Latest design offering from my small home shop, UltraZof Toy Studio. =) For anyone interested, this kit upgrades POTP Predaking by making the combiner legs removable from Headstrong and Torox while still maintaining their combining ability! Their bot and alt modes are now free to roam the jungles unhindered, but they can jump back into action as Predaking's legs at a moments notice (while also giving them the added bonus of "Scramble Wars" swapping ability). Like all of my other designs, the images show the "basic" parts, but additional specs and surface details (pistons, etc) can be edited/added based on buyer's preferences. Yes, it makes him a partsformer, but hot damn those combiner leg udders just look super bad so I feel it's worth it. lol Please PM if interested in purchasing this set. Also, please feel free to follow me on IG to see new designs and parts: @ultrazof_toystudio Thanks, UZ
Nice idea. I had a similar idea, but it involved swapping the combiner parts with ones that could turn into detachable weapons. Unfortunately, my days of doing stuff like seem to be pretty much over. I suppose if you get a bit more creative, you could turn those chunks of plastic into something useful for the other modes. I'm surprised Hastak never thought of this. I hadn't even considered that possibility. These guys definitely look a lot better without all that extra weight. Nice work.
If you mean give the leg chunks something else to do when not in combined mode, yeah, I'm sure I could come up with something, but it'd be forced and likely be very lame. The fact that they were forced onto the leg bots as huge tumors was already Hasbro's way of giving them a home in the toy's design, but I felt it was a very unsuccessful move that compromised the toy too much. Rather than try forcing them back into the picture somehow, I prefer to just leave them off until needed. I get that done folks might disagree with that, but this is just a design based on what my preference for this toy is.
I get where you're coming from. It was just a suggestion. Going by what you'd done so far, I figured you might come up with something I hadn't thought of for those who were interested. But if it's a 'lame' idea, better leave them alone. To be honest I really prefer the idea of completely swapping them out altogether for something that worked like the Perfect Effect combiner feet/weapons, but I'd rather have something like that done in regular (ie, non-3D-printed) plastic..
That becomes a matter of hoping a bigger toy company shares the same idea and decides to put money into brand new molds, which is a long shot as that is a pretty expensive endeavor. At the same time, a lot of companies released different kits for CW Devastator, so maybe they'll do the same for Predaking. Although, I highly, highly doubt they'll touch the actual combining joint design to free up the leg bots and still keep them "combinable". And if they do... I can at least say I did it first. =)
I'm down for a set! I never understood the all inclusive combiner parts, I do understand for non-combiners, but all G1 combiners were part formers and I was/am still cool with that. I wished more 3rd parties would have made their combiners part formers, it makes the other modes not hot garbage and has turned me off from them. The same problems for HasTek Devastator, but I bought it because is was the closes one to the OG g1 toon, imo, and the add on sets just make it better. I'm still disappointed in Long Haul, but short of a complete redesign with parts forming, it is what it is and I have to live with it. I was hoping someone would make something like this. As for any extra details, nay, I'm good, just make them the same to match the replacement parts and good to go. Thanks for doing this and looking forward to see this through to purchasing a set!
These are awesome. Any chance you're doing a similar project for the arm bots? What is the price for the "basic" set, they look fine to me as-is, except for maybe being black instead of grey.
Thanks for the interest! Please PM for ordering details and we can go over options. I'm working on offering the kit printed directly in black, but just need to run a test on the different color material first (as it could occasionally exhibit different printing characteristics).
I didn't plan to buy it, but lucked out on a cheap used set on Amazon. Had to deal with the leg issue though, it really does kill this toys vibe.
They are releasing an upgraded version of predaking it is a completely different release that they have put significant improvements into above and beyond what Hasbro did. So yes I do hope they use an idea similar to this for the legs instead of the massive Hasbro backpacks. If they don't use it I'll definitely be buying a set for him.
Haha, I guess you know you've really hit it big when Wei Jiang KO's your stuff! Yeah, I know about their KO version with the improvements. Let's see where they go with it. =)