Leader Class Ultra Magnus (UM) is probably one of the best, if not the most excellent, version of Ultra Magnus that one can get. Gone is the ‘I can’t handle this’ G1 version whose toy was a brick and the Car Robots(R.I.D) version which was a rebellious/jealous punk whose design was totally wrong: fat long legs, skinny torso, small head and Popeye arms. His only purpose was to serve as additional armour for Fire Convoy to become God Fire Convoy.

Character wise, Animated Ultra Magnus perhaps has the best character traits ever; Being the Commander of the Autobots Elite Guard and from the way the animated series depicts him, Ultra Magnus is the highest ranking Autobot in the series. He is also supposedly even older than Ratchet as mentioned on the packaging and that is reflected in the animated series. Call me biased, but I can’t help but re-iterate again the Animated Ultra Magnus is the best Ultra Magnus figure ever.

Then again, I’m such an UM fan…

Being a Leader Class figure, Ultra Magnus naturally is of a larger scale when compared to the Deluxe and Voyager Classes though he is smaller than Supreme Class Optimus Prime which is pretty much the largest brick of an Animated figure that is produced.

Packaging

Ultra Magnus is packaged in a windowed cardboard box with a cut out hole near his chest for people to try his sound gimmick. As with the rest of the Animated line, the box is shaped pretty oddly, with angles incorporated into the design unlike the straight-lined designs of the past, which makes me wonder how on earth these boxes can be nicely packed into their cartons.Ultra Magnus also comes packaged with 2 AA batteries which is a house brand of Hasbro’s, but it looks pretty cheap and prone to leaking if kept MISB for too long.

Box front view

For the sides of the box, 1 side features a mini catalogue for Supreme Class Roll Out Optimus Prime and Leader Class Megatron & Bulkhead. The other side features a full blown picture of Ultra Magnus in robot mode as shown in the animated series.

Ultra Magnus is held in place via a combination of twist ties and rubber bands. I hate twist ties and luckily, there isn’t much twist ties to contend with. However, what disappointed me was that the instruction manual and catalogue were not enclosed in a plastic bag and were just chucked under the internal packaging. As a result, my instruction manual managed to form a union with several of the loose ends of tape holding the internal packaging together.

Vehicle Mode

Ultra Magnus’s vehicle mode is that of an armoured vehicle and is based on a Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck (HEMTT) which is a real-life vehicle used by the US Military for various purposes. The vehicle mode looks really close to it’s real-life counterpart which is a plus for the whole ‘Robots in Disguise’ thing for Transformers. The hammer can be stored in this mode, nestled at the back in between the rear cannons.

The vehicle has an attack mode where the various ‘hidden’ weapons are flipped out. The front lights flip out to reveal a 4-barreled gattling gun on each side of the cab. The front portion of the cab flips out and 2 3-barreled gun turrets can be taken out. There is a tab at the top of the turret to push out the barrels even more. Lastly, the rear heavy cannons can be flipped over and there is a tab at the side of each cannon to push up and out to reveal yet another cannon with extendable barrel.

This mode features a light and sound gimmick. The button for activating it can be found on the right side of the vehicle. It’s a red button with a depressed inverted triangle which is right next to a silver coloured ‘riveted’ plate. Pushing on the button lights up the front of the 2 rear cannons and several firing sounds are heard. The lights flash orange to signify the firing of the cannons.

Robot Mode

Transformation from vehicle mode to robot mode is pretty easy. The only trouble I encountered was the flipping of the hinge inside of the cab halves portion. This roughly corresponds to the first 2 panels in the instruction manual.

Close up of torso

Ultra Magnus’ robot mode features another light and sound gimmick which is activated by pressing on the Elite Guard Autobot symbol on his chest. On pressing the button, he speaks from a ‘puddle’ of 3 phrases which are repeated over and over again. Ultra Magnus also ‘talks’, that is, the further one presses the Autobot symbol in, the larger he opens his mouth and his eyebrows cock towards the right, pretty nifty feature that I missed out on initially. The rear cannons, autobot symbol and eyes light up and flash several times as the phrases are said. The eyes flashes green and the symbol flashes red.

Accessories

Ultra Magnus comes with a hammer which features a size-changing gimmick. The handle can be folded in half for storage during vehicle mode. To activate the size-changing gimmick, one has to pull on the middle of the hammer head and the sides will pop out to ‘increase’ the size of the hammer head. The hammer can be held in either hand and is connected via a tab on the hammer handle which is situated somewhere in the upper-half of the handle bar.

Mass-Hammer (unextended)

Several gripes I have for the hammer are that

1. the handle bar is too darn short, Hasbro should have increased the length of the bar though that   would have affected how the weapon stores in vehicle mode;
2. the connecting tab is too far up the handle, it looks kind of weird when held and lastly;
3. the hammer head is a tad bit on the small side for a weapon but that’s purely my opinion that war hammers should have oversized large hammer heads for smashing the enemy’s brains inside out.

To counter the short handle bar look, Ultra Magnus can hold the lower half of the handle bar with not much problems at all. It looks so much better this way though. Hasbro should have placed the connecting tab at the lower half of the handle bar.

Articulation

Articulation wise, Ultra Magnus has articulation in most of the major points. His neck turns, has shoulder, elbow, hip, knee and slight ankle articulation. His fists can be opened or closed. Pretty articulated for a Leader Class figure, but Hasbro could have included a wrist joint. A kneeling pose can be achieved to a certain extent. The following pics show some of the poses he can achieve.

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