Most people who grew up loving GI Joe in the 80s also loved Transformers. And while I personally like vintage Joes more than modern ones, when it comes to Transformers the opposite is true. Vintage G1 Transformers are, looking back on them, basically bricks. Out imaginations did all of the heavy lifting when playing with them. Modern Transformers look great both in robot mode and alt mode, and many of them are available with cartoon-accurate appearances, which is what I really like. And canonically GI Joe and Transformers exist in the same universe, so one can lead to the other quite naturally.

But they can all use touch-up and paint upgrades of course. So lately I've started working on customizing my Transformers collection, both to improve the look of them and to do full customs as well, transforming them into different characters. The question is - if I submit these to the custom gallery, do they go in as figures or vehicles?

I'm starting off with Bumblebee, originally released in 1984, and his later incarnation Goldbug, which arrived in 1987.

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Bumblebee
Autobot Espionage

This custom Bumblebee is a paint upgrade of a third-party toy, since it’s more cartoon-accurate than Hasbro product (other than Masterpiece toys, of course, which are too rich for my blood.) Any 80s toy line worth its salt is going to have chromed parts. So I used Molotow liquid chrome ink to chrome the front and back bumpers, hubcaps, and Bumblebee’s face as well. I painted the black stripe on the forearms for a little more colour, and of course added the Autobot symbol to the chest, since the figure does not come with such a thing lest Hasbro sue them into oblivion.

All parts and accessories: Hot Soldiers HS09 Minicar (third-party Bumblebee)

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Goldbug
Throttlebot Espionage Director

This custom Goldbug is a paint upgrade of a third-party toy, since it’s more cartoon-accurate than Hasbro product (other than Masterpiece toys, of course, which are too rich for my blood.) Any 80s toy line worth its salt is going to have chromed parts. So I used Molotow liquid chrome ink to chrome the front and back bumpers and hubcaps. The original toy was pretty much all gold-coloured (except the head), since the G1 toy was that colour. But the G1 toy was just a block of plastic with no detailing, so I wanted more colour in this custom. I painted the upper legs, biceps and hands a blue colour to march the head, something like later versions of Goldbug had, and of course added the Autobot symbol to the chest, since the figure does not come with such a thing lest Hasbro sue them into oblivion.

All parts and accessories: Hot Soldiers HS13 Gold Fly Bug (third-party Goldbug)

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These are cool. The knock off master piece Transformers on eBay are a great deal.

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awesome!

Of course you would think so, LOL.

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The chrome marker is amazing. Great figures.

It's a godsend. I'm thinking every TF custom I do is going to get some chrome.

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Whenever I paint something silver or gold I always underpaint it with blue or orange first.

Do you have to do that with those markers, or are they good to go straight away?

I even use it to re-do some of my vintage accessories where the chrome is fading away.



they are good to go right away
it is a fantastic marker!
the flash in these pics don't seem to show it very well

Like Goldbug said, they're good to go. They cover very well. Sometimes if you're putting them over certain paints the chrome ink doesn't flow very well, so in cases like that you might want to do a base coat or something like that.

Goldbug's also right about the pics - the chrome is actually shinier than it looks here.

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These are excellent


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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Windcharger
Autobot Warrior

This Windcharger custom is a paint upgrade of the Power of the Primes version of the character. He gets the Molotow chrome ink treatment of course, but a number of red bits needed some paint as well. The windows on his arms are made of clear plastic painted red, and the edges were not well-covered by the factory paint job. The rear end of the car also had large grey bits that are hidden in robot form but visible in car mode, so those needed paint as well. I’m quite happy with the paint matching on this one.

All parts: Power of the Primes Windcharger

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Nice work.

How big a figure is that? I'm not a TF fan, so I don't have a scale reference.

These ones are all about 3-3/4" to 4" tall. That's called "legends class" most of the time in modern Transformers. I like to have the original minicars in this scale, and the larger cars in "deluxe" scale, which is about 5-1/2"-6" tall in robot mode.

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