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Rumble and Frenzy Repaints

RUMBLE:  Hey, nobody calls Soundwave uncrazzamatic!
FRENZY:  Yeah, let's kick tailgate!
--The Transformers: the Movie

They sure don't make it easy, sometimes, for those of us who want to own representations of the Transformers cartoon characters.  Back in 1984, Hasbro's assortment of Decepticon cassettes included a red-and-black robot named Rumble and a blue robot of identical design named Frenzy.  For reasons which are never likely to become clear, their color models were swapped for the cartoon.  An honest mistake, probably.  It wasn't a perfect switch, though, since Rumble wasn't actually blue at all in the cartoon; he was purple.  So, you can't even just swap the toys' names and call it good.

Well, I've recently been repairing lots of my broken G1 toys, and my Rumble toy was in particularly poor shape.  The poor thing was broken in three different places (this mold has to be one of the most fragile Transformer designs in existence), and after my attempts at gluing him back together had failed, I gave up and used some spare Frenzy parts I had laying around.  Of course, now Rumble had mismatching parts, so I had to paint him to disguise that.  I figured I may as well do Frenzy at the same time.  (In case you're wondering, I used Frenzy as the basis for cartoon Rumble, and I used the Rumble toy to create cartoon Frenzy.  I could have been a purist and done it the other way around, but that just seemed needlessly complicated.)

Aside from the repair work I did, this was also a custom job since I wanted the toys to be able to hold their weapons by the handle, as they did in the cartoon, rather than having to wedge their forearms in between the fins on the top of the gun.  So, I drilled holes in the weapon pegs, threaded a piece of paper clip through each peg, and drilled a same-sized hole in their tiny little fists.  (I wanted to use Constructicon-sized pegs, but their fists were just too small for that.)  Not only does this look better, it prevents scraping paint off their forearms every time I try to arm them.

Before I started painting, I drew up some color models of the characters to use for reference.  Each Decepticon cassette actually has two models for his cassette mode, one for each side of the tape.  (The toys only have realistic cassette detailing on one side, which is obviously supposed to be the "disguised" side, but the cartoon pretty much ignored that.)  Researching Frenzy was especially difficult, since he got very little screen time and there were almost no good scenes of his cassette mode in existence, particularly his "disguised" side.  I finally had to use a screen shot from the Headmasters series, in fact.

After stripping off their stickers (and wiping off the sticky residue, always a problem with metallic stickers), I disassembled the toys as much as possible.  (I couldn't take them apart completely, since their upper arms are bolted shut, and Frenzy had plastic knobs holding his knees together.)  I mixed up a nice, light purple for Rumble, adding some blue to the mix once I was done with most of him so I could paint his upper arms, upper legs, and cassette spools.  

Originally I had only planned to paint Frenzy so I could have a matching pair, but he ended up being the more interesting of the two, just because he has more colors in his cassette mode.  I had etched guidelines into the plastic with a knife that corresponded with the design of his tape mode as per his cartoon model.  The paint stayed within the guidelines very nicely, resulting in a near-professional looking paint job.  I painted their weapons light grey, as well as their feet, faces, and Rumble's chest details.  (Frenzy's chest details are a light yellow.)  For the details on their legs, I cut some stickers to the right shape and painted over them, applying them after the paint on their legs was dry.  I also gave them some micro-sized Decepticon symbols, courtesy of Delta Star.  At some point, I'd really like to make some pile drivers for Rumble, as soon as I find the right parts and figure out a way of attaching them.  In the meantime, working with the cassettes was so much fun that I'm already thinking about doing something similar with Laserbeak and Buzzsaw.

This Page Created 8/25/2002
Uploaded: 10/23/2002
©2002 Inspiration Studios
Screen Captures Courtesy of Nightwind