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"I've taken it this far--I won't stop now!"--Starscream, "Starscream's Brigade" (TF)
The Pretender Classics
were, at least to me, a boon to the then-dying Transformers line--we finally
got to see some familiar faces again, and at least two of their number were
much closer to their cartoon depictions than their original toys.
Bumblebee was pretty much an improvement across the board, but the
other three suffered because of their small size and oversimplified
transformations, and especially their color schemes.
Well, not too long ago I made some minor changes to Starscream in order to
bring him closer to his cartoon appearance. I drilled holes in the
sides of his arms with a screwdriver so his guns could be arm-mounted, and
I scraped the black paint off his face with an X-Acto blade. I also
sliced off a section of the cockpit on his back, hollowed it out a bit, and
glued it to the nosecone piece so that more of it was visible on his chest.
He
re
mained that way
for quite a while--improved, but not perfect. Recently I decided to
finish the job.
I sliced off the plastic surrounding the screws in the air intakes on his shoulders. (Why Hasbro used 14 screws to hold this guy together is beyond me. He only needs about 10.) I also chopped off the connector holding his lower legs together. Then I covered each of the screw holes with countour putty. I'd never used the stuff before this project; it dries basically like plaster. No more unsightly screws all over his body!
All that remained was to repaint
him in the correct colors. I honestly don't know where they came up
with this blue arms and blue legs business, but I corrected that as well
as the color of his cockpit, stabilizer wings and rudders (which become his
guns in robot mode), and the top of his air intakes, which weren't painted
at all. I kept the Decepticon symbols of course, but the old wing decals
came off to be replaced with the "correct" red and white stripes. The
new panels on his legs and feet are actually painted pieces of a tech specs
decoder.
I left his Pretender shell alone, though I suppose it might be fun to go back at some point and give the outer shell more appropriate colors, too.
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©2001 Inspiration Studios
This Page Created: 5/2/99
Last Update: 3/7/2001
