| WASTELAND
PROJECT #245
CLASSIFICATION: REPAINT/CUSTOM
BASE FIGURE: HEROES OF CYBERTRON SKYWARP (OTFCC REPAINT)
MATERIALS USED: ACRYLIC PAINT, EXTRA GUN, VINYL TUBING, BUILDING SET
BRICKS, SCULPEY MODELING COMPOUND
FIRST APPEARANCE: "MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE" PART 1
"Prime told me there'd be days like
this!"
"And you didn't believe him?"
"I do now!"
Preamble: Wasteland is actually one
of the first Decepticons to appear in the G1 cartoon, though like so
many of the generic troops, he never got an official name. He and his
buddies, who I call Aftershock
and Heatwave, were among the Decepticons
who intercepted Wheeljack and Bumblebee en route to Iacon. (I used
to think that these guys were just miscolored versions of Starscream,
Thundercracker, and Skywarp, since it looks like the first group gets replaced
by the second group, but close examination reveals that there are in fact
multiple Decepticons in evidence during that scene.) Onslaught Six
from alt.toys.transformers came up with the name; I'd just been calling him
Flamethrower, but the new name is a lot more evocative.
Construction: Wasteland is interesting
in that he's equipped with accessories entirely unique to the character.
In addition to his arm-mounted weapons, he also carries a third,
differently-colored flamethrower weapon. It's connected to a feeder
tube that leads to what I presume is a fuel tank, mounted on his back.
Luckily, I had a spare weapon left over from one of my other
projects (I think this is the extra gun from my Phantom repaint), so
I used that for his flamethrower. I borrowed the cable from my clear
SCF Grimlock (this is the tube that connected to his little helmet accessory),
and I built his backpack out of LEGO bricks, adding a peg mount to the backpack
and drilling a hole in his back to accomodate it. Taking my cue from
the blast effects Hasbro included with a lot of the Star Wars: Episode
II figures, I carved out a flame accessory from a piece of translucent
orange plastic. It's detachable; the end of the flamethrower just plugs
into it.
I wanted Wasteland to be able to hold his weapon
like he does in his screen appearance, so I drilled a hole in his fist to
accomodate the rifle peg, and swapped his left fist with Wheeljack's open
hand so he could hold his rifle with one hand and support it with the other.
It looked okay, but the figure's arms just weren't sculpted to accomodate
the right pose. So, I did the next best thing and changed the pose
myself, taking some spare bits of PVC plastic and using them to carve out
some new elbow joints.
Comments: Now that I've discovered
how easy it is to change the pose on these figures, I may be doing it with
future projects. (After I wrote this, I went back and did some tinkering
with Slaughterhouse because
he really needed to be doing some sort of "hail Galvatron" gesture with his
arm.)
WASTELAND
FUNCTION: THERMAL WARFARE
"War is the fire in which we all
burn."
Hot-headed, gung-ho, belligerent,
destructive...sets fires to amuse himself. Ceramic armor plating highly
heat-resistant. Armed with pyrotechnic bombs in jet mode...carries
two flamethower cannons in robot mode that produce temperatures as high as
4000 degrees Fahrenheit...uses ring of fire to ensnare Autobots. Weak
against cryogenic weaponry.
STR: 5 INT: 4 SPD: 7 END: 9 RNK: 4 CRG: 10
FPW: 9 SKL: 5
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