General Information:
Price Point/Size: Gigacon
Retailers: General (K-Mart, Toys R Us, Wal-Mart, Kay Bee)
Release Date: January 2003
Transformation Difficulty Level: 4 (Expert)
Accessories: Clench Mini-Con figure, Missiles x 3
Sounds in mp3 format:
When the writers of Transformers The Movie decided to take Megatron and reform him into Galvatron, they probably did not realize they would set a trend over ten years later where Megatrons of the future would upgrade and change their names to Galvatron. It happened in Robots in Disguise, and now it has happened again with Armada. The Armada Megatron toy has been given a new deco and renamed as Galvatron. For more detailed coverage of the toy itself, please read Megatron's review. This review will cover the changes made to the toy for this release.
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Clench is a redeco of Megatron's Mini-Con Leader-1. He is now mostly a dark blue gray color. His arms and upper legs are a dark red/purple color. His eyes are painted yellow and a portion of his chest is painted light gray (presumably to match the same color on Galvatron). His windows are silver while his laser turrets are gold. Most likely due to his darker colors, this deco makes the toy look much more menacing than his lightly colored predecessor. Also, not having neon orange on his laser turrets helps make the toy look more like a machine of destruction and not a spokesperson for laser turret safety. As a side note, Clench is not a new name in the Transformers universe. The name was previously used for a Transformer during both Generation One and Two where Clench was a larger Transformer truck (yes, I do plan to review him eventually).
Colors:
The biggest change to Megatron to become Galvatron (visually) is his color scheme. His cannon barrel, sides of his tank treads and his robot head helmet and horns are now dark red/purple. His treads, upper body, waist and lower arms are alldark blue gray. The tank treads have green "staining" on the underside to give them a slightly worn look, a very nice touch. His robot face is dark blue with red eyes. His robot legs and turret section are light gray. By itself the light gray is rather dull looking, but contrasted against the other colors along with battle scorch marks, it looks very nice. The shoulders, upper legs, hands and mid section are light lavender. The Decepticon symbols are a very bright purple (even the tiny one on his chest). Accents are filled in with gold rather than neon orange. Overall this is a great color scheme. Hearing colors like "light gray" and "lavender" may not sound good, but in this case, this is a toy that looks better than it sounds. He looks much more menacing and "Decepticon-like" in these colors.
Retooling:
Galvatron only has one significant retool, on the battery cover there is a slot where a plastic tab is inserted to keep the sounds from activating until you want them to. I am saving the tab in case I ever need to turn him off again.
Although this is more likely due to the rigors of reusing a mold, some parts of Galvatron move a little more smoothly than on Megatron. A prime example are the ratchet joints on the upper legs, which now move much more smoothly than on Megatron.
Sounds:
Galvatron uses the same sound effects as Megatron except for one. Megatron's scratchy voiced "Decepticons attack!" voice has been changed to a smoother one (but still rather chipmunk-like) saying "The power is mine!".
Galvatron is a fantastic redeco. What's impressive is that in theory, the colors that Hasbro used don't seem like they would go well with each other, but in the end they do. He looks much more "Decepticon-like" than the previous deco. Highly recommended!
Updated Thoughts (June 23, 2025):
After playing with this figure again for the first time in over a decade, it really struck me just how different the design philosophy of Armada was from modern day Transformers. Except for the kid-focused toy lines, Transformers nowadays rely mostly on the transformation and articulation as features. Even the days of attachment points for Blast Effects and bases connecting to one another are mostly gone now. Yes, Armada Galvatron is a brick for the most part, but he's a fun brick. I had a good time connecting all the Mini-Cons, activating his features and just feeling the relative heft of the figure compared to most figures nowadays. This is a fun toy and if you're not stuck on tons of articulation I definitely think you may enjoy having it in your collection!
