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CybCon 2002 Exclusives:
Spychanger Scourge and X-Brawn Repaints

"Fortunately, I have a delicate lockpicking technique."--Optimus Prime, "Day of the Machines" (TF)

"I'll get the door!"--Brawn, "The Ultimate Doom" part 3 (TF)

Last year, CybCon 2001 was hosted by Greg Gaub in Washington state, and the exclusive repaints I came up with were so successful that ViceGripX and I began discussing plans for the 2002 toys almost immediately following the convention.  The Spychanger 2-pack of Scourge and X-Brawn seemed like an ideal choice, giving us a chance to pay homage to two more G1 characters.  (One of the other possible candidates was a show-accurate repaint of Beast Machines Blast Punch Optimus Primal, but we nixed the idea.)  ViceGripX somehow managed to find ten sets of toys shortly after their initial release, and sent them off to me to be painted.

This year I really wanted to do more than just repaint the toys; making some physical modifications would make them that much more special, and maybe even improve their appearance in the process.  For X-Brawn, who naturally became the original Brawn, I filled in the holes in the backs of his upper legs with putty, along with the unsightly screw hole underneath his hood.  I decided to get rid of the vestigal wheels on the fronts of his legs to further remove him, visually, from X-Brawn.  I also chopped off the pegs designed to hold his doors in place in vehicle mode (since the doors were tight enough to stay in place on their own) as well as the plastic bar underneath his roof (ostensibly there to reinforce the roof's integrity).  I also had to whittle away at the plastic on his upper knees to ensure that there would still be room for them to slide inside his lower legs during transformation without scraping off the paint.  Finally, I cut away at the front of his helmet to give him a connected optic visor and bring him closer to the look of the original Brawn toy.

Unfortunately, I couldn't fully disassemble Brawn, since there are pins holding his doors in place (which in turn hold the two halves of his hood together) and I couldn't remove the pins without drilling holes in the toy.  So, I had to carefully paint around the hinges on the toy, going back to touch up the wheels with black paint to hide my mistakes.  (I do the same thing with all the die-cast cars I paint.)  I ended up using a very thinned-down paint mix; even though it required more coats, it also didn't lump up as much and wouldn't obscure the details on the sculpt.  I also painted some details that Hasbro didn't bother with, like his windshield wipers.  Once that was done, a couple of Delta Star's reproduction Autobot symbols completed the look.

For Scourge, whom we decided to repaint into a miniature version of G2 Laser Optimus Prime (the toy on which the full-sized Scourge was based), I filled in the grooves in the backs of his legs with putty, and carved out the part of the mold that corresponds to the knee joints on the large version of the toy.  I also filled in the holes in his forearms and the holes in his chest (used to guide the pin holding his head in place during assembly), and lopped off the peg that holds his arms together in vehicle mode.  Now, normally, pegs and things like this don't really bother me, but they really ruin the aesthetics on toys of such a small scale.  I also whittled away at the bottoms of his feet, as well as inbetween his chest panels, to help bring out some of the detail.  (The cut marks also served as painting guidelines.)

Optimus Prime was a bit easier to paint, if only because the toy's design is simpler.  The biggest difficulty I had with him was getting his lower legs disassembled for painting, since they're held together with both a screw and a tiny bolt.  I ended up prying the legs apart, praying that the plastic wouldn't warp too badly as I tore the bolt through the hole.  Luckily, all ten Scourge/Primes survived the experience (including an eleventh, the one from my collection, which I used first to test this procedure).  His paint job was easy enough to do; I stayed as close to Laser Prime's color scheme as possible, fudging just a bit on the details where he originally had stickers.  After a failed attempt at gettng the airbrush working, I ended up using spray paint to reproduce the red-to-black faded effect on the original Laser Prime toy.  Again, I painted some of the details that Hasbro missed, like the fog lights and tail lights.  (I could have designed some miniature stickers for Delta Star to print up for me, but decided against it.  We also considered getting some of BW Sidecutter's miniature resin swords and including those with the toy, but cost considerations were prohibitive.)  A few more reproduction stickers, of the G2 variety this time, and Optimus was finished... if a little smaller than usual.

This year, we decided to do custom packaging for the toys, using the existing packages as the basis.  ViceGripX created the design for the new cardback (utilizing elements from the Scourge/X-Brawn instructions) as well as the new insert that went behind the bubble.  We didn't do much with the front of the card, though I did replace the Decepticon symbol with a custom-designed G2 Autobot symbol graphic.  The tech specs for the characters, also written by ViceGripX, came in the form of Car Robots-style collector cards.  I drew up new art for both characters (based loosely on the G1 package art) to be featured on the tech spec cards.  Despite the fact that a trip to Kinko's was beyond this year's budget, the packaging turned out looking far better than I had any right to expect.  (Kudos to my sister-in-law Kris, who managed to turn out some absolutely gorgeous cardback printouts from her home printer.)  All I had to do was glue the new cardbacks in place, slip the collector cards in their protective sleeves, and stuff the toys back inside the bubbles for shipping.  (They made it to Washington the day before the convention.  Whew!)

I really enjoyed this project, and out of all the repaints and kitbashes I've done, I think these are the ones I'm most proud of.  Naturally, I got to keep a set for myself.

This Page Created: 7/7/2002
Uploaded: 7/27/2002
©2002 Inspiration Studios
Toy images courtesy of  Greg Gaub