Cybertron Galvatron (Legends)

Prelude: Beware, fool, for you are now facing the power of Galvatron! Pay no attention to the miniscule size of the Legends class. His power is everything, defeat is absurd, and even his own plastic pegs submit to the overwhelming force that is Galvatron. So say your prayers, fool, for Cybertron Galvatron has arrived. Let’s say go!

Many thanks to my buddy Scourge who loaned me his Galvatron for this review. I got him a new one, too.

Robot Mode: Cybertron Legends Class Galvatron is, unsurprisingly, a repaint of Legends Class Megatron, whom I have previously reviewed. It’s been nearly twenty years, though, so I can think we can give this guy a full review of his own. Looking back, my review of Megatron did end up a bit short, I think.

Naturally, Legends Class Galvatron is a scaled-down version of the larger Leader Class Galvatron figure. Now this was 2007, remember, so don’t expect a figure in this scale to be a contortionist with multiple extras and details rivaling any larger figure. It’s simply what it says, a much smaller, simpler version of the larger figure, very much recognizable as the character it’s supposed to be, but with rather limited articulation and no weapons. 

Galvatron is among the better-articulated figures of the Cybertron Legends line, featuring ball-jointed legs and knees, ball-jointed shoulders, and due to the way he transforms he can also move his head a bit, as well as his fists. Sadly he has some balancing issues due to his rather large backpack, but hey, the Leader Class figure had the same problem.

So bottom line: this is supposed to be a smaller, simpler version of the Leader Class figures and it fully succeeds at this job. A small version of the Death Machine Gun or the Death Claw for him to wield as a weapon would have made him much better, though.

Alternate Mode: Legends Class Galvatron features just one of the two alternate modes of the larger Leader Class figure, the car mode. But let’s be honest, no one really needed that horrible-looking jet mode, right? It was just the car with the front wheels folded back. So I will not hold it against this figure that it spares us that terrible jet mode.

Cybertron Galvatron’s car mode is one of the coolest-looking cars that ever transformed into a robot, looking like a pimped-up version of the Batmobile after it was repossessed by a 90s anti-hero with “Blade”, “Claw” or “Death” in his name. I love this car mode. The transformation is more or less the same as that of the larger figure, which brings us directly to the one problem of this mode:

The two pods with the wheels that hang of Galvatron’s back in robot mode and swivel forward to form the front of the car mode are fixed in place with two tiny, tiny little plastic pegs. Please be extremely careful when unpegging them again to return to robot mode, because they are fragile as hell and WILL break if you put even the tiniest amount of pressure on them. This happened to me, I must admit, forcing me to buy my buddy Scourge a new Galvatron on eBay.

So bottom line: very cool car mode, even in this smaller, simplified version, but be careful when transforming it!

Remarks: The Cybertron series was the first official Transformers line to feature Legends-Class figurers. Most of the main cast got downscaled to fit into this size class as well, and this includes Megatron/Galvatron, of course. This figure here is Galvatron, naturally, the powered-up form of Megatron after he was defeated by Metroplex and accessed the power of the Giant Planet Cyberkey. It took the combined power of Optimus Prime, Wing Saber, and Vector Prime to defeat this menace in the end. 

So bottom line for this figure: it’s exactly what it was advertised as: a smaller, simplified version of the much, much larger Leader Class figure. From today’s standpoint it might well be too simple, but given the time and the target audience, it really works very well. Except that, as a figure for kids, it really needed pegs that will survive more than a single transformation. That and the lack of weapons in robot mode (a “flaw” shared by pretty much every Cybertron Legends figure), I cannot say anything bad about this guy. All hail Galvatron!

Rating: C+