The Energon Pub

Did inventory/rotation of my collection the other day, and happened upon my boxed Octane. He's not the mintiest toy, and I hadn't really fiddled with him for a long time, so I figure I'd take him out and clean him up; there was a lot of sticker residue left on him from his now-gone stickers.

When I clean a toy, I usually take it apart completely. Both to get to otherwise unreachable areas, as well as... well, for fun.

As I made my way through the body of him -- upper torso, middle torso and pelvis/legs are the 3 "main chunks" of the body -- I discovered something in the middle torso section. For transformation, you can slide the upper torso forwards, so that the cab section is in level for truck mode. Looking at the connector between the middle torso and the legs, there seems to have been plans on doing the exact same thing for these two sections as well! If you gently "juggle" the legs and the torso, it actually "feels" a bit like a joint, that you just can't figure how to get to move, if you know what I mean.

The idea was -- apparently -- that the pelvic/leg section should be able to slide forward for robot mode, giving him better proportions (the chest reeeeeally sticks out in front), but was aparently abandoned because the toy would get backheavy (or rather: his heels, which are rounded for transformation, aren't too stable). So, the general slide "mechanism" is still in there, they just added 2 small "walls" inside the slide trench to keep the pieces in place.

Seing as this is probably one of the most non-destructive (at least for physical appearance afterwards) mod you can do, I decided to remove the "stops" inside those trenches, and now my Octane looks less gimpy in robot mode. Has some balancing issues, but the "feet" luckily bend a bit to balance him a bit better. If I want him to look "original", I just don't perform that step. Oh, and it doesn't affect any of the other modes in any way.





Now here's the funny part: Looking at the box, the toy used for the photo shoot appears to be able to do the same thing, so I'm guessing that it was done very late in the design progress -- which also explains the "stops" instead of a completely modified and stable connection there.



On top of that, I got to thinking about the 2 pegs on each side of his arms and what they could possibly be good for. They don't line up with the screws on the inside, so they aren't there to add support to the them. Happened to take a look on the extra tanker truck cover, and spotted a hole on the inside back. So he can actually hold all of his accessories (2 shields and 1 gun).

I barely own any G1 toys,only triplechanger i got is a very incomplete blitzwing,i do however like this mod,even though i can't actually "feel" the difference for myself,i'll make sure to try this one if i ever get an octane in hands.

Okay, this may be a bit of a lame question, but things have changed a bit since I was here last: Was this the right section of the forum to post this in?

Yeah, I'd say so.

I'm not sure about the mod myself. I can see why you did it, in terms of bringing the chest in, but it seems to sort of give with one hand and take with the other. It does make the chest look better, but as you noted it also makes him back-heavy, as well as pulling the head out of line.
It's a nice idea, but personally, considering you can only really notice the difference from side-on (even at three-quarters you can't really see it) it's probably not worth it.

On the other hand, like you said, if you do the mod, you've got the extra option, which is never bad.

Now I'm getting the urge to do that Motormaster mod of yours...