Customs and Other Stuff

So I think it's time to finally share some pictures of my completed Metroplex! This first picture is Metroplex as I got him (almost): yellowed, broken waist, tatty stickers and missing most of his accessories:

He was missing his chest ramp as well but I wasn't prepared to pull it out just for the photo. So the first thing I did was to buy the accessories he was missing (I managed to find a lot on eBay which included non-yellowed legs plus the chest ramp), plus repro stickers. I did a (bad) job on repairing his waist and this is what I ended up with:

I don't think it looks too bad in this photo but that waist is wood! (From an old sofa!!!). Thanks to Jin Saotome Dangerous Toys website I later discovered Hobby Link Japan and basically how to go about this project so I started again.

I liked the extra height that the replacement waist gave so I decided to keep that idea, I then designed knees with swivels thighs, elbows with swivels wrists, articulated hands (from Jin's website), plus a ball joint head.

From previous experience I'd found that I find it's really hard to sculpt cubes or cuboids from epoxy putty so I made the pieces I wanted from polystyrene (easy to cut to size), made a rubber mold and then casted the pieces. It took a bit of filing, filling and sanding but it worked fairly well. I then used ball joints to give the movement.

Despite Metroplex having a broken waist I didn't want to permanently change the figure so I designed the pieces to be non-permanent. By undoing a few screws, etc, all the pieces are removable. (I did alter the legs though as I had a spare pair.)

So here's Metroplex in his restored non upgraded glory:

Metroplex now has knees and elbows so is capable of slightly more dynamics poses than arms up/arms down. So here is the finished item:

I dread to think how long this has taken me but I'm very glad to have finished! He's now posed on my shelves with some WST.

So here's a couple of other much smaller things I've done. Firstly Terradive from the Hunt for the Decepticons line, it's an awesome mold but I wasn't sure how to fit him into my Classics collection so I came up with the idea of making him a minion of Unicron (I bought 3). I removed the Decepticon insignias, painted the white bits silver and gave them a black wash, and then finished them with some Unicron faction stickers:

I'm a big fan of the Real Gear line, in particular Booster X12 aka Laserbeak, it seemed wrong that Buzzsaw didn't get the same treatment so I pulled out my gold paint:

Speaking of the HFTD line, it also featured a certain Bludgeon. I thought his head was too movie looking so I made my own by making a resin copy of MOTU Skeletor's head and painting it silver. I've since bought HeadRobots upgrade as well so he's also going to get a new sword:

As I've mentioned previously, I love the Hearts of Steel steampunk asthetic, so I felt inspired to pick up a few ROTF Ransacks and paint them as the seekers. Pretty rubbish robot mode but the alt mode is decent enough. I made some machine gun weapons as well:


I'm going to be working on some Terrorcon customs soon, pictures in several years!

Nearly There!

I am now on the verge of finishing my Metroplex custom parts! Created extra bits for the arms and legs so that they can bend, as well as swivel (thighs/wrists), I've made a waist part so he's a bit taller, and I've made a neck and hands so he can look around and wiggle his fingers!

I'm very happy with how it's looking, I've finished all the filing and now he's ready to paint. Quite literally, I've just washed the dust off and he's just drying. I reckon pictures next week!

I've been working on it for at least 6 months so it feels like a bit of a milestone, I won't be hanging up my paintbrush for long though as I've got a load of Kabaya kits to be putting together - WST scale Predacons, Hun-Gurrr, Star Saber and God Ginrai. Should look pretty awesome together. Talking of WST, looks like we're getting Sixshot soon so he'll display very nicely with an articulated Metroplex (ala the IDW comics). We're also getting a Kabaya Victory Leo soon (which was my reason for getting Star Saber), they'll display very nicely with Countdown's base (ala the Victory cartoon).

Customs aside, there's not been much doing in Transformers land recently, the club's Runabout and Runamuck look awesome and I'll be signing up just to get them. There's NYCC next week so hopefully we'll hear about some more Generations stuff, if only the repaints hinted at through the instructions. I've got the FansProject Insecticons sitting in my BBTS pile of loot as well as Perfect Effect's Reflector, so once Doctor Strange (finally) arrives I'll ship and let you know what I think.

Speaking of which I've seen his wavemates in the UK so BBTS has really fallen behind - beaten by UK (regular) retail. Shocking! I found Apocalypse recently and with Mister Sinister on the way it's looking good with all the X-men villains, I'd really like to see Omega Red soon though. Hopefully we'll get a bit more Marvel Universe news at NYCC.

I'm going to rearrange my collection next week, I've currently got lots of Transformers rammed together so I'm going to put some of them away and space things out a bit, as well as displaying some things I've got which have never been displayed. Honestly, photos soon!

Convention Season!

SDCC 2011 is next week so I thought it would be a good time to talk about the year so far, Botcon and how everything's going.

So, not much doing at Botcon for the Classics verse collector, it was all about the third party stuff - it seems like every company under the sun is doing minibots, iGear are doing some particularly interesting stuff, hinting at doing the entire cast of IDWs LSTOT Wreckers series. I'm listening....... (Although it's only really Topspin and Twintwist I'm interested in.) Fansproject are doing a 'Heartmaster', which may or may not be War Within Grimlock. If they did an entire set of WW Dinobots then that could be very interesting indeed.

Since my last post I've completely caught up on all Transformers I want - got Movie Powerglide (I'll see how those third party efforts get on) and all the Generations stuff. Am looking out for a HFTD Tomhawk for use as a custom, I've seen his wavemates so whether I can track him down remains to be seen. I think I'll hold on for SDCC to see whether a Western market repaint is on the cards - Vortex seems to be Takara only.

Am really looking forward to Doctor Strange and Invisible Woman, will be great to finish the Fantastic 4 and original Defenders. SDCC Sentinel will be awesome too, shame it's not going to be at US retail.

I've decided to start collecting (Marvel) movie figures so I can have unmasked MU figures - Wolverine, Deadpool, Thor, Nick Fury, etc. (Okay, so Fury is already unmasked and Thor just wears a helmet but you get the idea.) Hoping we see Tony Stark, Rhodey and Black Widow soon........... I made a custom cigar for Fury which (imo) looks pretty good. Collection pics soon.

Specifically collection pics when I finish customising G1 Metroplex; when I first got him he had the standard waist break, years before I knew about ball joints and epoxy I did a repair which was a bit rubbish. So I'm doing a much better job plus giving him a few other 'improvements'!

I will update this blog after SDCC with my thoughts..........

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So, almost a month later, how did SDCC measure up? Rather well actually! No more Transformers news, or even any (good for me) DC news but a plethora of awesome Marvel Universe with a sprinkling of Gremlins.

We already knew NECA were doing some rather good mogwai figures, what we didn't know was the new gremlins - George, Lenny, Daffy, flasher Gremlin and even electricity Gremlin. Nice one NECA!
Marvel Universe then, for me possibly the greatest announcement of figures in one go since the line debuted. Psylocke, Kang, Hercules, Jubilee, Beast, Scarlet Witch, Fin Fang Foom (Masterworks!), Kraven the Hunter, Mr Sinister and She-Hulk. Plus Angel and a new Hulk.

I reckon Mr Sinister just about rounds off all the key X-men villains. Beast, Psylocke and Jubilee help to almost finish off the X-men (Professor X and Rogue where are you!?). Fin Fang Foom rounds off all the ML BAF figures that I really want to see in MU. (I'd like to see MODOK but I think Giant Battles is probably a better size point for him.)

So there we go, a much more exciting SDCC than Botcon (it's unfortunate when the third parties outdo Hasbro), guess once the third movie's all wrapped up we can get back to some Generations goodness.

Here's looking forward to Toy Fair 2012!!!

New Horizons

Howdy! So here we are a quarter of the way through the year, feels like it's barely got going! Generations is almost done pre-Movie, we've had Toy Fair, Marvel Universe is looking exciting and there's some awesome third party stuff on the horizon. I've tried to be a bit more careful about my spending so far this year and aside from some (quite) big spending on WST custom boxes, I've managed to achieve that. Combined with selling a load of stuff on eBay it's looking good.

So, Toy Fair; for me the most exciting news was Jazwares announcement of some 3.75" Mortal Kombat figures (in addition to the previously announced Street Fighter figures). I'm hoping for the entire cast of MK Trilogy and Streetfighter II! Pre-orders went up on BBTS last night for the first wave of MK - most of the classic and robot ninjas plus modern Raiden and Johnny Cage. That's about a third of the way there already!

Also announced were a good few Marvel Universe figures - Invisible Woman (finally!), Doctor Strange and Quicksilver. Great stuff, although we won't be seeing most of them until Autumn. There's also a scout sized Powerglide coming in the Transformers Movie line which looks Classics style, which is lucky as I was just weighing up the benefits of Ultra Universe Powerglide.........

Had an amazing delivery from BBTS (and only got marginally screwed on custom charges!). Most of the Generations Figures plus Wave 16 of DC Universe (Azrael Bats and Bane yay!). Great to finally catch up on those figures, plus got Wheeljack very shortly after he was released. Some excellent figures which I'm slowly opening. I found Windcharger here as well, very strange that he's so hard to find in the US but relatively easy here. Makes a change!

I think the only other news to talk about is the large number of very interesting/exciting third party figures/Knock-Offs on the way. From FansProject we've got Classics style Insecticons and hopefully Broadside (it's been on the cards for a while). Perfect Effect are releasing Reflector (they've really got those small figures nailed), Mastermind Creations are doing some brilliant stuff with their Heart of Steel line - Shockwave and the Insecti-train. Shockwave makes me want to cry with happiness - potential Classics stand-in, Steampunk aesthetics and a boat (other than Seaspray, I have no water based Transformers).

TFClub are doing a Classics style Devastator which looks great, but I don't think I can justify the cost (rumoured to be $90 a pop) - I've already got actual (Energon) Classics Devy plus the Crazydevy upgrades for the G1 version. If FansProject do an upgrade then I'd be far happier. The Hybrid style Dinobots from Justitoys are apparently still on the cards (just hope they're a decent size).

Finally KOToys are doing KOs of the Japanese exclusive dino cassettes, delighted if I can actually get hold of those. Also they're doing a Universe Sunstreaker/Sideswipe kit with all the heads to make it into the various characters including G1 Breakdown (presumably using the Botcon head) which is pretty sweet. I'd rather it was a straight up knock off but a kit could be fun.

So there we go, exciting times ahead plus all the repaints of the Generations figures that have been hinted at through the instructions - Ratbat, Gears/Skids, Reflector and more. Hurrah!