The Energon Pub

I received my Auto Assembly 2012 non-attendee pack over the weekend, which included the custom Marlboor Wheeljack head and sticker sheet. Since I was off work today I decided to knock this sucker out. Overall it's a decent conversion kit, but the stickers are pretty bad. I was under the impression the sticker sheet would be along the lines of a Reprolabels set tailor made for the Generations Wheeljack mold, but no, it's an uncut reproduction of the original toy's stickers. I knew the sheet would be uncut, but whatever material they printed these on is a bit on the low quality side. I had several stickers that the top layer of paper, which has the graphics, separated when I was trying to get them started off the backing. Ultimately I found a pretty good system for removing them, but that was after I damaged a couple. Luckily I was able to fix them without too much trouble.

Another issue I encountered was stained plastic. It's always a risk when removing factory paint from a white figure, and sure enough the hood was quite stained by the green and red paint applications. I managed to sand the plastic down with some 600 grit sandpaper, which got rid of the stains but still left a nice smooth surface. The only place I couldn't remove the stains from was the two hood vent details. As you can see I painted them silver, so that still worked out okay. I ended up using Krylon Fusion for the new paint apps and I have to say I'm really happy with how it turned out. I'm glad I went the extra mile and added the black details to the sides of his vehicle mode and completely disassembled his wings so I could properly paint them blue. It was a bit of a pain, but now that it's done I glad I did it. I also removed all the factory silver paint from his exhaust/guns leaving them their base black color.

The best thing, he's not an Action Master! By that I mean he's fully transformable without fear of paint clips. I made sure that there were no new paint applications at any interlocking or rub points. So I should be able to enjoy this guy like any other figure in my collection. I do anticipate having to apply new adhesive to the stickers in the near future, they just aren't very good. Hopefully another company will come along and make a Marlboor set specifically for Generations Wheeljack. I would gladly swap them out.

Anyway here he is:

Ah, I feel for your complaints, but you still did a great job!

Looks pretty awesome to me, El Duque. Nice work!

I want an original so bad and have for the past 6 years or so. One day!

You did an amazing job! I received my kit last Thursday. Can you give me some tips on which paints to purchase?

Looks sharp D'

It's beautiful. I want one. But since you had to hand cut the stickers out anyways, you should have switched the "O" and the "R" to read "Marlboro". The name "Marlboor" was just a way to avoid lawsuits and endorsing tobacco.

Also, paint stains are very easy to get rid of without having to use sand paper. A simple pencil eraser will remove all stains and some more 91% Isobaric alcohol buffing will bring back thew shine to the white plastic. I havent tried this on a Wheeljack yet, but I did it with 2 Red Alerts and successfully removed all the red paint stains.

Rated X wrote:It's beautiful. I want one. But since you had to hand cut the stickers out anyways, you should have switched the "O" and the "R" to read "Marlboro". The name "Marlboor" was just a way to avoid lawsuits and endorsing tobacco.

Also, paint stains are very easy to get rid of without having to use sand paper. A simple pencil eraser will remove all stains and some more 91% Isobaric alcohol buffing will bring back thew shine to the white plastic. I havent tried this on a Wheeljack yet, but I did it with 2 Red Alerts and successfully removed all the red paint stains.

So I can clean up the green and red paint with a pencil eraser?

Nice job, dude. Did you remove the 'wings' to paint them?

I need to get around to doing mine. I got some Scaelextric stickers which have the Marlboro logo and some of the other stickers. I will be using these instead of the supplied sheet, because as you say, it ain't great.

Cool figure and really great job!