Well eBay's been good to me, and the shelves are a lot clearer so I thought I deserved a treat. I have no other Titanium toys so I can't speak of the line as a whole beyond knowing there's been some Dreamwave characters in it (War Within) and a few G1 Characters done with more authenticity/added articulation.
Ultra Magnus falls into this latter category - with the robot form looking *very* similar to the G1 version - we're talking about the combined trailer/cab version here - the main differences being that the chest is mainly white, with red highlights and the blue shield, the head looks more rounded with shorter ears and the truck cab is visible on his back. The gun is now silver - and can slide into a slot on the shoulder between the shoulders and the cab. The robot has knees, a rotating joint in his thigh, universal hips, a waist, neck, ball jointed shoulders, bending elbows and a swivel just below the elbow. So he's pretty well articulated as a robot.
At this point we need to talk about his thighs. As assembled the panel lines match up on his front. Unfortunately the pieces are cut wrong and the knees bend the wrong way. A fix is easy - unscrew the lower thighs and swap both pieces to the opposite leg making sure the screw holes are to the inside of the leg. The panel lines don't quite match now, but the posability in the knees is greatly improved. 5 minutes if you don't loose the screws.
TF - remove the gun, and missile launchers. Straighten the arms, rotate the forearm (It will turn, v stiff on mine) so the shortest side of the forearm is facing up. Lengthen the arms by pulling them down through the shoulders. Position them at the robot's side. Unpeg the shoulders and fold Magnus backpack over his head to form the truck cab. Fold the shield up Straighten the legs and lock the lower legs together. Compress the legs, and then fold the lower legs forward 90 degrees to form, the rear of the trailer. Fold both sets of shoulders up and lock the arms together forming the upper car deck. Attach missile launchers to the from of the upper deck.
The car transporter looks a bit rougher in it's resemblance to the original. the cab is closer the main body and looks too short. The back looks too wide, and there's a gap at the back of the upper car ramp on the top. But for a straight from big robot version of Magnus it's not bad. Cab does not turn, is fixed in place as are the rear doors.
Overall: good nice toy, bundles of articulation, robot mode looks good, and you can fix it's most major fault yourself. Like it.