I loved a lot of the Cybertron figs, but
hate the Cyber Key gimmick. Most of the figs I have, I've now managed to rig so that they can be activated without having to summon a mystical switch from Trailerland.
Most of them, like
Excellion,
Skywarp, Ransack, Crumplezone, Evac and GF Starscream, have been a simple case of cutting down a Cyber Key to the bare minimum and supergluing it to the activation button.
Brakedown was a tad more complex.
But for quite a while I was really stumped on how I could trigger the gimmicks on Soundwave and Sideways, and now I've finally got it.
Sideways was the more complicated fix. The biggest problem was that he's basically Autobot by default; I needed a way to keep him in Decepticon mode without having to keep the mechanism forced in.
I wound up removing the spring from the slider and attaching a thumbswitch to it, so I could slide the switch forward to turn him into a Decepticon and trigger the blades, then slide it back to change him back to Autobot.
After taking the slider out, I attached a small piece of thick styrene to the back end, just long enough for the top of it to sit higher than the top of the cannon. Then using a diamond burr, I carved a slot in the cannon top, from the back through to the point where the front of the tab needed to stop.
After reassembling the cannon, I noticed that by sliding the switch forward, it only
partially depressed the release mechanism for the blades, so I took the slider back out and padded it with some pieces of styrene, which I glued on and filed to shape.
Once I'd made sure the mechanism worked properly, I made a thumbswitch, again from thick styrene. To try and stop it from standing out as a blatant add-on, I decided to make it into a pair of tail-wings. Once that was glued on, I painted it black, gave it a few coats of varnish (because let's face it, it
will have to deal with a lot of rubbing), and reinstalled it.
Voila!
I'd actually really like to work out how to make a second face for this guy; it seems off to have him switching factions, when he looks exactly the same for both of 'em. How he fools anyone, I'll never know.
Anywho... Soundwave was actually a bit easier, once I'd worked out how the switching mechanism worked. I was baffled by how the linear movement from the key activated the rotary movement of the door latch. Then I realised the key basically forced its way under the latch and pushed it round.
So, cut out the middleman, then. I made a lever using a strip of thick styrene (wondrous stuff), along with a little knob on the end (more for effect than anything), and glued this to the back of the switch (I use a
very good superglue).
Then it was just a matter of shaving out some plastic from infront of the switch, so as to clear a path for as far as it needed to move. I just shaved a chunk out, tested it, shaved out a bit more, and tested and so on, until there was enough movement to pop the latch.
Again, paint and varnish and we're laughing...