Unique Toys R-03 Dragoon

I have a complicated relationship with The Last Knight, the final movie in Michael Bay's increasingly bizarre series of live action TransFormers movies. I refused to see it in the cinema, because it looked like a mess, and have continued to refrain from viewing it ever since. I didn't like the idea of shoehorning dragons and Arthurian legend into TransFormers (or vice versa), I have never enjoyed the excessive focus on human characters in movies ostensibly about giant alien robots, and the whole 'Knight' motif looked ridiculous...

...Nevertheless, I found the new design for Megatron strangely compelling. There was just enough G1 essence squeezed into his 'Black Knight' look (the stylised helmet, the arm-mounted cannon, Frank Welker's voice) and his vehicle mode (a coherent, albeit still very alien air/space craft) was vastly more impressive than any of those that preceded it, that it turned out to be one of the least aggravating designs for the Decepticon leader in the whole series.

Since I tend to prefer Leader class toys, when available, for Megatrons and Optimus Primes, I picked up the larger version from Hasbro's almost comically misnamed 'Premier Edition' line and, while it was a decent enough toy, it took some serious liberties with the design and its paint job was not just typically miserly but also amateurish and sloppy in its 'weathering' effects.

Since I'd already acquired Unique Toys' inaugural movie effort, Peru Kill, I wasn't particularly suprised when they unveiled their take on TLK Megatron, and it looked every bit as impressive... But does the end result meet the high expectations set by their first movieverse figure?

Packaging:

While I was quite impressed by Peru Kill's packaging, Dragoon's is just plain stunning in some respects... Though possibly that's just because I'm a bit of a print nerd. In terms of print quality, it's a little too dark and lacking in contrast but, in terms of overall presentation... Well, for starters, it's a nice, heavy, strong cardboard box, but the finish is something very special. The print is over the top of a holographic layer which, while it doesn't shine through dramatically thanks the the dark, heavy print, presents a subtle rainbow sheen, particularly in the few areas where the ink coverage is lighter. Over the top is a textured laminate, with a smooth gloss over the figure's name and number, wherever it appears.

 

The front of the box features a closeup of the figure's head and upper chest, split between the closed-off, battlemasked face on the left and the exposed, horned version on the right. The sides, top and bottom have no images on them, but the back features a single, composite shot of the figure in both robot mode and vehicle mode with a bold halftone applied. Both of these box images are essentially greyscale with a subtle purple tint, but the image on the front additionally features a certain redness to the right eye.

Probably the most outstanding feature of this packaging, though, is the absolute dearth of text on it. Aside from the name, number and Unique Toys logo on the front, sides and top, the only text is the age recommendation on the front and a boxout on the bottom flap featuring the specs of the contents in Chinese characters, with the only word in English being 'Dragoon'. The one thing that's disappointing is the absence of a window showing through to the figure within - it's packaged in robot mode, albeit bagged as well as being inside a two-part plastic shell/tray, so perhaps they felt it wouldn't be visible clearly enough.

As a result of the simplicity of the design, there's just not much else to say about the box. Alongside the bagged figure in his shell/tray are his three accessories - a cannon, a sword and a shield - with the addition of an alternate head for Unique Toys' previous release, their take on Age of Extinction Optimus Prime. His instructions come in the form of an A3 poster, printed on both sides in only two colours, but it's quite good quality paper with a nice finish. The instructions are not quite so ambiguous as some, while still being somewhat insufficient on certain details.

 

The final item in the box is a collectors card - heavy, matte stock with very poor contrast images of the figure on both sides, against a washed-out background that isn't even close to black. The UT logo and the figure's name/number appear again on both sides, with rudimentary, Tech Specs-style stats on the back. The specific attributes which have been quantified are a little difficult to fathom: HP, PER, CHR, LER, ATN and HIT don't correspond especially well to the traditional specs, while SPD is obviously 'speed' and 'DEF' could be considered equivalent to 'endurance'. HIT may be firepower. If he was a D&D character, CHR would be 'charisma', while LER could conceivably be 'intelligence' (as in 'learning'?), but I'm completely baffled about the remaining three. I do like these collectors' cards/bio cards, but I can't help thinking this one is a huge let-down for the package, particularly compared to the one included with Peru Kill.

Vehicle Mode:

Something I found intriguing about Megatron's mysterious transformation back from being Galvatron - who, in Age of Extinction, would lazily cloud-form into a terrestrial truck - was that he reverted to an airborne - and very alien - vehicle mode. Through the five-movie cycle, he'd gone full circle - Cybertronian jet to (flight-capable) Cybertronian tank to terrestrial tanker truck to flat-nosed truck and back to jet - and yet his final alternate mode couldn't have been more different from the original flying mess of chrome shards. Somehow, the art team (I say 'team', but Josh Nizzi appears to have been primarily responsible for Megatron) spun a novel and - perhaps more importantly - coherent design with a true sense of mass and purpose, not least thanks to having a visible means of propulsion and clearly defined mounted guns. Going by notes on some of the production art, it appears that the concept was of a flying sword, although an early draft had the cockpit at the 'hilt' (which was entirely omitted on the final version) while the 'blade' was the back of the craft. This probably explains why the parts that look like rocket boosters are actually facing forward, and why it appears that there are at least a couple of guns facing backward.

Regardless of these trivial matters of design and concept, Unique Toys' version of this craft overall is vastly more intricate than Hasbro's Leader class effort, with fewer obvious robot parts, though this does make it rather more gappy in places. In common with the official toy, there are some robot parts are visible on the underside... but even there, this figure is superior in almost every way. Where Hasbro's toy had the robot's entire (and largely unaltered) torso, arms and legs plainly visible, the more involved transformation of this figure breaks up and shifts the torso around to make it less recogniseable as such. The legs are opened out, spread around and linked with the arms at the back end, with the butt plate folded round to make his tassets look more like coherent parts of the undercarriage. It gets a bit messy where the nose meets the main body, at which point the underside is basically a gaping hole containing Megatron's fussily-arranged spaulders, but everything ahead and behind that one section manages to look, if not wholly intentional, then at least somewhat convincing and solid. Where the underside really falls down - for my money - is that he has no landing gear at the back. He has a single, short, fold-out die-cast skid at the front, but the back end is basically resting on the robot's knee armour, which is no better than Hasbro managed with their versions. Viewed from behind, quite a few of Dragoon's robot mode parts are a little too obvious - particularly the head, which isn't even slightly concealed between his biceps, it's simply turned to face into the craft. This is all the more strange considering how well integrated his forearms are, with very little effort, by the leg parts folded around them.

In terms of sculpted detail, Dragoon's jet mode exhibits many of the same details and panel lines as Hasbro's toy, though the positions and proportions are quite different. Most obviously, the wings aren't quite so wide, they're set further back on longer booster sections, and their trailing edges are at shallower angles. While the arrangement of their panel lines are broadly the same, Hasbro's version has the wings becoming thicker where they meet the boosters, and there are open vents facing backward, while the Unique Toys version has fairly consistently flat wings, bar the transformation hinges. Hasbro's version has partially-decypherable Ancient Cybertronian text on the wings, but Dragoon does not. The details of the bodies are surprisingly similar, with only small differences in relative positions, partly because Dragoon's nose section is proportionally shorter than that of the Leader class toy from Hasbro. A lot of the panel lining and tech detailing on the nose is far shallower than on Hasbro's toy, but there's a far more pronounced step down, on either side of the cockpit, from the 'neck' of the jet to the tapering nose. The 'intakes', set behind and either side of the cockpit are somewhat flatter, but they do echo Hasbro's version in featuring some raised lettering in Ancient Cybertronian, which appears to read 'UTZZ'... Which makes me wonder if 'ZZ' was a placeholder that never got updated...

The area running down the middle of the jet, which appears to be exposed inner workings, matches most of what's on the Hasbro toy albeit, again, somewhat shallower and less precise or elaborate in its sculpt. Nevertheless, it does the job and, unlike Hasbro's version, much of this area is designed to be covered over by the robot's fusion cannon, which attaches via a longer peg to a socket right at the back of the jet, on what is effectively the underside of Dragoon's sternum. On either side of this, the robot's feet have been unfolded and reconfigured to match armour panels that are collapsed into the backpack on Hasbro's toy... and I have to admit that, while I like the more efficient use of parts on Unique Toys' interpretation of the character, it frustrates me no end that the curved cutouts on either side of both of these do not line up with the robot's shoulder joints, despite being of a size and shape that suggests they were supposed to lay directly against them. That said, the same details on Hasbro's version angle upward in much the same way, so I guess they're as correct as they can be.

It could be argued that Unique Toys' flying behemoth falls down in terms of its paint job. Most of it is painted uniformly gunmetal, with only a handful of gold-ish and coppery highlights in this form, but it's actually more extensively painted - even in terms of just spot applications - than Hasbro's effort. The extent of the gunmetal paint somewhat overwhelms the more strategic use of the other colours, while the absence of the sort of attempted weathering effect that afflicted Leader class Megatron further reduces the visual contrast, leaving it looking plainer overall, and particularly at the extremities. The centre of the jet exhibits the most paintwork, with copper coating the front-facing rockets, the panels of exposed workings at the back of the nose section (not strictly accurate to the CGI/concept art, but reflected in Hasbro's deco on the Voyager class toy) and on the tops of the 'intakes'. Alongside these are smaller applications in the 'afterburners', just in front of the 'intakes', the screw-like details on the underside of the robot's sternum and, barely perceptible, on the tiny, thin gun barrels on either side of the cockpit. Gold paint has been applied to the leading edges of the wings, the upper faces of the rims of the 'intakes' and the two small guns mounted in front of the cockpit. It would have been nice for some of the tech detailing toward the back of the main body of the jet to be picked out with paintwork but, again, this is intended to be covered by the fusion cannon, which has its own paintwork.

 

Another small gripe I have with this vehicle mode is the way the cockpit has been handled. The canopy is molded in the same opaque and fully-painted plastic as the rest of the jet, while Hasbro's at least had some translucent plastic. Both canopies open, but the detail inside Dragoon's cockpit is minimal, and the incongruous square hole partway along the central strip suggests that a seat/control section may have been omitted from the finished product.

 

The real shame of this vehicle mode is that, while the robot's arm-mounted cannon is integrated well (even the power cord/chain can still be plugged in to the shoulders), the sword can only be stowed by pegging it on top of the cannon - which looks just as ridiculous here as it did on Hasbro's toy - while the shield cannot be attached in any way. It would have been ideal for covering over the hole in the underside of the nose, but this would probably have required some minor remodelling, or giving the shield some transformation of its own, since it's a little bit too long and too steeply angled.

At 43cm/17" long, and with a 41cm/16.25" wingspan, Dragoon isn't significantly larger than Leader class Megatron, but the die cast components and additional bulk make him feel far more substantial. Just like Peru Kill, this vehicle mode is almost deserving of display in and of itself... but my preference tends to be to display figures in their robot modes, and I'm not about to buy a second copy just so I can show off this mode without having to transform the figure.

Robot Mode:

I've read a lot of criticisms of this figure, covering everything from the fact that he looks too new and pristine versus the grungy, oily-looking CGI from the movie, to him being too 'skinny', or stretched out compared to his on-screen appearance. I'd have to agree with both assertions, on balance, but certain practicalities come into play when creating a transforming action figure that don't need to be considered when working with CGI.

 

Let's face it, Megatron's transformations in The Last Knight were obviously fudged. They were normally seen at a distance and in high contrast, or hidden behind explosions but, even so, it can be seen quite clearly that his wings simply retract into his torso in a way that could never be replicated in real life. If this is one of the sacrifices required to make his transformation work - without leaving either the jet's nose or wings just hanging off his back - I'm happy for him to be less stocky than he appeared in a movie I hope that I will never see anyway. As far as his apparent cleanliness goes... I've never been a big fan of 'battle damage' paint jobs, and am very much against sculpted 'damage', so I'm not too fussed. One detail-related complaint I might be tempted to uphold is the lack of the finer details, such as the bas-relief artwork carved into the sides of Megatron's 'tusks', and other such texturing features. Thing is, it's just not practical to have the same level of detail on figure molded in plastic at this scale. That level of detail is always reserved for larger-scale models such as the 3A action figure (described as 1/6 scale but, weighing in at only 19" tall, that scale is assuming he's only 9'5" in real life, when he's actually supposed to be 30'... meaning closer to 1/19 scale) or the 31" Prime 1 Studios statue (which is about 2/23 scale), both of which were made based on the actual CGI models, which Unique Toys would not have had access to.

So, yes, the proportions are a little off, and he looks like a Megatron fresh off the production line rather than the veteran of many battles (though how he actually came by this form is never fully explained, as far as I can tell) without the intricately engraved armour he had in the movie... but, taken in and of itself, what Unique Toys have accomplished here is every bit as impressive as Peru Kill - if not moreso: a fully-articulated action figure that looks close enough to the source material, and infinitely better than Hasbro's miscoloured, sloppily decorated effort. One word of caution I would add is that the right arm features a thin band of raised plastic that's only connected to the forearm at either end... and, having only transformed him a couple of times, handling him - I thought - quite cautiously, I found that it had snapped after I'd finished taking the photos below. While I admire Unique Toys for attempting something like this, it really wasn't necessary to make it a separate piece, particularly when it's so close to the main bulk of the forearm anyway, and looks like part of the framing on the vambrace. However good the plastic quality - and most of it feels great - slender parts like this are exceedingly fragile, and I'm not inclined to glue it together because it's liable to break elsewhere.

Aside from the absence of weathering, this version is better painted than the Leader class toy, and not just because of the blanket coat of gunmetal. He has all the spot applications - and more - because Unique Toys took a similar strategic approach to decorating him in robot mode as they did for his vehicle mode. Thus, the details visible through gaps in his armour, the spikes around his collar and those on his spaulders are all picked out in gold or copper paint. This means that a figure which is already more natural-looking and three-dimensional than Hasbro's weirdly flattened toy genuinely look as if he's composed of many layers of overlapping and interlocking parts. The only parts where bare plastic is visible being his hands, tassets and the soles of his feet. These are molded in a grey plastic which is close enough in shade that even the difference in reflectiveness is barely apparent. There are parts with the super-shiny copper finish that are covered over in vehicle mode, but then end up on his back in robot mode. From most angles, considering how little of his vehicle mode is visible in this form, Dragoon looks just like a large-format action figure rather than something capable of transforming.

One of the biggest downsides of this figure is his weapon storage... or rather, the lack of it. There are angled tabs on his back that appear to be intended for attaching his sword via the slot near the base of the blade, but they're a little bit too short for a secure connection, they're also right near hinges which like to flex as the sword is pushed into place, and it's a very tight fit regardless. Then, the peg inside the shield is too short to attach it over the sword (per the way they're mounted in the CGI), which means the only way to have both the sword and shield attached to his back is by plugging the shield in first, then tabbing the sword onto its front, at which point it no longer sits at an angle unless the shield does too. When his fusion cannon is not attached to either arm, there's literally no sensible storage option. Using its longer peg - the one intended for connecting it to vehicle mode - it can attach to the spine socket, even fitting over the sword the way the shield should, but then there's nowhere to attach the shield.

On the upside, it's clear that this is a figure intended to wield all its weapons at once. The fusion cannon attaches securely, via its shorter peg, to the sockets on either forearm, and with its power cable/chain plugging into the back of the relevant shoulder. The sword fits securely into either hand via a large tab on the grip and a slot in either palm, while the fingers and thumb can be adjusted to simulate a firm hold. The shield can attach to whichever arm is not accommodating the fusion cannon and, regardless of which accessory is attached to which arm, the hand's range of movement is not significantly reduced. Dragoon can wield his sword in either hand just as easily, even with both shield and fusion cannon attached.

The sword - specifically an ikakalaka, a sort of ceremonial sword originating in Africa - is nicely designed, with 'teeth' at intervals along either side of the blade and on either face at the hooked, axe-like tip, but the paintwork seems incomplete. Aside from the base coat of gunmetal - matching Dragoon himself - there are strips of gold that start at the hilt and follow the sculpted detail along two channels up the blade. These gold strips stop abruptly at the first of the 'teeth' on the end of the blade rather than continuing up to cover a sort of 'spear tip' design that surrounds the 'teeth'. There are then two raised panels on either face of the very tip which are also painted gold, but the edge of the blade isn't painted any differently to the rest of the sword. The shield is painted much the same - though only the outer face is coated in the gunmetal paint, with the inner face showing the grey, slightly pearlescent base plastic of the structural supports and the connecting peg. The outer face is nicely sculpted, looking like a segmented, possibly transforming shield similar to the one wielded by Optimus Prime in Age of Extinction and The Last Knight, but a bit more vicious. The outer parts feature veiny panel lines, making them somewhat reminiscent of the wings of a fly. Gold paint has been applied to the frames of these outer sections, but it doesn't follow the sculpt consistently, with one section of the frame skipped entirely. The fusion cannon, meanwhile, makes up for its sparing use of gold paint along with the gunmetal by incorporating the figure's one and only electronic feature - a large, surprisingly bright orange LED mounted inside the barrel. While there's no indication of what size of battery to use, only that two button cells are required, I followed Emgo's recommendation of two AG9 cells, though their diameter is a little too small going by the size of the compartment (admittedly, that does make them easier to remove when it comes time to replace them). A small button set just in front of the battery compartment toggles between three modes: press once and the LED lights, press again and it flashes slowly, press again and it flashes rapidly, press once more and it deactivates. When the cannon is mounted on his arm, the button ends up just in front of his hand, so it's reasonably easy to use... but in vehicle mode, the button is inaccessible without removing the gun entirely. While I'm often not overly fussed by electronic features, I have to admit that, in retrospect, with this figure in-hand, I'm now disappointed by the absence of lighting in Hasbro's toy, considering the way it was constructed and the inclusion of the flame effect parts. Nevertheless, Unique Toys have done a decent job with theirs, and I'm certainly glad they didn't try to include any audio as well. I'd have been happy with a simple on/off toggle for the LED, but the two flashing options are a nice addition.

The head sculpt - while missing the most intricate details of the CGI, as mentioned above - is instantly recognisable as Megatron's form from The Last Knight. The sweeping 'tusks' on either side of the helmet are mobile, thanks to hinges at the back of the helmet, and the face can be switched between his standard, somewhat monstrous visage and the closed-up, battlemasked look by means of lifting the helmet and rotating the inner part of the head 180°. This is made a little tricky by the fact that both his chins clash with the spiked inner rims of his spaulders, so it's generally wise to crack the chest armour open a little to facilitate the face-change. The battlemasked look, while fairly simplistic, has a Predator-like look to it, thanks to the folded-in 'tusks' and the mandible-like details visible behind them. The 'open' face is nicely detailed but, since the mouth is closed, he ends up looking milder than most other Megatron figures, who all tended to have their sharp teeth exposed in an angry grimace. One neat little feature I like, despite it being inaccurate to the CGI, is that the central panel on his forehead is sculpted to resemble the stretched outline of the Decepticon insignia. In terms of paintwork, most of the head is coated with the same gunmetal as the majority of the body, with only a few small applications of gold on the sides and the forehead. Both faces also feature a continuation of the splash of translucent red applied to the righthand side, from the forehead down to the right 'tusk'. The eyes have also been picked out in this same translucent paint, but only the very centres actually have any paint on them, so they're quite weird and beady-looking - a larger application of a brighter, opaque paint would have looked better, I think. While I'm overall quite happy with the level of detail Unique Toys chose to work with, I feel the face could have used a few extra touches of gold, copper and silver here and there, and the shape of the 'tusks' isn't particularly accurate.

I won't lie: I'm not as impressed by Dragoon's transformation as I was by Peru Kill's. There are several reasons for this, but the main one is that the legs are an absolute nightmare of unclear instructions and too many tight joints in one area. For the first few attempts at transformation, I strongly recommend watching several video reviews, or something like Emgo's JTI video. The lower legs basically split into three main parts: two outer shell sections that swing in opposite directions at the knee joint, and the wings which collapse in on themselves and fill out the inner part of the lower leg. The feet are surprisingly intricate, with the sole splitting in half, swinging back on itself, then reconnecting the opposite way round to form one of the upper sections of the back of the jet. The upper body may well be equally complicated, but its only real problems are that some parts of the robot mode don't peg together especially well, and seem to stay in place largely because the arrangement of their transformation hinges encourage them to do so. The way the nose concertinas into itself and then into the chest makes a mockery of Hasbro's handling of it in both the Leader and Voyager class toys, and I'm particularly impressed by the way the cockpit canopy lays down beneath the robot's collar section, then gets covered over by the various panels of armour. The outermost sections of his chest armour, meanwhile, seemed to be securely pegged in when I first transformed him into jet mode, but now only connect quite loosely to the chest. This is by no means a bad thing - they're not inclined to separate by themselves - simply a note that the connection is no longer as stiff as it was when I first got Dragoon out of his packaging. Similarly, the neck features a slider joint for transformation which, straight out of the box, was so tightly screwed it started stripping plastic when I tried to move it. Loosening the screw just a touch made the slider incredibly floppy when it's not clipped into its robot (forward) or vehicle mode (back) positions. Strangely, having loosened this screw, I found that the panel on the very top of his head has a tendency to fall off during transformation. This gives access to another screw which, I'd imagine, controls how stiff the face-change gimmick is. I'm not surprised this panel wasn't glued, but the fact that it doesn't clip into place was a little alarming.

Dragoon's poseability is at least on a par with Peru Kill and, surprisingly, they both have similar limitations on their heads: Where Peru Kill's head was set a little too deeply within raised shoulders, with his neck hinged at the base, right at the front, for transformation, Dragoon's is hinged more naturally, toward the back of the neck and at the midpoint in the face-swap gimmick. Nevertheless, the size and design of the head means that his range of rotation from side to side is limited by his chin and the back of his helmet butting up against the armour around his collar (particularly the raised spikes), and he can only look down because the rim of his helmet at the rear butts up against the rim of the armour at the top of his back. The shoulders have friction joints for 360° rotation and ratchets for lifting out to the sides. These have an effective range of almost 180°, and the spaulders can be moved almost entirely out of the way via the hinged ball joints they're mounted on. There are rotation joints just above the elbow which can move freely through a full 360° (as long as the elbow is slightly bent so the armour on the forearms clears the joint), the elbows bend a little over 90° on ratchets, the wrists can swivel a full 360° and tilt to about 90°, then the hands are slightly more extensively articulated. The thumbs have ball joints at the base and a hinge about halfway along, the index finger is separately hinged at the knuckle, while the remaining three are joined, but all then have a further two hinges for a variety of expressive gestures. The waist can rotate a full 360°, though the hip armour and tassets can get in the way. These armour parts are mobile as well, with the former mounted on ball joints at the end of spring-loaded arms, hinged at top of his hip joints, while the latter are hinged for a small amount of upward swing, and an even smaller amount of swing out to the sides of the groin (though they appeared to be connected more to the insides of his thighs in the CGI). His hips can swing forward/backward through a total range of about 90° - assuming the nearby armour can be navigated out of the way - and ratchet through 90° in six clicks out to the sides, with a seventh taking them to 105° (if my maths is right) assuming, again, that the armour can be moved out of the way. The thighs can rotate a full 360° as the thigh armour ends well before the effective area of the joint, while the knee joints, made up of a die-cast core surrounded by plastic, are able to bend well over 90° - possibly as much as 135°. Unfortunately, and again, just like Peru Kill, he's somewhat let down by his feet: there's no rotation or forward/backward ankle tilt at all, but the toes can tilt upward, and the range of sideways tilt is severly limited by the armour panel on the front of the ankle, which covers most of the bridge of the foot. It's this point, more than anything else, that makes him hard to pose in a satisfyingly dramatic manner, because the soles of his feet are quite uneven and, without the ability to position them contrary to the angle of his legs, he's just not that stable in a wide-legged stance. His upper body isn't so heavy that they cause the hips or knees to sag, but I might have been happier if there were even some soft detents to make them more stable. Weirdly, the die-cast knee part does have lateral grooves, but there's no corresponding tab on the lower leg to make use of them. Even so, as my photos hopefully demonstrate, he can achieve a good range of poses... just not a great range.

In spite of my reservations about the complexity of Dragoon's transformation and the limited articulation of his lower legs/feet, I'd have to say this is - hands down - one of the most impressive transforming robot figures in my entire collection... My main problem with it isn't even down to anything Unique Toys have done wrong - they have worked an absolute miracle with this figure. Much as I love Dragoon - and, to be fair, the CGI design it's based on - I still just don't feel that it's entirely appropriate to the TransFormers brand. The Bayverse strayed from straight Sci-Fi into a weird Science-Fantasy hybrid with The Last Knight, and this design always struck me as something out of the pages of a true Fantasy story (or videogame), with a tacked-on transformation into an unbelievable and, frankly, incongruously angular vehicle form. Treated separately, both look awesome... and Unique Toys' achievement in creating so breathtakingly beautiful a figure that actually transforms into a reasonable approximation of the craft seen in the move cannot be understated... For me, though, there's this sense of "why bother?".

It's a huge shame that the best design for a live action Megatron (so far) just doesn't look like a TransFormer at all... far beyond the earlier movies' 'interlocking shards of metal' aesthetic, it's a coherent-looking thing that just doesn't look robotic enough. One can imagine this as armour to be worn by some kind of humanoid, particularly since he comes armed with a sword and a shield as well as his Sci-Fi arm cannon, and the fact that the cannon also functioned as a flamethrower in some scenes furthers the impression that it's a 'magical' weapon from some D&D/Fantasy videogame franchise rather than technology from Cybertron, even taking into account how inconsistently the TransFormers' homeworld was presented over the course of the movie series.

When Omegalock announced their final restock of Dragoon, at £140 a pop, I couldn't resist ordering... and I'm so glad I did. It may not be perfect, but it's still gorgeous and awe-inspiring, truly something that Hasbro/Takara Tomy should aspire to with their Masterpiece Movie line... It's just a shame so outlandish a design was wasted in so terrible a film... and I rather wish a more mechanical-looking take on this design had been used for Megatron in the very first movie. Its aesthetic doesn't match the other robots from The Last Knight - neither Autobot nor Decepticon - but it's a beautiful and truly unique piece in its own right.

Unexpectedly, along with Dragoon, I received the separately-boxed display stand - styled to look like a segment of one of the tentacle maws of Driller from Dark of the Moon (and with a ball joint and socket for linking several together for just that purpose!), but my shelves are not tall enough to accommodate Dragoon standing erect, let alone bestriding the stand. It's a nice extra, though, and if I ever have room for an additional Detolf cabinet from Ikea, it'd be nice to make them both the centrepiece of another - perhaps Third-Party Masterpiece - display.