Here’s Part 2 (of 4) of my Fortress Maximus posts! In Part 1 I took a look at Fortress Maximus’ packaging and starship modes (without stickers), and in this post I’m going to check out his city and robot modes (without stickers).
So if you don’t know, Fortress Maximus is the largest Transformer ever made (he’s the tallest one of them all, if you measure from head to toe), in the current Titans Returns line. He’s one of the eponymous Titans in this continuity, giant forces of nature that explore planets (who also happen to be Transformers). In G1, he was the Headmaster Autobot Leader and took over in the Japanese series, Transformers: Headmasters, when Rodimus Prime once again displayed an amazing amount of irresponsibility and recklessness when he left for who-knows-where.
Fortress Maximus retails for SGD $299.90 in stores, and is out everywhere. Thanks Hasbro for sending over Fortress Maximus!
City mode
The city mode benefits more from being stickered up than the starship mode, and if you intend to keep Fortress Maximus as a city then you have to put stickers on him. I would have liked if they had incorporated Metroplex’s splitting legs into the design of the city so that it’s larger, but then given that only the Titan Masters are really going to walk around here (and they only transform into heads), I suppose it wouldn’t make sense to have that happen.
His special feature allows him to connect to other Autobot bases to form an even larger city, which once again serves to cement his position as Headmaster Autobot Leader, since he’s leading all the other leaders.
Cerebros
If you call him Cerebros then you really have to call his Titan Master unit Spike, rather than Emissary, because come on, that’s who he really is. I like how they’ve integrated the speakers into his chest so that it has this sort of grill look. Also, thanks to the shoulder pads, he looks much more V-shaped than Fortress Maximus does – and he really needs it, seeing how Fortress never really engaged in battle (he only fought as Fortress Maximus). So having a more imposing look befits the Third Supreme Commander of the Autobots.
His backpack could have benefitted from some streamlining, but that would have been at the expense of Fortress Maximus’ head. I don’t know about you, but I’m going to keep Fortress Maximus in his giant robot mode, so yes, the giant head is more important than the robot in this case (just like how the Combiners aesthetics are more important than their component robots).
Robot Mode
And finally we have the part that everyone’s waiting for – Fortress Maximus himself! How does he stack up? Is he worthy of the name? Thankfully, yes, otherwise there really aren’t that many names you can give to city-bots (maybe Omega Supreme, but seriously, not if he looks like Fortress Maximus).
As many of you would have seen, he’s an extensive retool of Metroplex, but he’s less skinny since his midsection has been filled out a little bit more. Several of Metroplex’s pieces, like the “carpark” area in his legs and the runway panels that work on either side, are still here, although some of their functionality isn’t used (because a Fortress Maximus with carparks would look odd).
Overall he’s more proportionate than Metroplex was – he isn’t overly V-shaped, and actually looks like he’d still be awesome if he were shrunk down to Deluxe scale. He’s not skinny either, which is important since skinny is the last word you’d use to describe Fortress Maximus. Since this is the unstickered version, I’ll go into more details in Part 4, when I check out a stickered Fortress Maximus.
In Part 3, I’ll check out a stickered up Fortress Maximus in city and starship modes, to show you the details that it adds (and also some features you might not have realised). Watch out for it soon!
Check out my other Fortress Maximus posts here!
SDCC/STGCC Fortress Maximus is discernibly different in starship and city modes (Part 1 of 2)
SDCC/STGCC Fortress Maximus in robot mode revealed! (Part 2 of 2)
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