Unique Toys Mania King (Galvatron)

TFORMERS

Galvatron by Carlos NCT

Behold! The Fallen?

Unsubstantiated writer rumours are whirling around the Internets that Leonard Nimoy is in the picture to voice an ultra Decepticon dick named The Fallen in Transformers 2. Given the close proximity to release, they're really after some fine, nuanced performances if this stuff is still up in the air eh? Hater hate aside, it would be just great if Nimoy could assign some yack yacken to Transformers 2. Nimoy previously delivered a stellar performance (I'm serious) as Galvatron in 1986's The Transformers: The Movie. In the 86 feature, Galvatron is the intergalactic plaything of a planet sized Devil transformer. A reborn, re-tinkered super-identity for robo-fuhrer Megatron, Galvatron spends the entirety of the running time being a weaselly terminator with renegade ambitions. There's never much of a sense that Galvatron has any time for his subordinates, or master, instead pushing his own newly upgraded agenda. Given Nimoy's possible recasting, can we expect The Fallen to be a monstrously powerful ubermech with third-party ambition? I do hope so. Crush everybody The Fallen!

This Is How It Ends: Galvatron

Born from the battered remains of Megatron, and nursed by an all-consuming Satan planet, Galvatron stole all our hearts in the 1986 classic Transformers The Movie.

Treacherous, murderous, and ruthlessly dicky; Galvatron spent his introductory film entry moping about his Faustian bondage pact. Nominally created to rid doom-globe Unicron of his Achilles heel - the Autobot Creation Matrix - Galvatron instead seized the artifact for himself, turning on his chubby master. Unicron retaliated by transforming into a million storey tall Lucifer-bot and eating his slave. Galvatron survived this feasting only to be soundly thumped and cast out into deep space by a transcending Autobot do-gooder. Curse and confound it all!

Galvatron spent the years between The Movie and Transformers Season 3 trapped in a lava swamp. A tragic state of affairs that caused him to turn inept and mental. A shadow of his former self, Galvatron muddled about future year 2010 beating up his subordinates and failing to trounce interim leader bot Rodimus Prime. Last seen in the US TV series finale falling into space, Galvatron had a brief lease of life in the Japan only animated TV series Transformers: Headmasters.



This is were our glorious hero met his doom.

Cornered on an ice flow by the despicable Autobot Headmasters, Galvatron was eventually seen off by a bizarre sentai form-up that saw the four strong goody task force holding hands, floating in mid-air, and violently expelling white hot plasma blasts. What an affront!

At least he went down fighting (and it basically took the entirety of the hero cast to do him in)!

Galvatron! This is how it ends: See the whole sorry episode here.

Goodbye Emperor of Destruction!

But wait! Although that was the last we saw of Galvatron, in a TV mag exclusive manga / full colour spread series: Battlestars: The Return of Convoy, his carcass was found and revived by yet another interstellar leach-form. This time Dark Nova reformatted his slave herald into an ultra powerful version of former persona Megatron.

Super Megatron was born!

Scramble Power!

Like an unwanted second-disc padding DVD extra, here's some supplementary material for my Ultra Magnus post a few days back. Really, I should just update that with these links, but then I wouldn't get a quick post bump would I? You've got to think short-term bonuses when blogging.

Above is a scan of a Diaclone advert for Powered Convoy, the figure that would eventually become Ultra Magnus.

Here's some vintage Japanese adverts for various forms of this playset.

First, a 1984 advert for Diaclone Powered Convoy

Next, a Scramble City (Japan exclusive instead-of The Movie feature) branded ad for Ultra Magnus; seen here battling Decepticon City Commander Galvatron

Couple of interesting things to note:

1. Powered Convoy isn't a standalone character; he's a fleet transport alike, used for transporting legions of Diaclone vehicle-bots. Although the name Convoy would be become a supreme hierarchy title in Japanese continuity (in the same way that Prime denotes a leader in western plots), here it simply describes a kind of mob rank - Powered Convoy is the bouncer muscle for this truckin' support group.

2. Everybody's flying. Here's one for the real Transformers nerds - Autobots are classically depicted as being incapable of flight. In continuity applicable to Cybertronian warfare, the Autobots are a bourgeois class of artists and white-collar bureaucrats; the Decepticons are usually either gladiators or military robots who form their own break-away worker revolt faction under Megatron. Decepticons are innately superior combat wise, flight being their trump card. It's never really dwelt upon in any fiction, but the Autobots are pretty much dicks aren't they? They shit all over a slave class, and get a cob-on when they get a whiff of self-determination. Really, Megatrons' a Hero of Communism. That looks like a Nazi. And transformers into a Luger (look alike).

3. Unlike every subsequent continuity ever, these adverts depict the Prime / Convoy cab slotting into the trailer and assuming the Ultra Magnus identity. No wishy washy double-dealing here. Your toy is presented as definitive text! Quite the turn-around from disappointing western storylines that wished you'd forget about certain figure features.

4. Japanese Transformers ads of this vintage very rarely depict children pretending to have fun; instead we get fantastic little stop-motion vignettes of the toys acting as if they really are intergalactic mercenaries dying to shoe-in their foes. Take this and that scale environment!

Two sequences in the above videos really stood out for me: In the Powered Convoy ad, it's the rain soaked close-up of the trailer wheel as the toy screeches to a halt, the rain droplets give it a kind of rustic scale, and the steam pouring off the wheel suggests a real sense of power. You're going to buy something that kick ass! In the Ultra Magnus ad, I get my joy-joy from Galvatron's reality bending black-out transformation sequence - LOOK! As he morphs and contracts mode! SEE! As black inserts suggest a near demonic expression of power! Cower! As he stands there laden with guns looking like some kind of noble-robo devil!

Impressive stuff.