transforming into Robot mode:

1. First off, pull the gun barrel forward then bend it sideways. If you’re familiar with the G1 toy, you might tend to bend the gunbarrel right away (that was the way to transform it back in the day).

   Forcing the gunbarrel to bend sideways right away instead of pulling it forward first will result in breakage of the hinge holding the gunbarrel.

2. Before locking the torso down into the waist make sure the entire torso is completely pulled out (meaning the yellow bar in Meg’s abs is exposed). I tried pulling the torso after locking it down into the waist, it won’t work.

Gun mode:

Megaton comes with his Energy Mace…

…plus the sword and gun he used in the 1985 movie to make a mess of Optimus Prime.

The Fusion Cannon (lights up by pressing one of the buttons on the side, there’s a strip of plastic preventing battery contact that needs to be removed first though).

Plus there’s KreemZeek (the little bugger that almost single-handedly eliminated all the Autobots).

Here’s a shot of Megatron next to Mp01/04 Optimus Prime:

With the Tf G1 reissue Megatron:

In conclusion, It goes really well with the MPC Optimus Prime. Just don’t expect a lot of diecast. Transforming the toy will be a problem for some and the lousy manual doesn’t help. Overall, it’s a decent enough toy but still leaves room for improvements.

BTW, for the curious, the little tips that fold out of the side of the scope/cannon were “copied” from the G1 toy, which were originally meant as handles for Takara’s Microman (Megatron’s cannon transformed into a tripod mounted cannon for Microman back in the old days).

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