Vault Review: TF Prime Darkness
Megatron & Dark Matter Calibur

I’ve been falling behind on my Transformers Prime reviews over the last few weeks, so I thought I’d play a little catch-up and review two.  Today I’ve got the monstrous Darkness Megatron and the equally intimidating Arms Micron Dark Matter Calibur sword.

Last April I picked up Takara’s AM-05 Megatron figure.  Although I was happy with his design and his Arms Micron, I wasn’t quite satisfied with his smaller Deluxe size.  So when the preorder for the larger scaled AM-15 Darkness Megatron was announced I knew I had to snap it up.

Although Darkness Megatron shares the same basic design as his smaller counterpart, there’s so much more to this figure to like.  First off, he’s a Voyager Class figure, which is truly the only way Megatron should ever be presented.  His size gives the figure an intimidating edge and puts him perfectly in scale with his Deluxe Class minions.

But size isn’t everything, and I’m so glad I skipped Hasbro’s release of this figure.  From what I’ve seen there’s nothing really wrong with Hasbro’s version, it’s just that Takara’s Darkness Megs has so many addition features.  Most noticeably are his new metallic head, chest, and shoulders.  These chromed bits do a fantastic job of highlighting Megatron’s menacing upper body and making a very stark contrast from his darker plastics.

The chromed bits aren’t his only nice plastic feature.  Darkness Megs also has a translucent purple chest, forearms, and eyes that allow for some really fantastic light piping energon action.  These glowing purple pieces also serve to make him even more menacing with the look of Dark Energon flowing through his frame.

Since this is a Takara release, most of Megatron’s paint apps have been replaced by stickers.  But they did go ahead and paint the metallic purple areas of his legs and lower torso.  The rest of the color variations on his body are molded black and gray plastic.  All together these painted and molded pieces combine nicely with the translucent purple and chrome, so I didn’t even see a need to use stickers on the main figure.

Megatron’s articulation is decent.  He’s got a ball jointed head, shoulders and hips.  His wrists, elbows, knees and ankles are all hinge joints.  His forearms and thighs are swivels.  This really does allow for some nice posing, but he isn’t quite as limber as First Edition Starscream or Soundwave.  Continue to page 2…

14 thoughts on “Vault Review: TF Prime Darkness
Megatron & Dark Matter Calibur

  1. That chrome looks very nice. I’ll have to be content with the Hasbro version, but I’d think twice if I didn’t have it already. Great review, and I like the way you use those stands to make your figs hover/fly.

  2. Great review of a bloody nifty bunch of toys, with some excellent pictures!

    It’s a wrench, but I’m going to have to pass on these. Nowadays, I have to plan storage space allocation practically to the square centimeter.

  3. Impressive figures.
    Too bad I’ll never own them due to cost and just not liking the last few iterations of Mag’s alt-mode. As you hinted at, he’s been more bot-mode who transforms into cyber-kibble tank/jet/whatever with no real thought to practical design, as if he never seems to transform. This version does seem to have SOME thought put into his alt-mode, but not enough for me to care.

    In fact, I’ve passed on more than a few TFs that rely too heavily on the more insectoid Bayformers. That look has never appealed to me. Actually, I read this morning that he’s not going in a completely new direction, but the human cast will be replaced, but not all the Bayformers, or something like that? The article was vague at best as this was apparently a recent decision, probably brought about by people telling him TMNT fans were revolting over his ALIEN “Ninja Turtles” project.

    anyway….Hades looks like a nice update to Ratbat, but again, he doesn’t really click with me. This time due to the translucent plastic he’s comprised of with no paint apps, so it’s hard to make out features in a series of photos, no matter how well they’re taken.

    The other three Microns hearken back to …was it the first RID series? They had minicon trios that merged into a sword, too, among other items. Mine were all “lost in storage”, so working from vague memories about a decade old, here. Baru looks to be the best of the lot in alt-mode, possibly a Laserbeak/Buzzsaw update? The other two are passable in either mode, but the combined sword is impressive.

    1. Hades is really impressive in person. Fun to play with, too. The pics don’t really do him justice.

    2. You’re talking about the three jet Minicons that combined into the Star Saber?

      There were also the three racing vehicles that combined into the Skyboom Shield, and the trio of space vehicles that made up the Requiem Blaster.

      Those were awesome, but the shield was fickle–it didn’t clip together very well, and the handle was one of the Minicon’s heads, and it wasn’t long enough for most figures to get a decent grip on it.

      1. And that was in Armada, not RiD. RiD was an awesome toyline, with real world vehicle modes and articulated robots. Armada was a series of bricks with cheap Minicon-activated gimmicks.

        And the Star Saber didn’t hold together for sh*t, either.

        1. yeah, that would probably be why I don’t remember it much, other than they started changing everything up in successive years during this period, like Power Rangers. In fact, I do seem to recall more than one TransRangers or whatever joke going around the early days of the net, back then.

  4. Different strokes, I guess, but I think that chrome looks HORRIBLE. If I saw that close-up preview pic having no knowledge of this figure beforehand, I would have sworn that it was a knock off.

    The Calibur is nice, though. I thought I read somewhere that the one dude was a stingray, not a horseshoe crab, but at that level of abstraction, I guess it doesn’t matter. Maybe it’s really a flounder.

      1. Hee hee hee . . . chrome shiny!

        (Beedo is fascinated by small, shiny objects, and can’t get enough of vac-metal-coated toys.)

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