Review: Transformers Generations Combiner Wars Leader Class Megatron

Megatron, leader of the Decepticons, had his fair share of toys over the ages, but he hasn't had a good G1 robot rendition for a long time. We will look at the Combiner Wars Leader class Megatron to see how good this figure is.

In the box you immediately see that the resemblance to the G1 Megatron. He is big and menacing with a big cannon on his arm. On the back you see the description,
and you see the vehicle mode is a big silver tank. It says it changes in 15 steps which is a low number of steps considering it is a leader class figure.

In the box, you get Megatron, A rifle in 2 parts, a red missle, some instructions, a collectors card and a sticker sheet.

Robot Mode

In robot mode, he looks absolutely fantastic. The head sculpt is the best part of this figure and looks uncanny to the G1 cartoon.

The body looks great. It has lots of details from the G1 Megatron and there is a bit of red thrown in to accent the line and break up the otherwise silver body. You can see the tank treads peeking out from his back but they aren't very distracting. The backpack is actually quite a bit smaller than I'd expected.

The legs are big and thick, unlike the skinny legs found on other G1 style megatrons. He does have stubby feet though and there are treads on the back. There are some third party addons that make his feet a bit bigger.

His arms are big and the insides are accented in red. His arm cannon looks way too long compared to the cartoon.  You can can point his cannon either way and position it around his arm to your preference. But to have his cannon all the way to the side, you need to close his fist cover. His shoulder joints are visible and looks quite skinny and they look a little strange when you try to pose his arms as these are set lower than where normal shoulders would be at.  When you move his arms to the front you can really see the problem here.But it isn't really that bad. Other positions you don't notice it much.


Articulation
He has pretty good articulation and there is very little kibble to block the limbs. All the major joints are the clicky type that click into position. His shoulders, elbows, hips, knees, feet are clicky. His head and fists are smooth.

His head is on a hinge and swivel and can spin around and can look up a lot and down a lot.
His arms can go all the way around, and can bring his arm out about 45 degrees. 90degree elbows with swivel, and swivel fists.

His legs can swing out to the front 45 degrees and back almost 90 degrees and out the sides at 90 degrees, knees can bend only 45 degrees because it is blocked by the treads and swivel outwards only 45 degrees at the hips. He can bend his knees sideways due to the transformation.
The ankles can only point upwards from the transformation and there seems to be ankle rocker but it is blocked by the boots itself.

One of the major complaints I have seen is the clicking positions of the hips restrict the posability of his stance. They say he can only stand straight up or have his legs spread out way to wide in an wide stance. This problem is blown way out of proportion as you can just bend his knees a little and use the hip joints. Here he is both legs 1 click to the side, 1 click forwards, and knees 1 click back, then twist the hips. A great looking wide stance.

Size Comparison.
He stands about 23cm tall. Here is he next to Masterpiece Soundwave, voyager megatron, another voyager megatron, legends megatron, Evasion Optimus and Weaponizer optimus, Deluxe Optimus and MP01. Sorry I don't have a MP10 but if you want to send one to me let me know.

Transform sequence
The transformation is quite simple for a leader class figure, you can probably figure it out yourself.
Turn the head around, lift his chest plate up, pull his crotch plate down, cover his fists, And swing in the arms. The 2 tabs will connect the arms.
Turn the feet up and swing the feet to the side. Move the crotch plate down and then tab in the legs.
Pull the backpack apart, push them upwards and then tab it in the front.
Finally extend the cannon.

Vehicle Mode

The Tank mode looks gorgeous. There are tons of little details going on here that it would be tough to list them all. You can see all the armor plates attached to both sides of the tank,  Lots of panel lines and plate details all over. There is an entry hatch on the top, the small windows in the front, and even details behind the treads.

The tank features actually rolling rubber treads and the cannon can rotate 360 degrees, but it cannot point up or down. And it can fire the missile.

It has 4 minicon ports you can plug various minicons into. It will make it looks absolutely ridiculous.
It has two 5mm ports on top of the turrent for the guns. There are 4 screw holes on the side of the turret that look like they will fit guns, but they sadly do not as they are also too small.

Size Comparison:
In tank mode, he is 20 cm long and 9.5 cm wide, which makes about 1:36 scale with a similar M1 Abrams tank.
Here he is compared to a masterpiece Tiger Track, a 1:24 scale Smokescreen, a deluxe bumblebee, a voyager optimus, and MP01. Again, sorry I don't have an MP10 for comparison.

Final Thoughts

This is an absolutely wonderful figure. It is beautiful in robot mode and in tank mode. There are tons of little details all over it that will keep you admiring it all the time. There are some fairly minor nitpicking but overall this is a must get as we don't come across good Megatron figure often.