Anticlimax.

Man, The Fallen was dissapointing wasn’t he? He was supposed to be second only to Unicron in power in the Transformers lore. Then he barely gets to do anything in a movie with his name in it. Well, he still did more than Devastator though.

Even though he was dissapointing on screen, that doesn’t necessarily mean that his figure was too…

Right?

Vehicle mode

The Fallen here is a Cybertronian space cruiser. When people think of tacked on Cybertronian modes, they usually think of The Fallen. While this is literally an afterthought of a vehicle mode, it’s not that bad. It’s certainly not the worst I’ve seen. Everything pegs together nicely unlike some other Cybertronian alt modes I’ve handled.

Actually, I think it works quite well as an alien spaceship. If you saw this in the sky, you’d pee yourself. One thing I think is clever is that the only robot parts this mode actively tries to hide is the head. The hands, feet, arms and legs are all visible but work as alien spaceship parts. My only real complaint is that this mode is kinda gappy.

Oh yeah, another positive here is that there are parts specifically for the vehicle mode. They’re the cockpit and landing skis. Landing skis, not landing wheels. No rolling here, unfortunately.

Transformation

The transformation here isn’t too simple but it’s certainly not as nightmarishly complex as some of the transformations that came out of ROTF.

It’s a pretty good time despite how I feel about the vehicle mode.

Robot mode

The Fallen is pretty big in robot mode. He’s taller than the average Voyager from 2009 which means he dwarfs most Voyagers from 2019. That means he scales well with Studio Series Transformers. Nice!

The Fallen here actually looks menacing enough but is pretty inaccurate to how he looked like in the movie. For one, he’s green. Another thing is his proportions are off. Chalk that up to the toy being based on concept art I guess. Still, The Fallen’s well detailed and has lots of paint.

Now, onto posability. The Fallen has a major flaw. No head posability. Because of his gimmick he can’t look up or down and side to side. Ugh. His arms do rotate at the shoulders as well as go in and out. He has bicep swivels as well as double elbow bends. His hands rotate at the wrist as well as hinge in. The Fallen actually has a waist joint which mitigates the lack of side to side movement at the head a bit. His legs rotate as well as go in and out from body at the hips. He has thigh swivels as well as knee bends. His feet are interesting. They rotate 360° and are spring loaded. The spring loaded toes mean when you set the Fallen down on a hard surface, he poses automatically. It doesn’t always work but it’s a neat idea.

Gimmicks

The Fallen’s Mech Alive gimmick is that he has solar panels. I’m not kidding. It’s both very clever and downright hilarious that a villain who’s whole schtick is that he wants to harvest the Sun has built-in, spring-loaded solar panels on his body.

He has them behind his head, on his shoulders and in his forearms. He’s also got a moving knee armour gimmick kind of like Sideswipe. Bending his knees moves his translucent red leg armour.

Toy or collectible?

The Fallen is more of a collectible than a toy. He’s got a cool robot mode but the vehicle mode is still pretty questionable. Also, his gimmicks aren’t too exciting.

Even as an adult collectible though, he’s a bit of a hard sell. He’s not screen accurate and has no head articulation. Most adult collectors would probably not take to that too kindly.

Closing

Honestly, I’m kind of bummed about The Fallen. This guy isn’t bad by any means and he’s actually pretty good looking in both modes. It’s just he’s got a lot of flaws that make me hesitate to recommend him. I actually like him, it’s just I’m not sure anyone else would.

This one’s probably only for completionists. However, The Fallen scales quite well with Studio Series Transformers. He’s pretty cheap and looks pretty good just standing with the Decepticons.