Jeez, third Toyless Guy Created For Fiction Who Now Gets A Toy in a row!  Alpha Trion has kinda gotten toys before, whether they be PVC figurines or BotCon exclusives or what have you, but this is his first mass market North American transforming toy.  That I have to use so many qualifiers should lampshade how many different little Alpha Trion items we've gotten.  

Bizarrely enough, in lieu of replicating Alpha Trion's usual look that was introduced way back in the original cartoon, with the Floro Dery-esque geometry and the cape, TItans Return Alpha Trion instead homages two BotCon Alpha Trion toys -- one we didn't get and one we actually did.  The one we didn't get was a redeco of Beast Machines Snarl -- a lion --  back in 2001, chosen because he was a robot mode with a beard.  (Similar to how we got Arcee out of Blackarachnia because that was a Transformer toy that was a lady.)  The one we did get was a Cybertron Vector Prime retool -- a spaceship -- with a new head in 2007.  And so this Alpha Trion transforms into both a lion and a spaceship.  It's like somebody from Hasbro wanted to find out what Alpha Trion turned into (he didn't in the original cartoon, as he was older than the invention of transformation) and saw on TFWiki that his two "real" toys turned into a lion and a spaceship respectively and that was that.  

Titans Return Alpha Trion is a very clunky-looking toy, and it doesn't look particularly elegant.  This seems to have turned a lot of folks off him at the outset, but in-hand, he's... well, he's still clunky-looking and inelegant, but he's fun to transform.  He's just a doofy bearded robot that transforms into a blocky unikitty and a wedge that dubiously claims to be a spaceship.  Like the other Titans Return toys, he has a little dude that transforms into his head, and there's a translucent compartment for him to ride in either mode, or he can sit in Alpha Trion's gun.  

He's weird-lookin' but I like him.  

Before my Combiner Wars Ultra Magnus shipped, we got word that TakaraTomy over in Japan was doing their own Magnus, and it was going to have a bunch of additional paint applications I probably would have done myself (but badly).  In fact, it basically looked perfect.  It had the red legs I prefer my Ultra Magnuses have (a detail from the original toy and the first "season" of More Than Meets The Eye), it painted blue across the pelvis and parts of the shins instead of leaving them bare... there was not a lot to argue with.  It would have to be mine, saving me a lot of time painting my own toy.  

But there was one snag.  

It didn't come with Minimus Ambus!  Japan doesn't *really* get IDW comics over there, even though they're still very popular amongst Japanese fans, and so Minimus Ambus is not really a thing for them.  Instead, TakaraTomy decided to deco up Minimus Ambus as... Alpha Trion, the other bearded Autobot guy in the mythos.  And I guess he pilots Ultra Magnus now for some reason!  Who knows!  There's a two-page comic included, but I am monolingual.  

This is a fun contradiction, in that while Japan's Ultra Magnus is specifically detailed like his MTMTE "season one" IDW comic appearances, he does not come with Minimus Ambus, which is definitely a dealbreaker for me.  

Do I get the perfect Magnus or do I get the pretty-good Magnus who comes with Minimus Ambus?  

I decided to mix and match and get the best of both worlds!  My second Magnus is now here, and I've gifted him the first Magnus's Minimus Ambus, plus all the first Magnus's accessories, so that he gets to have his assembled hammer weapon at the same time as his shoulder missiles and rifles.  (one becomes the other, otherwise)  I have my cake, I'm eating it, I'm living the motherfuckin' Magnus dream.

While American Magnus is in the 1986 Ultra Magnus colors (minus the important-to-me red thighs), with a tealer blue and a milkier white, Japanese Magnus is a darker blue and bleachier white that looks more like the colors from the original cartoon.  His rifles are now white instead of black.  In car carrier mode, his trailer is almost entirely blue, which is truer to the original cartoon's model, rather than the patchwork red and blue of the original toy's.  That I'm sort of lukewarm on, but it's a very weak personal preference as to be negligible.  

The important thing are those red thighs.  

And now I have this spare tiny Alpha Trion to hang out with my other tiny toys!  Maybe he can say hello to The Fallen.  "Hey, in some continuities, we're brothers!" he'll say.  And The Fallen will be like "I wish I were on fire, why aren't I on fire anymore."

But I ramble.