One of my favorite Transformers has always been the original Sharkticon. Ironically I’ve never owned the figure myself, but my cousin had one that I always played with when I visited. Even after the figure took a bad fall and lost one of those little clawing arms, I just considered it advanced battle damage that made him even tougher than his toy brethren.
Flash forward to present day…
Even though my adult collector self is concerned about scale, articulation, and likeness, I’m still a sucker for a hideously clashing paint job. Not really sure why, but I have a feeling it has something to do with all those crazy Batman variations that Kenner exposed me to in my formative years. Either way, I can’t deny my love for figures like Halloween Skeletor, or TF Prime’s Dead End, and now I get to add Sharkticon Megatron to that wonderfully clashing shelf.
You may be wondering, why is Megatron a shark? Well friends, you won’t find that answer anywhere in the TF Prime cartoon. This is strictly a spawn of the people who run the toy line. Apparently Megatron lay defeated and abandoned in a derelict spaceship after a three way battle with the Autobots and Predaking. As he groped around in the darkness he found an ancient weapon, the Tartarex Warp Sword, which repaired his wounds and transformed him into a more powerful beast-like form.
Not too bad for a fun toy explanation.
The surprising thing about Sharkticon Megatron’s sculpt is just how much of it is new. The figure uses a lot of the same underlying skeletal structure as his earlier Voyager class counterpart. His torso, lower chest armor, biceps, hands, thighs, and feet are all the same. There are also some bits of back kibble that form around the cockpit and other small transformation details which haven’t changed either.
Aside from those mostly minor pieces, everything else on the figure is newly tooled. The head has a longer chin with a more samurai-like helmet and almost bulbous eyes. The shoulder armor retained is spiky feel, only now with more of an organic coral influence. The chest armor has been replaces with a ferocious piranha face. The forearms are now rounded with large razor fins extending out the side, and even his shin armor is much more detailed with those organic spikes. Continue to page 2…
Great review and pics, but I ain’t too fond of the figure itself. Having said that, I’m really looking forward to the third-party not-legally-Sharkticons-but-they-are-really 3-pack coming out later this year.
Me too! They look really good. I wish Hasbro cared enough to make real Sharkticons again.
His chest armor is also a homage to Beast Wars Rampage, the big transmetal crab Predacon! Most of the redesigned Beast Hunters figures have a BW homage somehow, like Ratchet getting design details from Dinobot II!
Awesome review as always, Vault! Comparison pictures are so great, I can’t believe that so many reviewers skip on them.
Ah, cool. I didn’t know that.
Yeah, I like the comparisons also. Unfortunately sometimes I don’t have the figures to make it happen. :/
this dude is surprisingly cool looking. even with that bizarre “anatomy.”
Yeah, he’s definitely a fun idea/toy. That’s always something I can get behind.
I find it a tad bizarre that we get this figure, but not a figure of the actual advanced form that Megatron acquired after being defeated and left for dead. Not that I actually much liked the Unicron/Megatron hybrid from “Rise of the Predacons” (didn’t like much about that movie, honestly), but at least it was canonical. I don’t much care for this Megatron, either, and he’s just a weird homage to a completely different character.
It’s defintely an odd choice on the part of Hasbro’s toy department. Just one more bit of evidence that they made this figure just for me I think. 😛
I’ve seen this guy at the store and none of the Beast (Wars?) stuff have caught my eye enough to buy any. I do have the deluxe version of the previous mold this was based on, and …yeah, very disappointed. Nothing in it says “Megatron” to me. He stood in bot form in the back of my Decepti-shelf.
I do like the ‘bot modes, however and the colors really do remind me of the G1 Seacons. Maybe if this guy had been named after one of them it would work for me? He’s just not MEGATRON, imo. “Sea-Megs” maybe? Then again, I’ve only seen a couple of the newer series on HUB, so that’s likely skewing my opinion? but not by much.
btw, had to laugh as I did have those two Seacons and the Pretender you showed. Too bad they were also victims of the Storage Loss of 2008. 🙁
I’d like to think he’s a seperate/twisted version of the original Megatron, similar to Galvatron. I haven’t come up with a good name for him though. Seavatron? Aquatron? Davey-Jones’-Lockertron?
Sucks that you don’t have your Seacons anymore. Mine are heavily played with and extremely brittle feeling now, but they’re still hanging in there with me.
Apparently there’s a packaging variant where one box lists him simply as megatron and there are two different names for his weapon. I also found a YouTube video that shows how to fix his shoulder pads/armor so they peg in correctly in vehicle mode.
http://youtu.be/eLre4qn3u-0
Ah, cool. Thanks Logan!
I couldn’t pull the budget trigger on the better voyager Megatron releases, but I was happy to settle for this guy. The colors are a little strange, but they’ll pass for a Prime Galvatron.
Yeah, I was getting a Galvatron vibe from him too.
Being that you love garish transformers, do you also like the Transformers Subsctiption Service Circuit figure? That has to be the ugliest figure I’ve ever seen.
Absolutely! Not only do I love his blinding color scheme, but that Lockdown/Axor mold is one of my favorite designs. I do plan on picking him up, but my budget is a bit tight now so it may be a while. But I’ll definitely do a review when I get him.
Great review and pics, but the figure ain’t my goblet of mead. I’m really looking forward to the Third-Party, Not-Legally-Sharkticons-But-They-Are-Really 3-Pack!
i love this figure — just can’t justify plopping down $20 for him though. i’m same w/ you i love disco skeletor and dead end!
Great review and pics, but the toy is not to my taste. The Not-Legally-Sharkticons-But-They-Are-Really 3-Pack, however . . . .
Yeah, after reading this review I went on Amazon and bought this guy for under $20. I just couldn’t stand the idea of not having such a weird toy on my TF shelves! He’s just so cool looking!
Love it! Even though I pretty much completely avoid contemporary Transformers toys, I’m a total sucker for these types of colour schemes, must buy for me.