Generations Leader Megatrons + Stunticons Official Images

[Bidoofdude]

He has a ridiculously powerful fusion cannon on his arm. Why would he bother transforming into a pistol that needs someone else to use? Was it so others can fondle his trigger?
As a child, Megatron was one of the only TF's I had no interest in getting. Mostly because he didn't have an alt. mode that could interact with the others.

I'm the exact opposite. I would love getting something like Megatron that I could interact myself with as a kid. It would be worth the sacrifice IMO. I guess that's why I've always wanted a G1 Shockwave, because it would be totally rad to have a lights and sound laser gun based off a favourite character.

[griffin]

People mock the Roleplay toys from the last 10 odd years (since Armada had Laserbeak and Star Saber), and yet, the leader of the Decepticons from the very first year of toys was essentially a roleplay toy (as noted by Demonac - it was way out of scale to properly "interact" with the other toys of that year, making it unrealistic to play with the other toys when it is in gun mode... it was more for the kid to play as a real gun in that mode).

[GoktimusPrime]

I'm the exact opposite. I would love getting something like Megatron that I could interact myself with as a kid. It would be worth the sacrifice IMO. I guess that's why I've always wanted a G1 Shockwave, because it would be totally rad to have a lights and sound laser gun based off a favourite character.

I agree. Shockwave was never released in Australia, but I grew up playing with "Shackwave," which I absolutely loved. Ditto Soundwave, Blaster and the cassettes, as well as the Insecticons (who did mass-shift in the G1 comics). I used to pretend that these toys had shrunken down in their alt modes and that I would be some unwitting human that stumbled across them and used them, and through me, gain access to certain places. e.g. I'd pretend that I was a scientist, and say I'd "find" Soundwave and carry him with me to my "lab" etc. And I did exactly the same thing when Real Gear Robots came out. I quite like role play Transformers. But yeah, they're certainly not interactive with other Transformers.

But honestly, during my toy-to-toy play, I would just use my imagination when they "transformed" to their shrunken down forms; kinda like what Peter Jackson does w/ human-sized actors who play Hobbits and Dwarves; IRL they're not smaller, but I would imagine that they were to scale w/ each other. e.g. transform Soundwave to alt mode and put him to my left, pretending that he was inside say the cockpit of a Decepticon Jet, while on my right I'd have say Skywarp in jet mode and imagine that he was flying with Soundwave inside the cockpit. But in my imagination Soundwave was inside Skywarp. But this was nothing compared to when I played Robotech! The only Zentraedi soldier that I had was a "Micronised" one (did they ever make a bigger one?), so for example, when I'd have Max Sterling running away from my Zentraedi soldier, I'd put the Zentraedi right in front of my eye to make him look bigger, with the human at arm's length to make him seem smaller and "super impose" each other when they interacted (e.g. Zentraedi picking up the human). Okay, sure, they'd never both be in focus with each other, but hey... I made do. And heck, even with the larger toys (e.g. Breetai), they still weren't exactly to scale to the 10cm human figures, so I still had to do some "super imposing" (just not as bad as w/ a 10cm Micronised Zentraedi ). And I would do the same when I played G.I. Joes w/ Transformers too.

[Ode to a Grasshopper]

I kind of liked the Galvatron route - having him turn into a space Howitzer/mobile artillery battery, but not actually a tank (which has already been done quite a few times over).
That said, I don't mind G1 Megs becoming a gun either, but as noted it's a bit impractical for a wide-scale toy release in Hasbro markets these days. What I would like to see is characters like Shockwave and Sixshot given Legends toys that can be used by the Combiner Wars gestalts. Sixshot could probably get away with being a standard 2-mode TF or triple-changer if he could be used with, say, a Combiner Wars Abominus.

[FruitBuyer]

Megatron as a pistol was one of the many mistakes of Transformers when it was created that didn't really manifest until it became bigger. Having him as a gun, while iconic, is utterly devoid of feasibility for the reasons Goki mentioned.

[Bidoofdude]

Although impractical, Megatron's gunmode was always one of the special, magical parts of G1 Transformers for me. It was a pretty badass animation in the show.

[FruitBuyer]

No doubt but that's largely nostalgia talking. There's a reason why all recent media have done away with such blatant levels of mass-shifting. The worst is Prime Arcee and that's still tame compared to original G1.

Honestly, G1 centric toys are incredibly restrictive, which is why you don't get absurd things like tape-players anymore.

[Lord_Zed]

I'm not sure what to think of those Megs (both of them), G1's paint job and details rather cool, but there's is something very static and boring about the toys overall aesthetic in robot mode.

I wonder if they will do a G2 repaint?

[GoktimusPrime]

I kind of liked the Galvatron route - having him turn into a space Howitzer/mobile artillery battery, but not actually a tank (which has already been done quite a few times over).

G1 Galvatron does also have a space pistol mode. While Galvatron didn't use his pistol mode in the G1 cartoon, he did use it in the G1 comics. Galvatron could mass-shift as Megatron would, allowing him to ride inside Cyclonus' cockpit. Galvatron II (plucked from an alternate future) didn't mass shift when transforming to his pistol mode though; it was just a giant flying space gun (similar to Shockwave and Straxus).

[Bidoofdude]

No doubt but that's largely nostalgia talking. There's a reason why all recent media have done away with such blatant levels of mass-shifting. The worst is Prime Arcee and that's still tame compared to original G1.

Honestly, G1 centric toys are incredibly restrictive, which is why you don't get absurd things like tape-players anymore.

Oh no, not Arcee. Help us. It's just so incredibly off. I like huge mass shifts better than stupid things like that.