The Energon Pub

I've been guilty in the past of hacking up my 'precious' plastic crack to recreate a vision of a never to be officially made/pipe dream/released transformer.

But where do you/I stop?

A few posts over the last few weeks, maybe the last year have made me come to think about how customising/modifying affects a figures value.

Modifying something like a mass release deluxe figure is totally different than a Masterpiece in my eyes. I've no problem picking up mass released figures at a discount store knowing I'm going to use them for customs. But when some thing rare or expensive I'd rather leave it 100% original.

I very rarely sell any of my TFs as I'm a very specific buyier of what I'm aiming for in my collection, but I do customs as well.

So where is your balance? Even if your in to the even tiniest modification?

SkyWarpsGhost wrote:Modifying something like a mass release deluxe figure is totally different than a Masterpiece in my eyes. I've no problem picking up mass released figures at a discount store knowing I'm going to use them for customs. But when some thing rare or expensive I'd rather leave it 100% original.

I very rarely sell any of my TFs as I'm a very specific buyier of what I'm aiming for in my collection, but I do customs as well.

I will agree with you on mass release figures, where a duplicate can be picked up easily for a couple of quid, then there is less worry in painting that figure.

I wouldnt touch any of my Masterpiece figures!

Funnily enough, I have just bought a few pots of enamel paints from my local Games Workshop (awful place, full of nerds ) with the idea of doing a few touch-ups on a couple of Classics, such as wheel rims and such like.

I havent done any sort of painting for probably 20 years, so I may start on a couple of cheap KOs or Poundland figures?

The Official Classics Minor Mods Thread here I come!

I considered painting MP Grimlock to make him look less plastic, his dino mode would benefit, but for some reason I didn't bother. It certainly wasn't fear of messing it up.

With MP Hot Rod I had to modify him due to all the design flaws.

I have no qualms about modifying expensive figures, maybe because I don't plan on selling them, maybe because my inflated ego tells me I'll make them more valuable.

I don't modify TFs, probably because I'm utterly terrible at it.

But occasionally I paint some Minicons or something. (Painted the PCC ones solid black/silver as classics Targetmasters)

Not sure why, I can't bear to screw around with TFs. I also never take apart Lego sets. (I do have quite a sizable Lego collection, been collecting that from 2004ish - 2007)

But I'll gladly hack up anything else to improve it, say Nerfs or Gundam.

The only modification I've done is switching misassembled parts. But my first foray into "fixing" a broken figure met with disaster.

Arms Micron Shadow Balo is made of clear plastic, as such his clips are more fragile than regular releases. Yes, one of the clips snapped and one is going there. So I asked my wife if I could use her nail glue (really strong stuff I may add). Followed her directions to the letter, gluing the piece together, waited a bit for the glue to settle, then reassembled him.

...eh yeah, the residue hadn't properly dried when I put him back together, so everything is glued in place. The result: Shadow Balo has a stiff leg

Have I mentioned nail glue is pretty strong stuff?

I'm not gonna let that deter me, a couple of figures have pretty loose ball joints that need tightening. Except I'll be using my wife's clear nail polish for that. Just a little bit safer that way

JelZe GoldRabbit wrote:The only modification I've done is switching misassembled parts. But my first foray into "fixing" a broken figure met with disaster.

Arms Micron Shadow Balo is made of clear plastic, as such his clips are more fragile than regular releases. Yes, one of the clips snapped and one is going there. So I asked my wife if I could use her nail glue (really strong stuff I may add). Followed her directions to the letter, gluing the piece together, waited a bit for the glue to settle, then reassembled him.

...eh yeah, the residue hadn't properly dried when I put him back together, so everything is glued in place. The result: Shadow Balo has a stiff leg

By no means am I laughing at your misfortune, but I have to say, reading your post I knew that this was going to be the end result of it. It made me chuckle in that Three Stooges way, where you see a bucket full of water and you know it's only there to fall on someone. As soon as I read nail glue, I knew what was coming next.
Again, not laughing at you, but with you.
*with you*

gavinfuzzy wrote:I don't modify TFs, probably because I'm utterly terrible at it.

But occasionally I paint some Minicons or something. (Painted the PCC ones solid black/silver as classics Targetmasters)

Not sure why, I can't bear to screw around with TFs. I also never take apart Lego sets. (I do have quite a sizable Lego collection, been collecting that from 2004ish - 2007)

But I'll gladly hack up anything else to improve it, say Nerfs or Gundam.

I'm more or less the same way. Adding non-permanent parts onto my TF's is fine, but all that hacking, filing and sawing TF limbs for major modifications is just too unnerving for me.

Repaints are as far as I'll go in "modifying" a TF. But as I have no idea how to disassemble many of the parts in TF's, I had to do a crapload of masking, which is exhausting.

The fact that I have a bit of an OCD when it comes to paint detailing doesn't help make the job any faster, either.

As a customizer I tend to stray away from touching everything or else I'll end up customizing everything xD. Like I'm not going to touch my Armada collection mostly because it is near 100% complete and looks great as is.

Toys in other lines usually don't get touched, but the Generations/FoC toys are the biggest culprit - like I couldn't stand Hasbro's FoC Jazz as it is, I was customizing it the moment I got it out of package. The Combaticons were a joke and... well yeah the entire Generations/FoC line just made me touch up everything.

When we go to bigger figures, as you all are talking about, I really don't have much of a problem. I don't really see myself reselling the figure as they are for my personal collection, and even if I do, what I have done has probably made it better. PG and MG Gundams are extremely expensive and I don't mind touching them up. Buying loose BotCon figures and turning them into different characters are things i'm probably going to end up doing - then there's Masterpieces I want to repaint, third party formers and so forth.

Blurrz wrote:Toys in other lines usually don't get touched, but the Generations/FoC toys are the biggest culprit - like I couldn't stand Hasbro's FoC Jazz as it is, I was customizing it the moment I got it out of package. The Combaticons were a joke and... well yeah the entire Generations/FoC line just made me touch up everything.

Jazz seems to be the most popular candidate for modifications and painting next to FOC Optimus, which says a lot about the figure. Heck, I'm repainting Jazz myself (my first full-on TF repaint, BTW).

Slow pace, but getting there...eventually.

I've always wanted to customize and repaint some of my Transformers as well, but I have no idea where to start and yadda yadda. The other day I had to stop myself because I was looking at the upcoming IDW deluxe Megatron and was thinking that I would only get him, JUST so I could make a classics Banzai-tron from it.

Yet I have no idea how I would do that! I don't have the skills, paint, of money to do that!