The Energon Pub

[Mykltron]

The Dark of the Moon toy line was riddled with poor designs and leader class Ironhide was no exception. A chest gun gimmick that took up loads of space that could have been put to better use, a left arm cannon that not only didn't look like Ironhide's gun but was too blocky for anything from the three films and knees that only had two positions (slightly bent and slightly more bent) mean that if I wasn't a kitbasher I would never have bought this figure. Oh yes, and they made him blue from the waist down as if he was wearing jeans even though he's entirely black in the films.

The fixes:

Added a ball joint neck.
Made the faceplate removable. It now attaches to his face with magnets and can be stored on his back.
Removed the weapons from his chest and legs as they aren't in the film.
Added wires, details and a rhinestone to the right arm cannon.
Removed the left arm cannon, replacing it with a scratchbuilt weapon covered with wires, details and rhinestones. The roof panel from the left arm can be stored on his back.
Increased the range of motion of his knees. They can almost straighten, and bend to approximately 90°.
Allowed the wheels to fold further inside the chest, allowing a greater range of motion for the shoulders.
Cracked the windshield.
Finally, a paint job including realistic chips and scuffs.




NO.



Without mask:


With mask:


















Want to see more pictures? Click here for the full gallery.

[RhA]

Well... Dammit.

[Mykltron]

Well... Dammit.

Is that a compliment?

[SKYWARPED_128]

You took a fig I hated, and managed to make it into something I'm now contemplating whether I should buy or not...if Hasbro made it THIS nice out of the box, of course. Well, that pretty much makes it a winner in my book. Kudos in making what Hasbro SHOULD have made in the first place. The ability to move one's head is the right of all leader class Transformers, after all.

BTW, I think the face mask has some silver accents to it in the CG renders.

One more thing: where on earth did you get all those wonderful rhinestones for your cannons and headlights?

[Mykltron]

You took a fig I hated, and managed to make it into something I'm now contemplating whether I should buy or not...if Hasbro made it THIS nice out of the box, of course. Well, that pretty much makes it a winner in my book. Kudos in making what Hasbro SHOULD have made in the first place. The ability to move one's head is the right of all leader class Transformers, after all.

LOL, yes, it IS rather important! It wouldn't have been difficult to make this figure good when they were designing it. Kitbashing it was quite hard but designing it correctly would have been easy.

BTW, I think the face mask has some silver accents to it in the CG renders.

Yes, there is some silver on the mask, it just doesn't show in the pictures.

One more thing: where on earth did you get all those wonderful rhinestones for your cannons and headlights?

Ebay, of course! I had a very difficult time finding them until I discovered the word 'rhinestone'. People sell them in single colour packs and multicolour packs.

[SKYWARPED_128]

LOL, yes, it IS rather important! It wouldn't have been difficult to make this figure good when they were designing it. Kitbashing it was quite hard but designing it correctly would have been easy.

LC Ironhide is IMO a victim of sloppy designing. It actually has a redundant lever for the light-up gimmick in the form of a lever in the back of his neck/head, which preposterously inhibits head articulation if it has any in the first place.

I keep wondering if they had later abandoned the lever idea and opted for the more conventional feature on his chest, but forgot to get rid of the lever.

Whoever designed Ironhide deserves to be put on latrine duty at one of their Vietnamese factories for a week.

Ebay, of course! I had a very difficult time finding them until I discovered the word 'rhinestone'. People sell them in single colour packs and multicolour packs.

Ah, my old nemesis.... I've always been hesitant in buying anything from ebay, but something as cheap as rhinestones might be a good start to ease my phobia.

Mind you, I do buy from reputable online stores, but individual sellers just make me hesitant for some reason.

[Mykltron]

LC Ironhide is IMO a victim of sloppy designing. It actually has a redundant lever for the light-up gimmick in the form of a lever in the back of his neck/head, which preposterously inhibits head articulation if it has any in the first place.

Sloppy or lazy. I couldn't agree more.

Do you have this figure? In case you didn't know, he DOES have neck articulation: if you twist his head to the side really hard you can break the glue seal with a sickening crunch and then him head turns with no problem. Yes, they gave him a turning head then glued it in place.

[SKYWARPED_128]

LC Ironhide is IMO a victim of sloppy designing. It actually has a redundant lever for the light-up gimmick in the form of a lever in the back of his neck/head, which preposterously inhibits head articulation if it has any in the first place.

Sloppy or lazy. I couldn't agree more.

Do you have this figure? In case you didn't know, he DOES have neck articulation: if you twist his head to the side really hard you can break the glue seal with a sickening crunch and then him head turns with no problem. Yes, they gave him a turning head then glued it in place.

I was tempted to get him when the fig was initially announced, but the bad reviews he got made me pass on him.

Yeah, I heard about the glued neck thing.

Apparently, it was to prevent kids from accidentally disconnecting the wires since they're supposed to be pretty fragile. Heard of more than a few collectors who had to return their Ironhide several times because the lights didn't work due to loose wires.

[ZeldaTheSwordsman]

Gravedigging because I found this custom on a Google search for customized DotM Ironhides in order to get some inspiration to poke at my own a bit more, and it was cool enough that I felt like commenting. I think you did an excellent job on the repainting and other modifications. I especially like your custom left cannon for him and the storage solution for it. It's not quite the same as having a collapsible accurate cannon that stores in the arm, but it gets a lot closer than the Fans Want It cannon that can't store anywhere. I'd say you've done him better than both HasTak and 3P have.

LOL, yes, it IS rather important! It wouldn't have been difficult to make this figure good when they were designing it. Kitbashing it was quite hard but designing it correctly would have been easy.

Yeah, there's a lot about him that misses the mark. Although for my money, as someone who wound up not getting him til well after the fact... probably the worst decision was the struts for his hood assemblies attaching via frigging ball joints. And unlike RotF Optimus' feet or Jetfire's JTFR panels, there's not even a 3D print replacement kit available yet (more's the pity).

LC Ironhide is IMO a victim of sloppy designing. It actually has a redundant lever for the light-up gimmick in the form of a lever in the back of his neck/head, which preposterously inhibits head articulation if it has any in the first place.

I keep wondering if they had later abandoned the lever idea and opted for the more conventional feature on his chest, but forgot to get rid of the lever.

I wouldn't say it's entirely redundant. At least if I recall correctly, it's for activating the eye lights without needing to deploy the big chest cannon or activating the other sounds. Which is a nice thought, although were I designing him I would have opted to use a button for that task so that the lever could solely be used for raising and lowering the mouthplate (a la Cybertron Optimus Prime). It's just about perfectly set up for that - all it needs is to be disconnected from the electronics and a bit of trimming for clearance.

Ironhide is a victim of "Leader class am supposed to have electronics", those electronics getting prioritized above other features in the design (something that also impacted Leobreaker and Starscream back in Cybertron), and the insistence on powering those electronics with AA batteries instead of anything smaller. These factors also had a negative impact on Movie 1 Leader Megs (who has a battery box butt, which may have been a factor in his legs not forming the jet tail as they should), RotF Leader Megs (wanna know why his right arm doesn't have an elbow joint? It's so that the missile trigger can also hit a sound button in tank mode ), and RotF Jetfire.

Do you have this figure? In case you didn't know, he DOES have neck articulation: if you twist his head to the side really hard you can break the glue seal with a sickening crunch and then him head turns with no problem. Yes, they gave him a turning head then glued it in place.

Yep. Doubtless to protect the wires, as has been said here already. I don't blame them for being a bit nervous on that score given the wiring repair I had to make on an HFTD Starscream, although smarter design (either forgoing the LED or putting it on a separate mount that the head rotated around) would have removed the need to worry. I have broken that loose on mine, along with gutting the electronics.

Now, as for my thoughts on the base figure. First, the blue. To start with, let's look at Movie 1 Voyager Ironhide.

Very minimal presence of blue, almost everything opaque is cast in black plastic. Which together with his only having a standard paintjob leaves him looking a lot less detailed than he really is.


It takes the extra paint of the Premium Series release to solve this. And, well, that's a bit of a problem.



The lack-of-contrast issue was sidestepped on regular RotF Ironhide by making his main color a screen-inaccurate dark gray, but would recur on Recon Ironhide (who was back to being mainly black).


This lack of contrast is a problem Jetfire would also have shared without a premium paintjob. So to counter that, they used dark blue as a secondary color (probably because it was close-ish to a dark gunmetal).



This idea would be brought over to Ironhide for the HFTD toy, with a lighter blue. It's not the most accurate, but it provides much-needed contrast and Ironhide's gunmetal parts do have a bluish tinge (especially in renders).

Speaking of the HFTD toy, I believe it was a design influence on the DotM Leader. It makes some similar engineering choices (less the many additional sacrifices made for the DotM toy's electronics), and its having Ironhide's turret as the left cannon seems a probably culprit for the DotM toy's odd, inaccurate left cannon.