Fall of Cybertron Ultra Magnus

Robot Mode: Let’s start with the obvious, the fact that Magnus is (as is often the case, though not recently) a repaint of an Optimus Prime, in this case of Generations Fall of Cybertron Optimus Prime. Thankfully they didn’t go the cheap way of simply coloring him mostly white and leaving everything else the same, no. They took the armored form of Ultra Magnus as their boilerplate, so not only does he have a nice paint job with blue, red, and white, he’s also gotten a beautiful new head. Meaning – in my not as humble as it should be opinion – this mere repaint looks far, far better than the supposed original.

In terms of articulation and design there is little to complain about here. The only thing that’s slightly bothersome is the connection between the very wide upper body and the rather slim hip, which could use something to plug everything together a bit more solidly. That, and you need to watch those pieces hanging off his forearms (the front bumper, actually), as they tend to flop around wherever they may and might ruin otherwise perfectly good-looking photographs. No other complaints, though, and these are minor. A very good figure in robot mode.

Weapons: I don't usually make a separate point of a Transformer's weapon, but in this case I think it is warranted. Being a typical male specimen, I of course first took on this figure without ever looking at the instructions and kept wondering why this bitchin' sword Magnus comes with (not a hammer for once) was made of three separate pieces. Finally overcoming my foolish male pride I took a closer look and saw that the rifle (the same one FoC Optimus carries) and sword could indeed combine into a much larger, even more bitchin' sword. See the last few pictures in the gallery for how that looks.

Alternate Mode: Magnus transforms (in a rather straight-forward, simply transformation sequence) into a science-fiction style truck. It’s a very compact-looking vehicle and offers little clue as to there being a robot hidden inside. If you look very closely you can see the white fists on the sides and there are the robot feet, which are on the back end, but not immediately recognizable as such. The truck can be armed with both of Magnus’ weapons, you can put the rifle (or two rifles if you steal one from Optimus) on the back and the sword on the side. So all in all a rather unspectacular, but nevertheless fully sufficient vehicle mode.

Remarks: To my knowledge Ultra Magnus does not appear in the actual Fall of Cybertron game, though he is apparently available in multi-player mode via a download. He’s also an unlockable character in the Nintendo DS version of War for Cybertron. That’s pretty much it, unless you count him being mentioned in the novels Exodus and Exiles. The Fall of Cybertron comic books by IDW do feature an Ultra Magnus, too, but that’s quite clearly the Prime Ultra Magnus and not this one here. And no, Prime and WfC/FoC are not the same continuity, no matter what Hasbro says.

Many people wondered why Hasbro bothered to design an entirely new mold for Optimus Prime for Fall of Cybertron considering the brilliant War for Cybertron Prime we already had. The answer is simple: so it could be given a really cool sword and be repainted into Ultra Magnus. That’s all there is to it. A good figure with a brilliant paint job, very cool weapons, and just about the only thing I do mind is that it didn’t come Voyager-sized. Apart from that, though: very cool. Fully recommended to all Magnus fans.

Rating: A-