there's also try before you buy. Check out a friend's Big Convoy (or Universe Nemesis Prime). I'm sure someone would bring their Big Convoy along to the next Sydney fan meet if you ask nicely.


I dunno... I guess for me the effort of transforming Big Convoy wasn't worth the result. As for comparing it with Car Robot (RiD) or Binaltech... um... it was 1999. What's Car Robot and Binaltech? I don't find God Fire Convoy terribly difficult to transform but the combined mode is unstable. BT Grimlock and Wheeljack would be comparable to Big Convoy, but I guess that by 2004 I was already exposed to very complex transformations like Masterpiece and previous BTs. But when I got Big Convoy in 1999 I don't think I'd had the experience of ever trying to transform anything that frustrating. It was the first time I'd come across a Transformer where you have to transform every single step correctly in a certain order. You might get to step 10 and realised that you didn't quite do step 3 properly, so you actually need to go back 7 steps and then redo the whole thing all over again!

Having said that, I was totally thrilled with getting Big Convoy at the time. In 1998 I was already quite excited with Lio Convoy because he had a Matrix sculpted in his chest, but I was just ecstatic with Big Convoy as he was the first Transformer to have a proper Matrix accessory that could be stored and removed from his chest cavity and held in his hands! This wouldn't be outdone for another half decade (with Masterpiece Convoy). But for the 90s this was a phenomenonally cool feature!

Magmatron is a lot like God Fire Convoy; I don't find him inherently difficult to transform, but the combined robot mode isn't very stable (although it's a lot more stable than GFC!). But it's only minor things that keep popping off, like Seasaur's head or Skysaur's legs. The actual main body of the toy does hold together reasonably well.