The Energon Pub

[Evil Eye]

So I'm very fond of RID Strongarm's design (despite not having watched any RID). Unfortunately, her toy is a hollow mess of a thing with big empty calves and very dull paintwork. So I thought to myself "How abouts I make meself a custom Strongarm?".

Unfortunately, I am faced with a conundrum: I have no idea what mold to convert.

So, my fellow Transtopians, what do you think would be a good mold to use? Ideally I want one that's fairly easy to disassemble so that I'm not removing a trillion pins and rivets. The head isn't a problem as I'll be designing a new one on Shapeways, though a mold with a balljointed neck would be preferable.

I had a few ideas, notably:
Prime Kup: With the addition of a lightbar, this would be a pretty sweet looking police SUV. Plus the mold shares Strongarm's body proportions pretty well, and I actually have the figure. Only problem is that he has some fairly tricky looking rivets here and there.

CW Trailbreaker: Once again, pretty cool SUV mode. I say Trailbreaker rather than Offroad because he has a 5mm socket in place of a hand, enabling for a literal Strongarm mode with the combiner handfootgunthing. Also, it lets her combine!

Just buying the Warrior figure and modifying it to not suck: Given how hollow she is, It'd hardly be difficult to fit some extra parts into her to make her lightly less terrible. I'm thinking back-of-the-leg "doors" to conceal her hollow...ness.

Thoughts?

[Glarryg]

Either the Kup or Trailbreaker you mentioned would work well, depending on whether you want those big shoulder things that Kup has on the sides of his head. I seem to remember someone using the CW Rook/Swindle/Hound mold to make a Strongarm, too.

Glarryg

[no-one]

Have you considered using one of the various Bulkhead figures? The vehicle modes match up pretty nicely and he is a big bruiser just like Strongarm. Maybe the RID voyager version. That one is a lot more square and the chest bits are very manipulable.

The beast hunters version is closer to the size of the warrior class, but would require a ton of tooling to get all the steampunk beast huntery bits off.

Edit: I think retooling the actual Strongarm figure isn't that bad of an idea. The only problem I have with the figure is that the backpack doesn't fold up. Nothing a few hinges wouldn't fix.

[Evil Eye]

Have you considered using one of the various Bulkhead figures? The vehicle modes match up pretty nicely and he is a big bruiser just like Strongarm. Maybe the RID voyager version. That one is a lot more square and the chest bits are very manipulable.

The beast hunters version is closer to the size of the warrior class, but would require a ton of tooling to get all the steampunk beast huntery bits off.

It's a good idea, but A: as you say, there's way too much Beast Huntery stuff on there, and B: my previous experiences with that godawful marbled plastic they used during the BH era have not been pleasant. I'm not sure if the plastic Warrior Strongarm is made of is much better but it can't be much worse than that...stuff.

As for RID Voyager Bulkhead, whilst I like the idea of a Voyager class fembot, both Voyager Bulkheads are a bit too...portly for my liking. I mean I like women with a bit of armour plating on their chassis, but not quite THAT much.

Thanks for the advice though!

To be honest I'm probably going to try and get a Strongarm for cheap when the line goes on deep clearance and collaborate with the wonderful GlauG to upgrade her. I did consider Prime Kup but he's so full of rivets I can't help but wonder if it'd be more trouble than it's worth. Plus, I do like that mold as Kup.