The Energon Pub

Hi guys, there is some amazing work here in these forums.

Hopefully some of you can give me a few suggestions here, but I'm looking to update a custom combiner set I made 5-6 years ago using various special teams members (Motormaster, Dragstrip, Brawl, Air Raid and First Aid) but this time using actual G1-style figures, mainly classics/universe scale.

I have an idea of what I want and how the figures are to be laid out, but I'm getting stumped in the design stage on ways to securely connect them all and to articulate the joints where they all meet, and was wandering if any of you guys would be willing to impart some wisdom on a good way to approach that problem?

Are there suitable connections on other figures that could be copied/used, or would starting from scratch be a better solution?

Thanks in advance for your time.

often seem to stump them with these questions too. It seems like there is some sort of trade secret to attaching and posing of homemade combiners. I have some of the megablocks sets that had kind of a large pin and socket connection that allow connect/disconnect and rotation. I used one pair to connect the two halfs of the rocket for a Cybertron Omega Supreme that I made out of Cybertron Defense Red alert. Still need to finish the head and paint it. I've also bought another building set and aquired my boy's bionicles for other projects. Depending on what scale you are working with, I'd look into modifying the figures with building set pieces. Sometimes you can find sets cheap at Big Lots and Tuesday Morning, and similar stores. Or perhaps yard sales or posting for sets in online classifieds, or ebay. The mega block sets that I am refering to, came out several yers ago, and the gimmick of the sets was transformable vehicles that build and transform into robots with a little figure to pilot them. Several sections had ratcheting points of rotation, as well as the pin and socket connection. It didn't have any balljoints. Hope thius helps a little. If you come up with another solution, please let me know, as I haven't started on my combiner projects yet. Still stuck in the need time, space, and more planning phase.

I think the issue of combining the figures can be solved in a fairly straightforward way - use existing combination ports and connectors like the Energon ones, for example.

Articulation is a little more tricky, but seeind as the Energon combiner ports also have articulation, if you used them you'd be killing two birds with one stone.

Alternatively, you could use some building block type parts for the combination, but I'd recommend attatching those to parts like joints that are already articulated.