Due to it’s hodge podge origins in various Japanese toy lines, primarily Diaclone and Microman, the Transformers picked up a few less practical alt modes in it’s early days. The most well known is Soundwave’s cassette player. Perceptor is one of those characters with a less conventional (ie not a car or a plane) modes with his Microscope mode. The previous Generations remake of Perceptor changed things a bit giving him a Snow truck alternate mode instead of his traditional Microscope. Titans Return has been all about keeping with the designs of the original toys as much as possible, with updated modern engineering, so Perceptor is once again, a Microscope.
You could argue that he’s actually a sort of medical bay for the Titan Masters however, since the stage of the microscope is designed for a Titan Master to lay in to be examined by the scope. The scope itself is functional as a microscope, though it’s extremely low power and kind of hard to look through due to it’s small size. If you put say, a finger in front of it, you will get an enlarged image of your fingerprint however, which is a nice touch.
The overall design is very reminiscent to the original Perceptor toy from the 80s, though he’s quite a bit smaller, the original figure was somewhere between modern Deluxe and Voyager sizes. His transformation is where a lot of the flaws come through. It’s simple enough, but the sliding mechanism for the microscope feels extremely stiff and prone to breaking. I have not broken one, it just very much feels like a part that could easily BE broken if care isn’t given. There are alsoa lot of unused extra bits on his body for the undocumented Tank Mode
The original Perceptor had an attack mode which amounted to folding him into a square and using the scope as a tank canon. There are definitely vestigial bits for something similar to be done on the Titans Return toy, but the instructions do not show anything about how to properly transform him into a tank. There are extra flip out treads, extra flipping parts on his chest, extra tabs on his legs and shoulders. It’s even a great way to better incorporate the little Titan Master drivers into the mode. It’s just not documented, which is kind of tragic.
Aside from the missing Tank Mode, I really enjoy this figure. I’ve always been partial to Perceptor because of his goofy Microscope mode, though I can see how this may be seen as boring by some people. The microscope actually having some very basic functionality just makes this guy even more interesting and good in my book.
