One of Nonnef's most anticipated upgrades, his replacement combiner feet (version 2) are finally here. Each set comes with a pair of feet molded in black plastic with other color schemes provided by paint. Currently only unpainted black is available. Each foot features a large ball jointed ankle, a pivot near the back of the foot, and a toe joint. Together they provide a wide range motion no matter how bulky a bot you use for the lower leg. Compared to the Perfect Effect feet, the Nonnef feet are significantly slimmer and match up well proportionately with any limb of your choosing, whereas I feel PE's offering only really works well with bulkier limbs such as the car molds. However, the Nonnef feet dosen't give as much of a height increase the PE set does. The feet work wonders for Defensor, compensating for his wonky hips so he stand tall even with Groove as a chestplate and they're more than capable of supporting dynamic poses. And for Superion, the feet match up well with the slimmer nature of the aerialbot limbs. However these feet do have their faults. Unlike Perfect Effect and most other third-party companies, these feet are not mass produced in factories, rather they're produced at a much smaller scale and you have to keep in mind that Nonnef is just one guy. As a result the finish of these pieces are not as good as PE's set, with blemishes, flash, and sprue marks that are going to have to get cleaned up once you get them in hand. Additionally on some pieces there are sink marks on the plastic where it looks like the plastic cooled too fast and then sunk in. The plastic itself can feel a little weird in-hand at first. They're not cast in a "hard" plastic like most TFs or even Nonnef's other products. I'd say they feel like really firm Marvel Legends plastic if that makes sense. This isn't flaw as the plastic doesn't affect how solid the pieces are, but it can be an unexpected surprise. For the painted pieces, any blemishes in the plastic will show up in the paint. The paint itself is sprayed kinda thick in certain areas and have started chipping at the pivot points. Right out the box, when plugging a foot into a limb the 5mm peg can end up being loose depending on what figure you're using. This isn't necessarily the foot's fault rather the weird tolerances between all the 5mm ports across the CW line. With the sets I have, I found they plugged into the Stunticon molds (barring Offroad) just fine, the Offroad and Rook molds are somewhat loose, and the feet just fall off the Aerialbot molds. However a coat of super glue on the pegs fixed up any looseness. As for the feet themselves, the ball joints may also be loose but tightening the two screws underneath the ball socket housing should tighten it up. If it's still somewhat loose, dabbing in some Future Floor Polish takes care of the rest. If the ball joint is extremely loose, I'd recommend disassembling the ball joint and coating the ball and ball socket with a thin layer of super glue and letting it completely dry before reassembling. Personally I've found super glue better for building layers in this case. Admittedly that's a lot of small tweaks and potentially a lot of extra work to make these feet go from "good" to "great". Tightening up joints isn't anything new for a TF collector, but having to clean up, cut, sand, fill in gaps with putty, paint, all in all putting more money and effort towards something you already paid for? That can understandably be a deal-breaker. While the finish and tolerances could use some work, I love how these feet were designed and how much they improved my combiners, even if it took a little extra work to get there. If you're not a fan of the PE set and are willing to spend some extra time polishing them up, then I recommend getting Nonnef's set for your combiners.
These are fully cast in plastic, not 3D printed. While the plastic is a lot smoother than most 3D printed pieces, there are areas on the foot where the plastic picked up the milling marks from the mold it was cast in. It's most noticeable on the foot guard piece.
Why does the back of the foot look incomplete? Like something should cover the heel. And like someone just clipped off a couple of 5mm posts off the back?
I assume the posts are left over from the mold process since they aren't used for anything else, but they're missing on the 2nd batch of the V2 feet. Unfortunately it seems for both the 1st and 2nd batch there just weren't any heel covers designed. No idea if it was just to save costs or if Nonnef didn't think they were necessary. No, those feet were painted by Nonnef as part of his trial run of colored feet during the 1st batch of these feet. I'm in the process of repainting those feet since I wasn't satisfied with how Nonnef's paint turned out. Thankfully for the 2nd batch of these feet he went with adding colored panels to the feet to give them color. The hands on Superion are KFC's Ultra Magnus Hands with wrist adapters from Shapeways. I wasn't a fan of how Perfect Effect's hands turned out and while Nonnef has a good looking pair of hands coming soon, I felt they were too big on someone like Superion. The KFC hands are just right in my opinion. On another note, I'm going to be updating the review in a couple days once I've finished building the 2nd batch feet I got.
