Cliffbee.com Galvatron Purple Clear Version Toy Review

Individual Review




Name: Galvatron
Series: United
Allegiance: Destron (Decepticon)
Alternate Mode: Tank

Thanks to Tiby for loaning me Galvatron for this review.



TANK MODE
Height: 5.5cm Length: 16cm Width: 8.5cm

   A transparent purple tank with a transparent orange cannon and gunmetal treads. There's a few other silver & gunmetal painted elements, but he's about 90% transparent purple - which works well for the character. He's a limited repaint of Universe/Henkei Galvatron, hence the transparent purple. I'm not really a fan of a transparent purple tank, but it works well enough in that context.

   The sculpt here is very good, although a lot of the detail is lost in the transparent plastic. Galvatron sports missiles, hatches, mesh and the like. The links on his treads are also well done, although you can only see then if you lift him off the table.

   The play value is pretty much what you'd expect here - the turret rotates through 360°, there are small plastic wheels underneath allowing him to roll along. The orange cannon is actually a missile launcher, firing an orange missile. There's a solid lilac trigger which blends in well - at a glance it won't stand out at all. The launcher itself is quite powerful, the missile will happily fire several feet.

   It's a good mould, but like the Universe version, the paint job is lacking, which hides a lot of the detailing - so we don't get to fully appreciate the excellent sculpt here. Still, for a limited repaint, the all transparent purple theme is well well executed. The play value is solid and this is a good representation of Galvatron as a tank.

TRANSFORMATION TO ROBOT MODE

   A very involved and complex transformation which I'm not going to describe in great detail - but I'll summarise. The front of the treads becomes his legs, the turret becomes his right arm while the cannon becomes his arm cannon. The head, torso and left are are concealed underneath the rear of the tank, which itself folds up as a backpack.

ROBOT MODE
Height: 14cm Width: 9.5cm

   A transparent purple robot with silver on his knees, left wrist and face, Galvatron has red eyes with a useful lightpipe. There are metallic red panels on his stomach and a stamped purple Decepticon logo on his left shoulder. The red cannon resembles the orange cannon of the G1 toy here. The colours line up to those of Galvatron as seen in the cartoon, and specifically represent the moment in Transformers: The Movie where Megatron is reformatted into Galvatron. The good news is that this colour scheme captures that moment perfectly - justifying this repaint & excusing the awkwardness of a transparent tank.

   The robot mode looks very complex, since there are so many moving pieces involved in his transformation. The arms are highly asymmetrical, and not just the cannon. The right arm is actually slightly longer than the left, the hand is lower and has an open palm while the left is a fist. I don't like the longer arm, but the other asymmetry doesn't bother me. There is some kibble on the back, including a plate hanging off his skidplate, but it's all close to his torso, so it doesn't affect his centre of gravity. The general bodyshape here is good, except for the longer arm.

   This is a great Galvatron tribute, and as I mentioned, it works well for his reformatting. The red panels on his waist and the crown on his head are traditional Galvatron elements, and that crown is very much based on the cartoon Galvatron. The legs aren't especially Galvatron-esque, nor is the right arm (cannon aside), but the character is ridiculously obvious here, which is a good thing.

   The poseability here is pretty good. His head turns, the left shoulder is ball jointed and the right rotates. His elbows are hinged with rotators - the left elbows is a double hinge. His waist turns a little while the hips swing and lift out to the sides. His knees bend and rotate while the ankles can wiggle a little. There are useful heelspurs. The cannon rotates up and down and of course the missile shoots. On Tiby's Galvatron, at least, the left arm pops off far too easily. It popped off three times while I was transforming him.

   The lopsided arms bugs me a little, but that's my only real complaint here. The repaint works very well as a reformatting Galvatron and works well visually (in this mode, anyway). While this isn't a perfect robot mode, it's a very good one and they've nailed the repaint here. I'm rather annoyed by the left shoulder joint, but I'll give it the benefit of the doubt (it may be a one off on this sample).

VARIATIONS

   None that I'm aware of. He was exclusively available in a three pack with Cyclonus & Scourge, only through e-Hobby, making variants unlikely.



OVERALL

   A very well designed toy with good poseability in robot mode, a great tribute in robot mode and a good tank mode. The transparent repaint works really well in robot mode - not so much in tank mode - the robot mode is enough to make this repaint work. The transformation is above what you'd hope for from a deluxe. This repaint is limited & therefore likely to be expensive, but if you have the means & like the concept, this is a focused and well executed repaint - 7.5/10

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