Classics Series Galvatron

Height: 13cm to top of head; 12cm (vehicle body length)

Articulation: 26 total points - Swivel neck; 4 points each arm: Ball joint shoulder (left arm only)/ Swivel shoulder (right arm only), pre-elbow swivel, double hinged elbow; Swivel waist; 8 points each leg: Universal hip, mid-thigh swivel, hinge knee, post-knee swivel, triple-jointed ankle.

Colors: Molded grey, purple, safety-orange, clear orange; Painted silver, red, black, grey, orange.

Accessories: Missile

Release Data: Released in the second wave of Universe Deluxes in the third quarter of 2008 at a retail price of US$9.99

Gallery: 26 images.

Author: ExVee



Arrogant, powerful and ruthless, Galvatron has emerged to seize control of the scattered Decepticon forces. He has formed what was once a loose confederation of assassins and warlords into an army capable of threatening the entire universe. Rumors abound, but no one knows where he came from; they know only that he arrived, and swiftly crushed all opposition to his rule. Some Decepticons hope another leader powerful enough to challenge him will emerge, but most are too afraid of him to even hope for someone better.

(He so totally killed Bludgeon.)

Much like Animated Ultra Magnus, this Galvatron is a rare case these days. Ever since Robots in Disguise back in 2001 renewed use of the name Galvatron in Transformers toys, it has always been represented as a recolor and occasional retool of the year's Megatron toy. Since RiD kicked off a fair few years of imported Japanese primary media, every Megatron upgraded every year like clockwork. The only exceptions to be had were non-transforming merchandise items. Things like statues and figurines. But now with the renewal of Classics within the likewise revived Universe line, a Galvatron is once more his own man ...er, toy.

The bio is quite vague about pinning down this Galvatron's existence and newly adapted vehicle mode. A source of some frustration for myself and RAC who tend to like things to make as much sense as possible. Assuming this Classics Series follows the alternate-post-Marvel G1 setting as was applied to the previous Classics line, this is most assuredly the Galvatron that appeared in the final fifteen or so issues of the US comic. Which doesn't explain at all the tank mode. If this is a new "continuity," things get way less certain way faster for not having any frame of reference besides very oblique lines in a few of the known bios for the new Classics toys. In either case the best hope we have is for Fun Publications to bring both Classics Series together in the Fan Club and convention exclusive fiction. But it probably still won't satisfyingly explain the tank mode.

Now, in reality the application of a modified Israeli MBT for Galvatron's alternate mode is a result of Hasbro desiring a level of realism for the new molds in Universe. Fun as a space cannon might be (and as articulated as the G1 Galvatron toy was, I can scarcely imagine how awesomely poseable a modern revisit might be), it's about as far away from realism as you can get. Not to be completely daunted in their drive for ridiculous G1 homaging, while engineering the toy's transformation Takara added in a few extra parts that can permit some degree of a legged-tank third mode. Hasbro has chosen to leave this one blissfully undocumented, but we can surely expect to see it appear in the Henkei! equivalent. If it looks like the cannon modes fans have worked out, I certainly applaud Hasbro's decision.


Vehicle Mode


Galvatron's vehicle form is based on the Merkava Main Battle Tank, currently used by the Israeli Defense Forces. As usual, enough details have been changed to skirt the legal issues of cribbing somebody else's design. Some extra missiles strapped to the flanks, a translucent orange, missile-firing "particle cannon", a little tweak to the lines of the body... The tank mode is appropriate, even for real-world considerations. As a long standing and somewhat traditional substitute alt mode for Megatrons that can no longer become guns, this feels like a sort of self-referencial choice for Galvatron's transformation. In a similar way, it's probably the best alternative to the space cannon, essentially trading one type of field artillery for another. I'm down with that. Thoughtful creativity is something I very much appreciate in my Transformers.

As you'd expect, the tank mode is by and large a big, grey box. The surfaces are all covered with various mechanical and techy detailing. The tread detailing is okay, though it seems slightly on the soft side. I'm not sure if it's a result of a black paint that was a little on the thick side, or if the sculpting just wasn't what it totally could have been. The paint coverage seems like it could have been slightly better, as well. Some places don't quite cover all the way to the edge, while others overlap around the sides. Within the treads is the normal set of sub-wheels, this time molded in the same clear orange plastic as the cannon ...and then painted over in orange paint. What? You blow at least four paint operations on the wheels and you don't even bother to make them black? Confusing, man.

The only intentionally moving part in this mode is the turret. It swivels freely, though you best watch out since I've pulled it out a couple of times already. It fits right back in, though I fear for it possibly loosening up if it goes through the process too much. Be careful there. On either side of the turret is tampographed "GALV-25", most certainly referring to the impending 25th anniversary of the Transformers brand. Though of course Galvatron himself won't have a 25th anniversary until 2011 - I guess they're giving the '86 toys a break. Galvatron's cannon cannot elevate, unless you partly transform the turret to open up the cannon's jointing. It looks pretty ugly doing this, though.

There's hinged panels on the front and rear of the tank body. There's no real point for this, it's just an element of transformation that doesn't lock down well or at all here. In a nice bit of detail, both ends feature what appear to be tiedown hooks, like would be used when transporting the tanks, else one might slip into the sea, or crush a passing car if being transported over land. Finally, there's a missile pod on the backside of the turret. By virtue of another transformation joint, this can be aimed to a small degree. If you go too far, you'll end up poking out the robot's hand. You can move the launcher about 45 degrees before you actually start to see any robot parts peeking out.

The tank really holds together quite well. So much that you'll probably have a hard time at first figuring out just where to start transforming from. Meanwhile, I'm not going to pay any service to the sad legged mode here. Check the gallery for a photo of it and see why...



Robot Mode


I should preface this portion by noting that there is radically varying parts fit between examples of this toy. Ranging from fairly average and stable, to frighteningly loose. There's no way to know beforehand, and you won't be able to tell either way until you start trying to transform Galvatron. If everything begins ripping off in your hands, you're probably not so lucky. Mine is decidedly an instance of the less fortunate outcome. Bear in mind that it's possible units from later in the production run will fare better. I hope.

So, true this Galvatron is pretty much required to have a different looking robot mode given the radical departure from the original alt mode, but to their credit the designers managed to keep enough elements that this is instantly recognizable. The head and torso are the focus of this, naturally. Galvatron's head is of course more based on the various cartoon and comic redesigns of the original toy, which is good. The old toy's head looked like a tower off a castle. I'd say there's been effort to integrate the considerably different facial appearances between the cartoon, old comics, and modern comics. The face has the angular lines and flat panels as expected from the cartoon style depiction, while around the eyes and mouth is a slightly more "organic" appearance which fits into the original Marvel comics method of having totally human looking faces. That's what you get when you have to have folks used to drawing Avengers start working on giant robots, I suppose.

The major portion of the head is cast in the purple plastic visible on the "helmet", with the face painted over in silver. This has a really nice result, as the purple plastic immediately surrounding the clear orange light-piped eyes is left unpainted. In the tiny, tiny area, recessed under the brow ridge, the color is practically indistinguishable from black, making the eyes look sunk in, and really helping to accentuate the glow even under indirect light. The torso itself maintains a fusion of twenty years worth of design elements all conglomerated to the most effective state. ...at least from the front. The back is taken up by a sizeable backpack made from some of the tank parts, mostly the rear section of treads and central body. As a result Galvatron has the tank mode's large missiles strapped to his back. Whether you want to take that as launchers on his back or maybe as jump jets, I could go either way. The tread units are intended to lock into place via tabs and slots, but the fit is less than stellar. They'll kind of hold in place, but more often than not you'll find them to have popped themselves loose, or be dislodged by an errant pass from your hands. It's not helping that the tank's hidden wheels are just slightly too close together when folded up like this, adding to the pressures at play. You might have noticed during transformation that there's quite a lot of little techy details molded on the torso under the chest plate, and on the inner surface of the chest plate itself. Pretty good for a spot you'll probably only see for half a second while you flip the panel around.

The arms share essentially no common details from left to right. The left arm is fairly standard. The shoulder gets pretty good range of motion, though its ball joint is mildly restricted by the cap on the arm. The cap itself is on a hinge as a consequence of transformation, so it can be made to get out of the way if you need it to. Not that this will always produce a more desirable result. An oddity, there's a hook-like piece on a hinge that can be flipped out of the shoulder cap but serves no practical or stylistic purpose that anyone has managed to identify as yet. It doesn't even seem to have a function in the Takara-initiated "third" "mode". A large, silver Decepticon symbol is tampo'ed on the front panel of the bicep - since in the current outline-free style a purple insignia would get rather lost amid the purple plastic! Though double jointed, odds are you'll find the upper part of the hinge much, much tighter than the forearm end. The bicep end is secured with a screw while the lower end is little pegs. I figure in general it'll act more like a single joint unless you specifically attempt to manipulate both ends of the hinge. At the end of the left arm is a closed fist - no peg hole. More on this in a moment.

The right arm is where most of the action is. Made from basically the entirety of the tank turret, it's much more massive than the left. However, the particular way it's formed leads to some restrictions in its articulation. The shoulder is only designed to swivel, leaving no way to raise the arm or cannon out to the side. The transformation jointing can be taken advantage of here however, among other things letting you point the cannon across the chest. Some mistransformation is necessary, since there's actually tabs at work to keep the shoulder joint locked together in robot mode, even if these are less than obvious in execution. The sad part is that if you lock the shoulder together how it's designed, the backpack prevents the cannon from being levelled. The turret chunk and backpack try to occupy the same space. Boo, physics.  The elbow is still a double hinge, but the mass of turret tends to negate the usefulness of this. It's mostly impossible to do more than bend the forearm to a 90 degree angle. The forearm does contribute to this, but I'm gonna go with mostly blaming the upper arm here. The right hand is molded as an open, sort of relaxed looking pose. The fingers end with vague points, giving this a certain clawness. I'd really have rather had these hands reversed. Open left hand, with which you could pose Galvatron supporting the cannon. Plus I find the fist more natural in conjunction with a mounted cannon. In any case, it sort of seems like Marvel Legends hands are beginning to leak over to Transformers. While the crazy posing (a taste of which can be found in our Iron Man movie toy reviews) is left out, the mostly uselessness remains, and this isn't restricted to Galvatron. Ironhide will come with a pair of open hands. Seriously, I miss having standard 5mm peg holes in the hands - or close to it at least.

A feature on the right arm that I like is the pop-up missile launcher. Though that's mildly inaccurate. There's a little tiny tab inside the forearm preventing the missile pod from raising straight up, likely to prevent the screwed together joint getting worn down. In any case, you can flip out the little missile pod by rotating the hand back like you were transforming it to vehicle mode. The hand ends up pointing down, but I love little hidden weapons like that. As goes the main cannon, I have to say that they did a really good job making it where it doesn't look like any part of the tank while still integrating pretty well into the vehicle mode. The cannon is mounted by way of a ball joint at the end of a hinged arm. This arrangement does not allow for any stunning degree of articulation of the cannon, though you can get it to swivel if you coax it to just the right spot first. In any case you need to be careful, as some of the greebly detailing on the turret block will rub against a painted surface on the cannon. If you're not mindful of it, it can wear the paint off pretty quickly. There is more or less a 'correct' position for the cannon, easily determined since otherwise it skews to one side or the other. When you get it sat in there just right it'll point straight along a line started by the seam in the turret. In this spot it's safe against the paint rubbing off, too. The cannon fires the included missile a short few feet.

Galvatron's waist joint could turn a full circle, except under normal conditions the legs will run into the ...er, tank panel "coat tails" after a somewhat short distance. The remaining range still looks pretty natural, and plays nicely with posing the cannon. The legs are a somewhat discouraging mix of plastic tolerance and engineering issues that are more consolidated than any of the rest of the toy. As noted at the opening of this section of the article, plastic tolerances are known to vary to some extremes with this toy, so your own experience may differ. In this case, the weakest link is in the knee joints. Held together by pins, it's possible that the holes in the plastic ended up just the tiniest bit bigger than what was intended. The result is the knees often failing to resist the backward tug of the figure's weight if you're not careful to get the center of balance in just the right place. I usually have to lean the figure ever so slightly forward to be sure. The hip joints are mostly okay. The stiffness is up to the challenge mostly, but versus the weak knees, it's difficult to make them move the way you really want. I guess it's not a huge loss. Between the back-heavy aspect and the knees being set a little on the high side you probably wouldn't want to try to use them for normal posing anyway.

There's a number of swivel joints in the legs, which all manage to be more resistant than the waist swivel - not that you'd want to use them anyway. Of particular offense here is the way the feet were designed. While most Transformers have some manner of essentially solid heel to catch the backside weight of the toy, Galvatron's heels are made from a portion of tank tread turned on its edge. And between that and the actual foot is a wide chasm of empty space. Add in that the "heels" are set toward the inside of either leg, and you have a stunning recipe for instability. This construction has a severe impact on the toy's ability to resist twisting around its center of gravity and collapsing into a heap by way of the weak knee joints. The only real way to counter this flagrant defiance of the laws of physics is to keep the legs splayed apart a good bit, so the heels end up on the outside of the center of mass. In all practical considerations, this is probably the worst foot construction I've encountered on a Transformer that's not a Classics Mini-Con. Galvatron's still ahead of that stupid tank in that he actually can stand up eventually, but sheesh. It even looks really sloppy and haphazard. I blame Takara.



Accessory

The missile is pretty standard fare. It's of the type that can be loaded at any of four angles, rather than having a specific "up and down" slotting structure. It's a little hard to tell because of being all clear orange, but it seems like the tip of the missile is vaguely meant to resemble an artillery shell such as might fire out a real tank's main gun.



Closing Remarks


This thing is really all over the board, and I'm almost at a loss. The vehicle mode is solid, though the painted wheels thing is still weird. It's got one of the most complex transformations I've come across at a Transformer of this price point, but it's tarnished by pieces coming off all too easily in the process. And when you get to the robot mode, you're kind of running into a landslide of failed concepts and questionable engineering decisions. It's not all a loss, and once you figure out how to work with it you kind of stop noticing. Plus there is hope that more pieces will have better results with some of the weakness issues I've called to attention here, much like how the problems with Prowl's paint may have gotten corrected for the release of Wave 2. Only time will tell on that count.

I know for a fact there's some die hard Galvatron nuts out there who'd buy this thing no matter what flaws it had. If you happen to be slightly more discerning than that, you might wanna wait until this hits deeper saturation and see whether there's been any improvement. For now though, I'll have to say that if the tightness of some critical joints and fit of other parts had been more solid, I could have given this a rating of Good. But the card I was dealt? Could Have Been Better. Wait for retail, don't Ebay this one.

-ExVee, 8/20/2008