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Megaplex seems doomed to obscurity, despite having two toys to his name. When e-hobby produced an exclusive Megatron recolor (with extra accessories) based on one of the old pre-TF Maciroman GunRobo color schemes, they tapped Ichikawa for his bio. And he tapped Machine Wars for the character of Megaplex, a clone warrior of the Decepticon leader.
At initial glance, this is one that doesn't look like a lot was changed, especially when one takes into account that the painted Hasbro version formed the base. But in actuality, almost the entire figure is repainted. Only the fist and waist are untouched. The black portions of the legs have been touched up, with the heel-parts painted black as well.
The Fortress Gray that covers most of this PVC is darker than the original Megatron's paint, which matches the toy's unchromed flat gray plastic nicely.
I went with a happy medium of toy and cartoon model in order to bring out some more of his blue. the actual midsection of the toy is gray, but I liked how the cartoon model made it red. So Megaplex gets blue there.
That face was actually not as annoying as some others to paint. Replicating the toy's "hemlet-in-helmet" look was actually an afterthought, after I'd painted his eyebrow-thingy with a toothpick.I then went over the interior of his helmet with a fine-tipped brush.
The PVC came without his cannon (it was sent to me that way, since the cannon was to be used for their Action Master Megatron), which suited me fine. I used the neck-peg I'd sliced off of Ratchet to fill the hole in his arm, then simply painted over it.
The mace turned out better than I'd feared, worse than I'd hoped. It's a foray into dyeing plastics rather than painting. I figured if it looked horrible, I could just paint over it. A pot of low-boiling water, RIT Golden Yellow Dye, and about half an hour of dipping for 10 seconds, letting cool, dipping, cooling... long slow boring process. I'm glad the mace was a veyr light, washed-out purple. The end result is yellow-orangey enough to where I don't want to paint over it.
Man, it must suck to be him.
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