So, I was originally not really that interested in this toy. On the scale of toy tributes, where one end of the scale is "perfect homage" and the other end is "completely redesigned," this Magnus toy straddles the mark directly at the center. He's just this side of too-different from G1 Magnus and it bothered me a bit. (I quite like the six-inch Titanium Series version of Ultra Magnus and consider it part of my Classics collection.) The point was made largely moot by the fact that I've never seen the toy at retail anyway, so I didn't even have an opportunity to decide not to buy it.
When I was ordering G2 Menasor on
toysrus.com, though, I noticed that they had Magnus in stock. Since he was originally released, I've softened on a lot of the aspects of the toy that I originally didn't like (and I think there was a deliberate effort to distance him somewhat from Masterpiece Ultra Magnus, who exhibits the Geewun accuracy I usually crave). The web site also had him on sale, so I decided to splurge since I was placing the online order anyway. (This turned out to be fortuitous, since the G2 Motormaster I got was missing his head. Were it not for Magnus, today would have been a very disappointing day.)
We did kind of desperately need a Generations-era Magnus update, since the original Classics toy was a) just a white Prime redeco and b) a limited-run Target exclusive. I dislike the IDWification of the toy, because I don't read the new comics. I am aware of who Minimus Ambus is and his role in the current lore, but that doesn't mean I want tiny robots with green beards infesting my neo-G1 toys. Thankfully, the Minimus toy isn't required to make the Magnus toy work, so he's just a useless accessory who's going to end up at the bottom of my toy box.
So, Magnus. As a Leader-class toy, he's nice and tall (over nine inches in height), towering over most Classics toys as the character is supposed to. His color mapping pleases me (just about every piece matches his G1 cartoon colors, from which the G1 toy deviated rather drastically). The red paint used on his chest is way too dark, which is strange since they were already using a bright red paint for the missiles on his shoulder launchers.
One of the things I originally disliked about this toy was that the design of its individual parts deviated so strongly from the G1 aesthetic. For example, G1 Magnus had square-shaped shoulders but these are trapezoidal. G1 Magnus had square-shaped launchers with long, round missiles, but this toy has flattened launchers and twin triangular missiles, which look like they belong on a Hero Mashers toy. If you break him down and look at him piece by piece, there's not much that evokes the G1 character. However, when taken as a cohesive whole, it still manages to look very strongly like G1 Magnus, and that's a pretty amazing feat considering the changes. Also, most of the necessary design elements are still there, even if they've been transmuted a bit. His blue chest armor is still roughly T-shaped, though a bit more stylized than before.
What really impressed me, though, was the head sculpt. It's like the cartoon character brought to life in three-dimensional form. A good head sculpt has sometimes been the turning point that determined whether I bought a toy (and some toys I have literally bought just for the head... so I could install it on a different toy and make a better-looking version of that character).
Articulation is really good, especially for an Ultra Magnus toy. His feet are separate parts from the legs and are connected with Masterpiece Sideswipe style connectors. Knees have soft-ratcheting clicky joints, legs swivel at mid-thigh, hips swivel and also pivot outwards using more clicky joints, elbows both swivel and pivot with more clicky joints, shoulders are soft-ratcheting and upper arms can pivot outwards with some good old-fashioned spring ratchets (and the panels to which his shoulder launchers are attached will very politely swing up to get out of the way of the arms). The only really useful joint that's missing is that his waist doesn't turn. Also, due to the way his chest is designed to hold Minimus Ambus, his head swings down on a hinge to act as a helmet. This means his head is connected at the back, not the bottom, and its swivel function is very limited as a result. All in all, though, it's still a very well-articulated toy. The problem I foresee is that the soft-ratcheting joints rely on the friction of plastic parts scraping against each other, so unlike the spring-powered joints, they will wear down over time.
He comes with one gun that looks a lot like the rifle he carried in The Transformers: the Movie, and another that does not. All his weapons (the two guns plus his missile pods) are designed to connect together to form a big hammer. Seems like there was an earlier Magnus toy that also came with a hammer (maybe the one from Transformers: Prime) so apparently that's a thing now.
His transformation is surprisingly faithful to the G1 toy with a few new tricks thrown in. There are a lot of parts that are held in place with plastic locking tabs. Like the Titanium Series toy, his cab is attached to the trailer and does not separate for transformation. Swinging down the front chest plate reveals the truck cab in its entirety, which swings out and then rotates into the correct orientation. It can swivel with respect to the trailer but does not detach. Magnus' robot head stows inside the place where Minimus Ambus is supposed to go, so there's no place to stick him inside for vehicle mode. The way his chest swings open allows it to become part of the car-carrier trailer, which means no separate pieces floating around when he's in vehicle mode. The rear panels on his legs shift, change, and rearrange to form side panels for truck mode, which is how his upper legs can be white but the sides of his carrier trailer are red. It's super clever.
Like the robot mode, the integrity of the truck mode relies largely upon tabbing everything together securely. The missile pods plug into the sides of the trailer (as per the G1 cartoon; not the front as per the G1 toy) and you can plug his other two guns into the rear sections formed by the legs. The cab section is sexy and streamlined, still a COE configuration but not as boxy as his G1 predecessor. (The toy is now more recognizable as the Titans Return Powermaster Optimus Prime, which will be so heavily retooled from Magnus as to nearly be unrecognizable.)
What's really nice is that a lot of the truck-mode functionality of the G1 toy was retained here. As before, the rear ramp sections (the white armor panels on the fronts of his legs) swing down to allow access to cars that will be carried by Magnus, and the top carrier section (the arms) can also swing down to allow cars to drive up on top. The trailer is a little too small to accommodate four Deluxe-scale cars, but you might be able to get away with two Deluxes and two Legends.
There's the usual cost-cutting that we've come to expect from the toy line these days. The robot feet and underside of the cab module are disparagingly hollow, and there are many parts of the toy with empty sections you can literally see right through (the sides of the lower legs, the white mid-arm sections, the trailer support struts). All ten of his Lee Press-On Wheels are black with unpainted hubcaps. I know they're trying to get away with assembling these toys as cheaply as possible, but it's preposterous that a Leader-class toy can have so little heft. It feels impossibly lightweight in my hands.
Overall, though, this is a toy I'd initially planned to skip and now I'm really glad I didn't. In some ways it's a reimagining of Magnus rather than an update, but it's also really faithful to the core ideas in a lot of ways. And, of course, I will certainly been buying the toy again after it's been rejiggered into Powermaster Optimus Prime.
Zob (not thrilled that I have to order a new G2 Menasor now... but as I've always said, if plastic robots are the biggest problem in my life, I must be doing pretty good)