MOTUC Review – Megator

Megator is a character I don’t know all that well.  In fact, I didn’t know he existed until I saw a thread about him online a few years before MOTUC kicked off.  All the pictures I had seen looked, well, pretty awful.  I hadn’t been hotly anticipating the figure, but the prototype we saw at toy fair piqued my interest quite a bit.  The design of this character really seemed to come together for me after the 4H worked their magic.  Click through for more pics and thoughts about the August MOTUC creature, Megator!  Spoiler warning for those who want to be surprised about the secret accessory, I take pics of it here!

Megator™ Bio

Real Name: Moleb the Demolisher

An Eternian giant in service to Hordak®, Megator™ led Hordak’s troops in battle during the Great Wars. He was recruited to help booster the Horde’s ranks after Tytus™ and several other giants from the Mountains of Perpetua allied themselves with King Grayskull™. Megator™ was killed during the First Ultimate Battleground, caught in the iron jaws of Central Tower when the Three Towers were enchanted to sink into Sub-Ternia™. His remains were discovered millennia later by King Hssss™ who magically reanimated him into a mindless zombie. He served King Hssss™ and fought against Hordak® and the Masters of the Universe® in the Second Ultimate Battleground – once again dying on the battlefield.

 The thing I like about this bio is that they give you a ‘canon’ reason to put your Megator with your Prince Adam era MOTUC figures (if you care about stuff like that) and it introduces the Zombie Megator concept which lead to a pretty neat looking alternate head sculpt for this figure.  Considering the skull iconography on his chest plate and bracers, I would have pinned Moleb here as an evil warrior in service to Skeletor, but the bio places him in with Hordak in Pre-ternia and King Hssss in the Prince Adam era.   That works for me as both of those factions could use a little personnel boost in MOTUC.

 Accessories

Megator comes with a spiked ball and chain weapon and an alternate ‘zombie’ head sculpt.  The spiked ball feels like it’s made of vinyl and is hollow, but the sculpt is pretty sharp and detailed with a pitted metal texture and lots of dings and scratches.  The ball connects to the spiked handle by way of a thick metal chain.

The zombie megator head is a beautifully ugly piece.  The busted jaw, vicious expression and patchy gray hair makes me think more of an aged, punch drunk fighter coming out of retirement than a zombie but it’s still a really neat touch.  I don’t normally care for rooted hair on figures, but it’s effective here.

Sculpt

It looks to me like Megator doesn’t actually re-use that many parts from Tytus.  I think he only shares the shoulder/bicep piece and maybe the thighs with Tytus.  The torso and neck are bit more hunched forward than the Tytus figures’ and it helps give him a more trollish stance.   I also dig the thick black claws on his hands and feet as they look deadly and gross. 

The 4H took the design of the original Megator figure’s armor and amped it up a bit with nice textures and better proportions and fit to the figure’s body.  I love how they took the same expression from the toy, but made it look much more cool somehow.  There’s a magic to that transformation that’s a big part of why I love this line and continue to want every figure.  The 4H seem to be able to make it all look fantastic, no matter the source material.  I do kind of wish his right hand had a straight wrist so he could be posed throwing a punch with that wicked looking knuckle duster, but that’s a minor quibble and part of a larger issue I have with this figure…

Articulation

My issues with this figure begin and end with this here.  Megator just does not stack up to the rest of the MOTUC releases in this regard.  I knew that was the case going in, but it’s still a bit of a problem for me as I love articulated action figures.  For my taste, MOTUC standard figures are about as low as I like to go in terms of points of articulation.  With no thigh, shoulder or bicep swivels, Megator’s poseability is severely limited.  I feel like if they had done some ball and socket shoulders that would have helped a lot.  The shape of the shoulder makes me think that they were designed to be ball and socket articulated.

Paint

Paint is one area where Megator excels.  The green skin has highlights and lowlights and I think that helps sell the green skin as something real.  The armor is a nice metallic tone and the straps have a wash to help highlight the leather texture in the sculpt.  It’s nice to see that the teeth got a grody brown wash to dingy up those massive chompers Meggsy sports.  It’s also fun that they gave his zombie eye a bit of a bloodshot paint op.  I like to see little touches like this.  This may just be a mistake unique to my Megator, but I could swear they added a bit of gloss paint to his nostrils!  That adds to the ick factor quite nicely.  The spiked ball also has a dark dirty wash that brings out the texture on that sculpt as well.  The only slight paint issue I have is that the handle of ball and chain is just gray plastic that looks a little toy-ish for my taste.  It’s not a big deal, though.

Megator is less of a action figure for me and more of a display piece.  He looks nice in a big crowd of figures standing about as he adds some height variety and cool colors to the mix, but the playability isn’t quite there.   He’s more scenery than figure for me.  It’s still a great looking bit of scenery, though!  I do have to say that Megator is a striking presence on the shelf and way more fun to play with than Tytus.

Turnarounds

 

 

 

Previous reviews:

• Queen Marlena
• Clawful
• The Faceless One
• Battleground Teela
• Catra
• Panthor
• Battle Armor Skeletor
• King Hssss
• Bow
• Palace Guards
• Vikor
• Buzz-Off
• Grizzlor
• Roboto
• Chief Carnivus
• Whiplash
• Count Marzo
• She-Ra
• Keldor
• Optikk
• Evil-Lynn
• Moss-Man