This started life as a Movie Longarm, which was originally going to be repainted into Hoist, until Hasbro did it officially and I figured it'd be easier to just get that. I eventually decided he'd make a good Gears; the face isn't too far off that of his G1 toy, and with a little work, I figured I could ditch the towhook and replace it with a straight flatbed. So here he is. He's pretty much stock, but I made a full flatbed by making a section to fill the gap with styrene. Because I couldn't get diamondplate styrene with the same tread as the existing fig, I sanded all that down, and made new pieces from a fresh sheet of diamondplate styrene. The two shoulder flaps I glued together into a single panel, and used a hinge made from styrene tubing to attach the new scratchbuilt part of the bed, so that it folds down onto his back in robot mode. I also built a tailgate from layered bits of styrene and attached that to the rear bumper. Hoist's pretty much just here for comparison to the base model, but has had a few paint tweaks; I've repainted most of his grey into silver, and added green to his arms to better reflect his G1 form. I got rid of the insignia on his roof and replaced it with a rubsign and put an Autobot Reprolabel on his shoulder for 'bot mode. Plus I deliberately mistransformed his hook; sure, it's nice he's got a big missile launcher, but I think some kind of scanner is more suited to his personality, so I found an extra mode for his weapon. There are still some touchups I want to do; some inside bits that need painting, and some neatening up, maybe even a little extra detailing on the tailgate. I'd also quite like to give Gears some kind of gun, since he's now got quite a bit of storage space under his flatbed; new hands are also a possibility. But I thought I'd throw it out here for CC&I (Comments, Crits and Ideas) before I finished it off and shot a gallery. Enjoy!
Thanks, guys! Hmm... personally there's not really anything about this mould that makes me think of Grapple. A tow-truck only really works for a mechanic, which he isn't, and the pick-up makes me think of gruntwork; someone who does all the fetching and carrying (like Gears), or is otherwise a hands-on, blue-collar kind of mech. The robot mode doesn't really have any visual cues that match him either. And of course, he's got a new fig coming out very soon anyway, which looks quite a lot like him. I s'pose anything's possible, though. What made you think of Grapple, specfically?
