As stated: Wow.
I mean, we all knew that a Beast Wars II Galvatron would be coming eventually; Legacy Evolution Leo Prime/Lio Convoy was released 3 years ago, and Takara's nicer retool was finally shipped later last year after many delays. Then we managed to get both of the BW Neo leaders within about a year and a half, and also the heroic leader from Car Robots/RiD, which is also sort of in the JBW lineage. So, we were missing 2 of the 6 leader characters from that trilogy of pairs: Car Robots/RiD Gigatron/Megatron and BWII Galvatron.
I feel Gigatron is a bit more up in the air, with his counterpart being a Haslab, but mass retail Lio Convoy has needed his nemesis for quite some time now. I didn't really expect Galvatron to be revealed by Takara (and in the grey model stage, no less), and leads us to the potential problem here: will Galvatron get a domestic release?
Galvatron here is marketed as part of the New Legends line, a Takara-exclusive line that, up to this point, has only included repaints (or maybe some molds with retooling). Galvatron seems to be the first completely new mold for the line, and there is no language supporting the idea that it will be part of Hasbro's upcoming 2027 line (revealed to be "Age of Evolution" by leaks). The actual problem here is, of course, if Hasbro doesn't release this mold themselves, they will still offer the Takara version, and that will be more expensive. Case in point: the new Nemesis Prime repaint of AotP Star Convoy will be nearly $300 (and that's without the blast effects) before shipping.
Even so, I'm not quite panicking yet. The Age of Evolution leaks did not include information for Commander nor Titan class. All the photo evidence for the Galvatron grey model suggests that it would be a Commander class figure, and AoEvo could have two commanders in 2027 like it did this year (though that may be less likely if there isn't a completely new combiner set...and to that point, we don't know exactly what is being done for Nexus Prime, aside from the fact that it seems very likely that some AoEvo deluxes are limb bots for him). Galvatron could easily be the commander, or one of two commanders, for next year.
I'll admit, the design is strikingly similar to the original toy, aside from very welcome tweaks in proportions that make him look a bit more like the anime appearance. This made me feel (perhaps amplified by the context of the Takara unveiling) that the figure was completely designed in-house by Takara, as many brand-unification updates will add tweaks that update a design in some way or another. On the other hand, I guess Magmatron was pretty faithful to the original, even so far as including the Magmasaurus mode, and he is the most similar, recent product to this new Galvatron mold.
Also, many are making much of the fact that Takara unveiled this mold, and in a grey model state, and that Hasbro just doesn't do that, especially so early, or that Takara doesn't unveil brand unification items first. And this isn't really the case. Hasbro themselves had a big increase last year in showing off products in an early state, unveiling grey protos for TF: One Alpha Trion and Airachnid in a livestream, and also showing a render of Onslaught back at their SDCC presentation, and that toy still hasn't released (they would also display a blue Onlsaught test shot later in 2025). Takara has also unveiled Kingdom Rodimus Prime and Legacy United Silverbolt well ahead of Hasbro, and I'm sure I am forgetting other examples that would be similar to this Galvatron unveiling.
At the end of the day, all I can do is hope that Hasbro has this new Galvatron in their plans. I really don't know why they'd leave him out when they have already done Lio Convoy, Big Convoy and Magmatron, but they've made stranger decisions before. We'll see!
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