As News Editor Scott Moore put it, “FINALLY, someone got payola right.” A day or two ago, Paramount and DreamWorks sent me a transformer toy to pimp Michael Bay’s upcoming Transformers movie, which is pretty much the best example of bribery ever.

The transformer they sent me was Megatron, who’s the villain in the film and will be played by a bunch of flashy CG and will be voiced by Agent Smith. (Megatron looks way different now than he used to. Here’s what he looked like in the cartoon, and here’s what he looks like now. And yes, good call—that face is vaguely anus-y. But at least he’s fared better than Optimus prime, who used to look like this and now looks like this.)

But anyway: THE TOY. Pretty sweet right? Here Megatron is lording over my cell phone, REFUSING TO TAKE SHIT FROM ANYBODY. (“Fuck you, shitty Samsung cell phone!” he’s saying. “You can’t transform into shit!”)

Now I’m going to show you his “transformed” form, in which he is a “Cybertron jet.” (In the ’80s, he just turned into a big gun, which was so totally stupid and useless. Now he’s a jet! Jets rule! So shit yes!) HOWEVER. Please note that it took me no less than 90 MINUTES TO TRANSFORM HIM, and it required the help of two other Mercury staffers (Mr. Scott Moore and Ms. Alison Hallett), both of whom are way smarter than me but who were equally bewildered when faced with the maddening toy—which feels like it’s going to BREAK all the damn time, and is fantastically COUNTER-INTUITIVE, and will make you HATE LIFE, and DOESN’T MAKE ANY SENSE HOW IT TRANSFORMS AND KIDS MUST BE BRILLIANT IN ORDER TO TRANSFORM THESE GOD-FORSAKEN PIECES OF SHIT. And I’m not even going to go into the cryptic, labyrinthine “directions” that mocked us as we tried to turn a big plastic android into a big plastic jet of the Cybertronian persuasion. THIS IS A LOT OF HARD WORK, SO YOU’D BETTER BE IMPRESSED.

Eh? Eh? How about that! Okay. So it’s not that impressive. Never mind.