Flashwave wrote:Dr. Caelus wrote:LeAwesome1 wrote:Dr. Caelus wrote:What is the purpose of the hinges on Optimus's calves? They very clearly look like hinges, with metal pins, but they don't do anything.
Because the legs are the same as those from Siege Prime (except some changes with how the wheels work), they carried over from Siege prime. They are used on Earthrise though, if you pop the flaps up all the way it secures the legs a little bit better.
The flaps on the knees are used in the instructions, but the hinges on the backs of the legs (the calves) seem to be totally nonfunctional artifacts, which is puzzling, as a metal pinned part would seem like an expensive inclusion...
For some reason they recycled the blue part of the lower leg (they are flipped from Siege, left leg is right) and like LeAwesome said, bit every other part of that lower leg assembly including the louvres is all new. My only guess is that the hinge is a byproduct of making the wheel assembly fit the original front piece properly, or possibly as a way to make the assembly process smoother in the factory, but I can find no part of mine that is in anyway loose and wants to move. The only other theory is that there is some retool coming down the line that may use either the hinges, the space, or swap out parts in there, explaining why they didnt cast a solid calf piece there.
It's just so weird, because you know the metal pins cost money, as does the additional time workers spend assembling the legs that way. Given how massively they were retooling things already, it's really, really strange they'd leave a money sink like that in there (also strange that they cast those parts in light grey, rather than just matching the blue on the other half of the boot). I almost think it HAS to be related to a retool further down the line, but can't imagine what. Maybe a Powermaster Prime redo?
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