Voyager Rescue Ratchet to Ironhide Kitbash

I had this crazy idea - Since G1 Ironhide and Ratchet shared the same mold, I decided to use the Rescue Ratchet mold and kitbashed it to Ironhide. I will be using the same head from the KO Landcross. I always hated the movie hands, they looked like insect pincers, so I substituted it with extra Gundam hands lying around my home office.

There were massive repaint activity buzzing around him and alot of detailing done on this Ironhide. Rest of the mold will remained the same more or less.

This was be a joint collaboration between me and a good friend of mine.

Here is some of the shots of I took on the preliminary modification stage.




A full day job and I was really pleased with the result.

First of all, MAJOR PROPS and CREDIT must be given to my friend Hakim for the extraordinary job he has done with the overall paint job for this Voyager Ironhide. He is one talented dude. I only did the modification and the detailing but the whole paint works was done by him singlehandedly and it is very impressive.

The toy was taken apart for primering and color coating.

Pre-painted the head to get the feel and look of the color.

The color used - Gunze Sangyo - Number 79 : Shiny Red

The compressor - the thing that made the whole project worked

After the 1st coat of paint

DONE!

It took from 10am till 4pm for the paint works to be completed and a further 2 to 3 hours on my part to finish up with the detailing and the decals. We removed the front kangaroo bar and the stretcher cum weapon to give Ironhide a distinctive look, different from Rescue Ratchet.

Decals (water-based) were used from ther 1/144 Bandai Gundam decal series - cheat at RM16 for roughly 100+ decals.

Alt mode pics!

Pictured together with my Rescue Ratchet (Kitbased the head and hands).

Side view

Let's Roll Out!

All in all a fruitful project and looking forward for more!

Robot Replicas Optimus Prime

After acquiring RR BB in the previous post/review, I had high expectations for this "poor-man's" revoltech. Priced at RM50 per piece, it is definitely cheaper than original revoltechs (priced between RM80 to RM90 - depending on character and availability)


Unfortunately the next RR I bought was Barricade and it was total crap IMHO. Lousy joints and lack the already limited poseability of the RR BB. When I came across RR Op, I was quite skeptical after my lack my faith in Barricade.

Now to the nitty gritty. The PVC quality is the same with the other RRs. But what actually turned me over was the mold detail.



First of all, the detail on RR Op is miles better than RR BB and RR Barricade. The details on the head is awesome and it replicated the details of the movie Op nicely. The same goes for the rest of the detailing of the whole figure.

In terms of poseability, it might be no revoltech, but after the debacle with Barricade, I was surprised with the joints and poses thet he can pull off. I begin to wonder is this a RM50 toy? Not bad.....

RR OP comes with his Pulse Blaster that can be attached on his right arm. No gimmicks here, just an add on. But it comes around nicely.


Now for the bad.

The paint job on his head is HORRID. There are no paint on the sides of his head and it is packaged in its PVC color - gray. I had to do some detailing on the head and other parts of the body to make it look serviceable. But even with this nitpick, the flames that adorned his feet came out nicely off the package and I was glad no touch ups are required. :)

Overall, a solid figure for its price and I recommend this to those who wants a TFTM actionmaster.



My score? A solid 7/10.