Bootleg AOE Evasion Optimus Prime - Minor Paint Touch-Up

Cannot help but take up my silver paint-pens and start to paint my newly acquired bootleg AOE Evasion OP, so that it looks closer to the Takara-Tomy version... the only trade-off is likely to be I will be less tempted to transform it due to the fear of paint chip off... hahahahaha.... Thought of taking the below picture as I wanted to convince myself more that the silver biceps will look better in picture... hahahahaha.... Sorry for all the grainy picture background as I thought I want the KO OP's colours in the pictures to be closer to what I see by eye - dark blue, dark red... Anyway, also realised that the KO has 2 left shoulder-bicep parts... Damn... no choice... sigh...



Robot mode done!!!!! Very nice, hahaha.... though not 100% same as Takara-Tomy's version, I think it is good enough...



In addition to the silver biceps, I also followed TT's silver fake smokestacks... Opps, painted too much for the smokestacks... nevermind, will just leave it...  The head still retains that of Hasbro's...



For the feet part, I struggle to decide to paint the whole feet silver or not... In the end, I decided to only highlight the "mechanisms" details on the inner of the feet and a minor touch on the front of the feet... Looks clean enough...



Another pose... Still no gun!!! Hahahaha.... Will find one for you some day, don't worry, ok? Hahahaha....



Comparison with the raw bootleg...



Once done, I proceed to touch up painting in truck mode... Really, I hate the wheels unpainted... looks very very very unpleasant...



Done!!!!! I have to repaint majority of the silver paint already on the truck body as my silver paint-pen's silver don't match with the bootleg's silver.... And the cover up for the ugly upside-down AOE logo roughens up the paint and leaves scar there... sigh... And this is also when I realised that the paint does not stick to the plastic well...



Closer look at the front of the truck...



... and back of the truck looking from the top... I painted the circular piece (cab connector???) silver too, just to break up the blue...



Side of the truck... The scar left by the logo is ugly but sigh... too lazy to remedy already... hahahaha....



Comparison of the trucks before and after paint touch up... simply love the painted wheels...



Waiting for my bootleg/KO AOE Leader OP to come, though the reviews for it is bad, according to some Baidu forum-ers......

Side-Tracked: Recent Haul of KOs and Such(166) - Junkion Blacksmith Headmasters (Soundwave, Soundblaster, Blaster), Bootleg AOE Evasion Optimus Prime "I think We Just Found A (Bootleg) Transformer"...

Received my items from Taobao.com again today... sadly could not make it in time to arrange delivery together with last night's items... Anyway, very happy...


Junkion Blacksmith Headmasters (Soundwave, Soundblaster, Blaster)
And the super tiny and fun JB Headmasters!!!!! And they are "triple-changers" too!!!! Hahahaha.... Cost approximately $21.25 for these 3 figures... They came with some connector pieces that I believe is to attached to some other third party TFs or something... which I don't really bother, as JB Soundwave and JB Blaster are now standing proudly in my Detolf cabinet shelf... hahahaha... Am intending to use JB Soundlaster for my KO Mindwipe but still deciding whether to keep JB Soundblaster's face or use the KO Vorath's...



Robot mode...very tiny, but articulation is good!!!



Back view... JB Blaster comes with an additional connector piece.. or perhaps is the other 2 are missing this piece???



Head mode!!!!



Music player mode!!! Very simple but effective transformation... The big faces can be covered with a movable plate to hide in music player and robot modes....



Bootleg AOE Evasion Optimus Prime
Yeap! It's the bootleg version!!!! Huge box, waste money to ship to Singapore... sigh... Hopefully my Bootleg AOE Leader OP comes in a smaller box than this... Cost about $25.70, and could have been cheaper if it were able to make it in time to be collected last night... I don't think this is over nor under-sized, should be the actual voyager size...



Back of the box... And the pictures of OP is that of the real deal version's... Bio is written in Chinese, hahahaha....



This bootleg/KO comes with the DOTM Megatron's gun, but in blue plastic instead... Plastic is not Hasbro-quality, but still slightly better than the usual KO TFs... Build-quality is quite okay, with reasonably-tight to overly-tight joints, and even slight ratcheting joints at the shoulders for outward swing motion... However, since this is a KO, so there are bound to have some "errors"... Mine have to force-fully and skilfully push in the fake window chests pieces in order to prevent forcing the side pieces to be un-tabbed from the shoulder pieces... After watching some Youtube reviews, I believe this bootleg/KO has the same colour and paint scheme (with some bad painting and paint bleeding, of course), and no simplifications to the parts and transformation... Nice....



Another pose... Hey, where is the gun????



A closer look at the face... No light-piping, but does not matter to me... Does not look as bad as his other KO counterpart of the same KO line (factory)... Still looks quite ok... Though I prefer the face-plate version over this humanoid face version...



Looking from the top, over the shoulders....



A closer look at the foot... Got an ankle joint to move the ankle slightly... Mine had the feet stuck very tightly (and hence the whole shin-transforming piece also tightly stuck) when transforming to robot mode, so had to do a lot of trim-and-trial to eliminate this problem...



Transform to truck mode!!! All parts fit in snugly... nice... but the back wheels do not seem to like to touch the ground, no matter how much I try to tweak the legs...



There is a weird up-side down AOE logo at the side... hmmm... AOE G2?????



The back of truck mode... More determined to do some painting touch up now...



Posing together with my undersized KO AOE First Edition OP (truck mode)!!!!! And the KO First Edition OP's truck mode is still much bigger than this voyager despite being undersized...



... however, the robots are almost equally of the same height... very nice... Looking forward to my bootleg/KO AOE Leader OP...


... "Anyone looking for a gun???"...



... "It's mine now!!!!"... Hahahaha... Will repaint this gun next time...

KO G1 Mindwipe - Minor Repaint

Slight repaint of my KO G1 Headmaster Mindwipe, and the Headmaster Vorath... or rather, a limb-less Vorath... The KO came in a rather funny colour scheme and below is a picture of the back of packaging card showing the original KO colour "half-beast" mode in a reverse colour scheme version than mine... funny... hahaha.... "Batman" mode!!!!! Hahahahahaha....



... and this is how it looks after some paint touch up, using paint-pens... I also took the opportunity to do some tightening of some of the looser joints... Also put up some spare stickers... 



And the robot mode before repainting...



... after repainting, it looks much better!!!! This KO does not have the tech-spec-chest feature...



I also repainted the limb-less Headmaster... looks much better now with the painted face...



The Headmaster can also be stored in the bat mode's chest cavity...



Looking forward to the delivery of my KO Evasion OP tomorrow!!!!

War For Cybertron (WFC) Optimus Prime - Minor Trimming

Hands are itchy today, and took out my WFC OP to transform... and realised I needed the help of Youtube clips...



Anyway, I noticed the vehicle mode's side panels are not flushed (circled in yellow)...



Upon inspection, I believe it is caused by the blue tab (panel) not able to peg into the hole (arm)...



The hole seem to be slightly too small for the tab to tab in... So I used a small file and gently file the short ends of the hole (same for the other side of the vehicle) and...



... it worked!!! Well, not completely flushed, but at least the panels seemed to look better now...



p.s. Waiting eagerly for my KO Evasion OP and KO AOE Leader Class OP to come...

Side-Tracked: Recent Haul of KOs (165) - KO Cybertron Galvatron

Haul from Taobao.com arrived yesterday... And the one and only TF item inside is none other than Master Galvatron... KO version, that is... Very costly, at $35.70 approximately...

The huge toy comes in a bubble-cardboard pack...



I took out the missiles that are attached to the front wheels when taking pictures... Indeed, it looks very much like the Batmobile, especially when it is the leader class size... This is the slightly simplified version. In fact, the middle peg-holes on the rear wheels are missing, so the "wings" in jet mode can't tab in securely... The feet is super simplified, similar to the legends class version... The plastics used is typical of the KO TFs, perhaps a little teeny weenie thicker... Joints are generally ok, except for its right knee joints and right "wing" main joint (to the body) has came out... Some parts are also not joined cleanly (i.e. with a visible gap)...



Jet mode... The other simplified version (oversized legends version) is not able to transform into this mode... Will need to make some peg-holes for the rear wheels to peg in the "wings" parts... Nice white-purple colour scheme, so I refer to this as Galvatron rather than Megatron...



Bot mode! But it is very back-heavy, and the weak right knee joint does not help ... still, it can be placed in a standing pose after some leaning forward fiddling... Nice... Visual estimate it to be Leader class size without shrinking nor growing... hahahaha...


Size comparison with G1 Megatron... Nice KO...