Transmythic Ironclaw

from Fuzor Terragator

Continuing my Transmythic kitbashes, I fiddled with Terragator for a while before finally realizing I could make him into a reasonably convincing Hodag. While most websearches on "Hodag" result in a caving group or a country music festival, here's the Rhinelander History Page, with information on the Hodag and its origins. As you can see if you go to the site, I only approximated the true beastie's look, limited both by Terragator's huge shell and long snout.

(2018 update: That link is dead, but now Wikipedia exists, and it has a decent page on the Hodag.

Most of the sculpting work involved smoothing out the shell and adding the fearsome row of horns along the back, plus reworking the entire head. I fashioned the head horns separately and later glued them in place, to avoid drooping while the putty hardened.

Appearances aside, I painted this toy quite extensively. The Hodag is green, but not quite the green that Terragator is, and I couldn't really match Terragator's colors anyway. I also painted over the bony parts with ivory paint to match the new horns I'd added. The red used on the eyes and inside the gun was yet another that claimed to be metallic red but fell short.

Ironclaw, so named because the original hoax-critter had claws of real iron, remains fully poseable and transformable. A coat of nail polish topcoat on some of the softer paints helps in this, although the green paint is durable enough on its own.

MAXIMAL: Ironclaw
Beast Mode: Hodag
Function: Forest Warrior
Motto: "Da Predacons goin' down, yah der hey!"

Granted the form of a northwoods myth by Megatron's datatrax, Ironclaw is short, feisty, tenacious and feisty. But most especially, he's feisty. Between his snapping jaws, his body covered in razor-sharp horns, his iron claws and his thick hide, Ironclaw's pretty dangerous even in beast mode. Especially if cornered...his stubby legs allow for some surprisingly large leaps when he attacks. In robot mode, the double-barrelled shotgun nuilt into his tail and his leathery shield make for an awesome combination, as he is never without cover. In melee, he can use his beast mode jaws or impale foes on the horns of either his shield or his gun. For all his ferocity and power, he's very unassuming in noncombat situations. When others brag about their power, he usually dismisses them with a short snippet of northwoods humor...which almost no one else understands through his thick accent. Yah der hey.

STR 8 INT 5 SPD 4 END 8 RNK 4 COUR 9 FRP 8 SKL 6 Avg 6.75

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