Legacy United Thundertron

Series: Legacy United
Year: 2024
Allegiance: Star Seeker
Class: Voyager

Prelude: A pirate Transformer with a peg leg that transforms into a lion and sails the space ways on an eternal mission of vengeance? Now that sounds like an interesting, fairly original take, which is something the Prime TV series avoided at all costs, so naturally we never saw it in animation and had all that Beast Hunters stuff instead. Anyway, despite never appearing anywhere outside some novels, Thundertron is back in Legacy United with a brand-new figure. So hoist the Jolly Roger and let’s say arrr!

Robot Mode: This figure here is supposed to be an updated version of Prime Thundertron, so comparisons to the older figure will abound. Now the original Prime Thundertron was a pretty great figure in terms of looks, but did have a few problems in terms of engineering and accessories. I can say that Legacy Thundertron has solved most of these problems. The chest holds together much better, he is better articulated, and he comes with a proper sword where you don’t have to remove a clunky battery pack, first. So points for that.

Thundertron is a Voyager-sized robot with a rather portly shape, but great articulation and nice detailing. The head looks quite a bit different than that of the original figure, though, including a much more realistic-looking beard and something that looks like tears edged into one cheek. Maybe he is shedding tears for his lost colony? Or does he miss those big claws the first figure had on its shoulders? Anyway, Thundertron comes with a sword and, like the original figure, can remove one foot to stand on a peg leg. The foot can attach to the sword, which… yeah, doesn’t really do anything, but at least it has somewhere to go. Sadly it cannot become a parrot.

Overall I must say that while this new Thundertron is a better figure in purely technical terms (stability, articulation, weapon, etc.), he kind of forgot to capture the character of the older figure. Prime Thundertron looked like a robot version of Davy Jones from Pirates of the Caribbean, while Legacy Thundertron looks like Alpha Trion got himself a new paintjob (and a beer belly). The look and feel of the character somehow got lost along the way.

In closing for the robot mode: nothing objectively wrong with it, but to me it fails to capture the look that made Prime Thundertron one of the most original designs of his time.

Alternate Mode: Thundertron transforms into a robotic lion. While he basically does use the most simple beast mode transformation imaginable, going down on all fours, there are some extra steps. The front legs of the lion emerge from the robot’s big shoulder pods, while the robot mode arms fold underneath the head, forming the lion’s chest. The big sword goes on the back.

The resulting lion looks pretty good and is a much closer match to Prime Thundertron than in robot mode. Sure, Prime Thundertron had much longer front claws and there is the color difference, too, but otherwise the two lions look very much alike. Overall the lion is pretty cool. The details are good, the mouth opens, and all four legs are articulated… somewhat.

Much like Prime Thundertron, Legacy United Thundertron has some issues with the front legs. In theory they are fully posable, but for some strange reason you are supposed to plug them into the sides of the lion, meaning they are immobilized from the knee upwards. You can leave them unplugged, of course, for greater articulation, but then you have those plugs that are supposed to plug in scraping over the sides of the torso all the time. No idea why they didn’t simply leave those out, the front legs are stable enough to hold the lion up without any additional plugging in.

So bottom line for the lion mode: pretty well done, though Hasbro keeps up its record of somehow not wanting lion mode Transformers to have fully articulated front legs (see the various incarnations of Lio Convoy).

Remarks: Depending on who you ask, Thundertron was either created solely as a character for the Aligned novels (such as Transformers: Retribution) or was supposed to play a major role in a hypothetical fourth season of Transformers Prime, hence why his original figure was included in the Prime toy line. We may never know, seeing as TFPrime was cancelled after the infamous Beast Hunters season. Either way, Thundertron used to live on one of Cybertron’s colony planets before the war caused the Spacebridge Network to collapse, leaving his (and other) colonies bereft. Assembling a crew of fellow-minded Transformers from other colony worlds, he went out to seek vengeance against those who started the war, Autobot and Decepticon alike. Would have been an interesting story to see in animation, but probably way too original for the Prime TV series.

As mentioned above, Thundertron here is a good figure objectively, but what I was looking for was a new version of Prime Thundertron. Legacy Thundertron did improve on some of Prime Thundertron’s limitations, but very much failed to capture the look of the original. So if you have no connection to the original figure from Prime and are simply looking for a good beast mode Transformer, Thundertron is worth a look. Otherwise, though, I’d advise you to stick with your Prime Thundertron figure.

Or, alternatively, spend a bit more money on the Leader-Class Thundertron, which has a far more accurate head mold from what I've seen in the pictures.

Rating: C