The Energon Pub

Ok I was going through a nice lil haul of Transformers I got from my local charity shop and found Power Core Combiners Pinpoint in there without his larger buddy and wasn't sure what to do with him as I didn't think he was worth much on his own.

He looks like this.

Image from TFWiki. Obviously.


After playing about with it a bit earlier I realised I could make a decent update of Hot Rod's Targetmaster buddy Firebolt. Unfortunately I then found, while browsing TFwiki some more, that it's already been done officially at least twice. But I looked at them some more and felt they didn't look enough like Firebolt in my opinion so I had a go anyways and tried to make mine more unique by making some modifications to the shape in a couple places. I cut off the posts on his knees as I had no reason to hold him via that as it looks stupid, and I glued new kneepads on which are actually the toes of a junker RotF Sideways I found in the charity shop. I felt they looked pretty cool as kneepads and as the back part of the gun. I reused the posts as barrels on the guns (with a lil extra bit taken from a GI Joe assault gun sight) after cutting off the rather pathetic looking gun 'barrels' the figure had. I glued a bit of crazy straw into the port on his chest to make a handle and now he can be held in gun mode to have the basic shape of the original G1 Firebolt. Then gave it a paintjob (a bit rough but I wanted him to look a bit weathered and battleworn rather than all new. May have overdone it but hey I can always do it again). I like that he has three lil silver tubey things on each arm quite similar to Hot Rod. So yeah, this lil useless Pinpoint figure is now my rendition of my fave Targetmaster gun. For now he's partnered with Springer til I come up with a good Hot Rod of a similar size. I think I will tidy up the paint a bit though now I can see it magnified thruogh photos but hey it's not too bad I think.

Ok I have cleaned up the paintjob a bit and will posts pics of 'robot' mode later on but for now I wanted to show a couple of photos of something I added to it. Firebolts for Firebolt!





They are cotton buds (or q-tips, whatever), with superglue over the cotton bit to make it hard, snipped off one end and inserted toothpick to make a small lil post to go into Firebolt's barrels (the ones originally made by chopping off the posts from his legs and sticking them as the gun bits) and painted a orange/yellow mix to look flamey. Completely unplanned but I'm really pleased with how they look for my first go.

Still very amateurish but just working with what I got and experimenting and trying to learn new things.

What is that attached to Springer's gun? Is it ROTF Jetfire's gun?

I had to carefully look through each photo to figure out what you were looking at. I hadn't realised that was in any of them.
I don't know where the gun came from to be honest. I found it in one of those random trays of toys & bits in a charity shop ages ago and chopped a couple small bits of it and stuck a small slice of crazy straw to make a 5mm handle to use with most Transformers.
I have seen it pop up elsewhere in a RoboCop custom and asked where the customiser got the gun from but he didn't know either.
http://www.figurerealm.com/viewcustomfigure.php?FID=58339

Updated the custom Firebolt I made two years ago and in that time I've got me a MP Hot Rod (KO with Toyhax stickers) and another Pinpoint for comparisons so here's some new pics. Still need to smooth out the barrels a bit but yeah it's cool and I prefer it to the Firebolt that comes with the new AKOM redeco of Hot Rodimus plus I like that mine can swing his barrels over onto his shoulders in robot/nebulan mode.

How come you prefer it to the MP version (which originally came with Hasbro's sad excuse for a release of the first MP Roddy)? The MP version's head, torso, and arms at least actually match up with the detailing of Firebolt's original toy and animation design. Same for the version that came with Legends Targetmaster Rodimus. Yours, just the head passes as a match. You'd need to rework the arm and torso detailing at the very least.

ZeldaTheSwordsman wrote:How come you prefer it to the MP version (which originally came with Hasbro's sad excuse for a release of the first MP Roddy)? The MP version's head, torso, and arms at least actually match up with the detailing of Firebolt's original toy and animation design. Same for the version that came with Legends Targetmaster Rodimus. Yours, just the head passes as a match. You'd need to rework the arm and torso detailing at the very least.

Um. I like this gun shape better (particularly the 3 silver bits on each arm that remind me of Hot Rod's exhaust arm guns but short and at an angle... and that it has what looks very much like one of them car supercharger thingies on top of the gun again showing a similarity to Hot Rod), I like the robot/man shape better (despite lack of elbow articulation), the cannons over the shoulders, and the fact it didn't cost me a whole expensive Hot Rod figure I do not want? I'm not an master customiser. Just a fan with not a lot of money or skill and just do what I can and I think I did alright. I don't really consider Firebolt's toy or toon design to be exactly iconic or cool enough to match exactly anyways and considering most of it is black how can you really tell?

Thanks for the encouraging words.
This be second thread of mine regarding customising a Hot Rod toy's guns that you've been all picky on.

I suppose it is, at that. I suppose in this thread's case I could argue that without slaving to match the original design it can't really be called MP, but that would be retroactive reasoning...
Looking at it, I've somewhat become what I hated, someone who mercilessly picks apart any flaw in a custom either in concept or in execution... Admittedly I haven't gone to the extreme of calling a paintjob where brush strokes can be seen/that isn't perfectly smooth "Destroying a toy", but to a degree I've still been acting like the people who treated my customization efforts like dirt over on TFW2005 and Rangerboard...

Your paintwork is pretty decent, as are the modifications to the figure. Way better than my early endeavors hands-down. You did good work making this. IMO he's loads better than Fansproject's excuse for a Firebolt

Heh. Oh I would never class anything I do as a Masterpiece in either terms of art quality or the TF brand but I put MP/Gen cos it can work with both styles of TF figures as you see in the early pictures that Springer figure is holding it and in the newer pics MP Hot Rod is. I had the original Targetmaster Hot Rod as a kid and so Hot Rod toys often feel a bit 'incomplete' to me without Firebolt and so just made my own. I'd never claim for it to be perfect but I like it and I do prefer it to the official one myself for the points I mentioned (obviously the official one is a much cleaner ,refined product) and as usual with a self-custom adds a bit of a personal touch to a collection.

Destroying a toy with noticable brush strokes? Wow. Those guys sound like jerks. Every customiser, every artist, everyone who develops any kind of skill in fact has to start somewhere and useful advice is good and just plain nasty negative comments are not helpful to anyone. Am sorry you've been on the rough end of that too.

Yeah, that kind of nastiness sucks... To make matters worse, a lot of the people doing it were staff, so my getting defensive in response tended to get me punished.

You may not consider it perfect, but it's a decent job all the same. And like I said, beats the pants off Fansproject's.