Paints, Repaints and Kitbashes, Oh My! Transformers Quickbashes - Minor Mods Last Updated 7/29/24 Target Optimus Prime's "ballards" added. These are projects where I had to do some sort of physical modification, or built an accessory, or otherwise did something to change the toy other than just the colors. Some also involve painting, but unlike Lesser Kitbashes the work tended to focus on only part of the toy. Sometimes it's as simple as "I drilled a hole here so that a part could attach in a new way."

• Saber: A robot mode for the Star Saber team. It's kinda weird, but actually works without needing any physical modifications to the toys. I painted some red bits on to highlight the eyes and mouth. Pre-2008.
• Unsafety Thrust: Thrust's missile launchers were modified to make them unremovable and thus not a choking hazard. As any under-3 child in my apartment would probably find hundreds of ways to kill itself, I removed these launchers and added new pegs using bits of Lego vine. Pre-2008.
• Voyager Animated Megatron: A strut on Megatron's cannon was strengthened to meet safety concerns, but this impeded function. So I made it less safe. June 2008.
• Animated Bumblebee: Another safety mod resulted in Bumblebee's stingers not being fully stowable, so I carved out the blockages. June 2008.
• Animated Blitzwing: As molded, TF:A Blitzwing has a pair of pegs that go into U-shaped slots rather than proper holes. I used Apoxie Sculpt to block off the sides and make the slots into holes, improving stability in jet mode. September 2008.
• Animated Swoop's Mace: The flames-pop-out gimmick was neutered, possibly because it made the toy fail a drop test. I restored it. September 2008.
  • What to cut.
  • How it looks when completed.
• AT-TE Thigh mod: Altered the thigh swivel on the Star Wars Crossovers Transformers AT-TE to be less child-safe but also less likely to fall apart. February 2009.
• Lego PCC Peg: A 1x1 Lego brick is about the right size to fit into a Power Core Combiner limb's PCC port, but I had to shave it down a bit to do the job. August 2010.
• Double Clutch mods: The Power Core Combiners Double Clutch was, to put it frankly, a mess. So I did a bunch of mods to mine to try to fix mine. And I took some other pictures along the way.
  • The Problem
  • Another view of The Problem
  • My Solution (dremeled shoulders)
  • Power Up Mode after mods
  • Double Clutch fan robot mode
  • Paint Tweaked vehicle mode
• Mudslinger Fan Modes: Mudslinger and the Destructicons didn't need any mods, but I found some fan modes.
  • Power Up Fan Mode with Backwind as a chestplate.
  • Hauler Drone AT-ST using the Lego PCC peg to keep it stable.
• G1/TF:A Bumblebee: I got a keychain G1 Bumblebee, slightly reshaped the face, added a roof light and painted it in the TF: Animated Bumblebee scheme. I also did some very minor touchups to the TF:A Legends Bumblebee seen in the comparison shots. November 2010.
  • Robot Mode
  • Vehicle Mode
• Human Alliance Icepick: Prabal Nandy pointed out to me that a frozen joint at the base of the neck strut could be freed up, providing a new mode possibility. June 2011.
  • The part that needs removing
  • Part removed
  • Cockpit revealed
  • Some possible mech suit modes
• Pinpointer bird: While messing about with Pinpointer, the Targetmaster-ish companion of Human Alliance Tailpipe, I realized it could be made to look kind of like a wingless bird. After a quick proof of concept I went ahead and took pieces from a cheapo model kit (I pick such things up every so often for parts) and made proper wings. I used wings and weapon loads from a Fiat G.91. July 2011.
  • "Jet" and "Bird" modes. The only modification to the base toy was adding silver paint to the guns.
  • Attached to Tailpipe.
• Kre-O Mods: These aren't full rebuilds, just ways of doing something with the leftover pieces of various Kre-O sets. I add as many as I can onto the main model, then do something with the leftovers. I may also rearrange for better stability.
  • Bumblebee (small): Rebuilt the forearms to look more substantial, rearranged the backpack to be a lot more stable.
  • Jazz vehicle mode: I put a few more pieces on the car mode (not really visible here) and built a mini-walker from the rest for Kreon Jazz.
  • Jazz robot mode: I added a few bits onto the robot mode (the windows are more visible from the back and made a hovercraft thingy out of the plentiful remaining pieces
  • Hello Jazz! I merged a Jazz kit with a Hello Kitty car kit. January 2014.
    • Before pic: What the sets look like when built according to the instructions.
    • Front view: I think I used more of the Hello Kitty car pieces than Jazz's regular robot mode used of his vehicle bits.
    • Other views
  • Robot Roamers: Not actually Kre-O, or even official Transformers products, but they have knockoff Optimus Prime heads, so I'll put this here. Like many Kre-O sets, the shoulders are way too low on the robot modes of these, so I tweaked them (the one on the right moreso than the one on the left) to address this. September 2018.
• Legends Tribarrel: The CostCo Battle Ops Bumblebee from which I got the Chrome Bumblebee also had a plain old Legends Mudflap. I decided to get some automotive touchup paint and make this one over into a movie version of Tribarrel, my 2006 Mazda-as-Transformer. Of course, since GM had the licensing for the movies, switching models only made sense. November 2011.
  • Robot Mode
  • Vehicle Mode
• Legends Bluestreak: a spare Prowl Reveal the Shield Legends figure with the lightbar replaced with a plug, and other minor mods done to allow parts to slide past each other once painted. December 2011.
  • Robot Mode
  • Vehicle Mode
• TF:Prime Wheeljack Cyberverse: Another of those "I'll just touch up a little" projects that went nuts, I ended up also altering the swords and making places for the swords to plug into the front of the car. July 2012.
  • Robot Mode
  • Vehicle Mode
• Rescue Bots Magnus Hammer: I removed the Energize Gear from a Rescue Bots "Actionmaster" Optimus Prime and constructed a Magnus Hammer for him. August 2014.
• Ultra Prime chestplate adapter: While waiting for the Rodimus intended to go on Ultra Prime's chest in Combiner Wars, I made a little platform so that Thrilling 30 Windcharger could ride there instead, as seen here. February 2015.
• Combiner Wars Blackjack door mod: I put a hole in Blackjack's door so he could hold his weapon as a gun rather than as an axe. March 2015.
• Legion Windblade touchup with sword: Some detail work added to RiD (2015) Windblade, and I scratchbuilt her a sword from styrene plank February 2016.
• Combiner Wars Wreck-Gar Weapon Mode: A fanmode, also works for Groove. April 2016.
• Sqweeks handlebars: I modified a spare Sqweeks (The Last Knight) so that the handlebar hands could be used in both modes. December 2018.
• Swords for Slash: Power of the Primes Slash lacks weapons, so I made some rapiers for her from cocktail swords and sections of 5mm rod. January 2018.
• Studio Series Jazz fix: While otherwise a very good toy, Studio Series Jazz is really hard to get into vehicle mode without stuff forcing the panels apart. My first attempt at fixing this focused on the fact that the hips were pushing against the forearms, and this solution did work at the price of ugly hips in robot mode. Shortly after posting this, someone finally figured out and pointed out the roof peg problem. August and September 2018.
• Siege Starscream pin addition: It appears that Siege Starscream's chest was modified late in the design stage to replace a pin with snap-on nubs, possibly as a cost-saving measure. After having the chest fall off a bunch of times the first time I transformed the toy, I decided to see if I could add a pin back in. Fortunately, I had steel rod in the correct diameter as part of a scrap piece (scale flagpole, I think) I'd had in my parts bin for ages. March 2019.
  • Starting conditions and rod piece
  • The nubs that needed drilling out
  • Pin in place!
  • Oops, single long pin was wrong for robot mode.
  • Shorter pins in place, robot mode.
• Powertrain Fix: There's a minor assembly issue that affects a lot of Powertrain copies (TF:Siege), this just points out one way to fix it. August 2019.
• Scrapface adjustment: The renders of Scrapface looked pretty cool, with scarring and stuff. But the final result left off the facial scar and made the chest scars almost invisible. So I carved the scars with a Dremel, painted them in, and then did a lot of other paint job improvement (made the rest less sloppy and added a bit, made the white more of a light gray, added some metallic blue). I also Dremeled a gouge in the shield and painted it with a scorch mark. May 2020.
  • Robot mode, front view
  • Robot mode, from the side
  • Vehicle mode
• Accessory pack Optimus Prime: A 10mm tall tiny Optimus Prime was included in the Centurion Drone's accessory pack, presumably for use with the HasLab $600 Unicron that I have no interest in getting. It's too small to drill a 2mm socket in the base for Titan Master posts, so I glued it to a Lego cap piece and then painted it. December 2020.
• Netflix Bumblebee with 5mm roof socket added: While I rather like the VW Beetle retool of the Earthrise Cliffjumper mold, it does lack one important thing: a roof socket. They found a way to mount the bazooka in a sort of attack mode by lifting up the rear section, but that won't help hold the accessory pack pistol. The plastic is too thin for just drilling a hole, though, so first I reinforced it with Apoxie Clay putty. I considered painting the chassis gold and calling this a Goldbug mod, but too many painted parts need to scrape past each other. January 2021.
  • Closeup of the "shield" piece
  • Vechile mode with bazooka and accessory pack pistol (not shown: bazooka applied for aquatic mode while pistol is on top).
  • Robot mode holding pistol and stowing bazooka
• Generations Selects G2 Megatron Mod: A simple but pains-taking mod, adding a slot just wide enough to the "sword" of the mold to go onto the backpack tab meant for securing vehicle mode together. January 2021.
• Core Class Kingdom Megatron tank barrel: A quick alternate tank barrel for Core Class Megatron. The main barrel is a 5mm plastic knitting needle segment, the muzzle is a slightly wider styrene tube bit that I carved out a bit to (badly) accept 5mm peg Fire Blasts, and then I added a 3mm peg on the side (a shaved down 1/8" rod bit) so it could store on back in robot mode. The 3mm peg didn't take dye well and ended up blue, so I went over it with a Sharpie in the hopes that that would soak in and not rub off. The other parts are just as they emerged from the black dye pot. May 2021.
• Golden Disk Collection Jackpot mod: I just drilled a 3mm hole in the back of Jackpot's pistol so that it could attach to the barrel of Sights in rifle mode, as per the Actionmaster toy so long ago. The joint holding the barrel is a bit loose, so I cheated with some poster putty for the picture. March 2022.
• Studio Series Exo-Suit Spike Witwicky: The merits of the mold aside, the actual execution had two glaring flaws. One, the back of the head is hollow, and since the helmet is clear all around, it's not like this is a hidden thing. Two, the face is just painted over in flesh tone with no eyes or eyebrows, and that's just CREEPY. So I filled in the head with putty and repainted the entire thing, including the parts that needed to be white. I found a reasonably close match to the light blue plastic and painted around the collar with that to make it pop. January 2023.
  • Full figure
  • Upper body closeups
  • Comparison to unmodified toy
  • Troopbuilder version, chromed helmets (technically not kitbashes, these are just touchups, but keeping them with the other Spikes) March 2023.
• Volcanicus Axe: Okay. The 2023 Legacy Volcanicus figure could only be more obviously a Dinoking pre-tool if they put that information on the boxes. One of my oldest accessory mods was to take an axe that came with a knockoff Ganbarugar and paint its blade so my Monstructor could use it (both Monstructor and Dinoking toys came with swords, but the Transformers Victory anime gave Dinoking a big axe). I later came across a second copy of the axe in a knockoff GodMax set, and when I had most of Volcanicus built I modded it so he could hold it. The peg was closer to 4.5mm, and the reason this is here rather than in Touchups is that I ended up needing to use putty to thicken the peg after layers of Pledge failed to do the job. (I mixed black paint into the putty so it wouldn't need to be painted.) August 2023.
  • Monstructor with axe - Done in the 90s, even if I had a picture from back then it would suck, so this is a new picture. Why did I use gray paint and not silver? Because this is so old that I didn't have any silver paint back then. We're talking mid-90s. Amazingly, the gold plastic hasn't crumbled into dust yet.
  • Volcanicus is hopping mad - Still waiting for Snarl to come out, but he has an axe now!
  • Baby Volcanicus complete!
• Gamer Edition Megatron: I originally just planned to use the same "Purple Flash" paint I used on Gamer Edition Barricade to touch this up and make the mace flanges better (they were only half painted on the stock toy, annoyingly). But I ended up also using a Dremel and a 5mm drill bit to open up the socket on the head of the mace. Y'see, while the mace haft is a separate piece that connects via a peg, that peg is flattened on two sides and the socket similarly narrowed, so that the haft can't be rotated freely. This also means that the Gamer Edition gimmick of replacing the right forearm with a weapon can't be used with the mace head. I widened the socket just enough to let it go on the forearm (as seen in the second picture) without sacrificing the locking feature when on the haft. The hammer was just my attempt to do something with the leftover pieces, the narrowed peg of the haft and hexagonal socket on the forearm mean that it's not really connected, just sitting on top of the haft. Might put some poster putty in there, though. October 2023.
  • Two views with arm on
  • Mace Arm Mode!
• Target Optimus Prime Ballards: So, the packaging for 2024's Target Optimus Prime with Bullseye showed Optimus playing fetch with Bullseye, using one of Target's infamous giant red concrete ball bollards, or "ballards" as I call them. But the toy did not come with such an accessory, so I decided to address that in late June and early July 2024.
  • Try 1: Used a plastic marble from a marble shooter toy, and a bit of 5mm rod. Turned out that the marble had a metal core, so I could only drill in so far, plus the rod was white, but this was meant more as a proof of concept.
  • Try 2: I got a larger supply of plastic spheres from a Five Below Kerplunk game, and tried dyeing my 5mm plastic rod stock black. It didn't take dye well at all, so I ended up painting the rods, so that's gonna wear off over time.
  • Try 3 was going to use some black 5mm rod stock I got on eBay, but when it finally arrived in late July it turned out to be 0.200" rod, aka 5.2mm, too big. Sigh.

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