With the arrival of the Earthrise Seeker mold, my Siege Starscream outlived his usefulness in my collection as my "G1 Generations Starscream" However I still quite like the mold, and thanks to my local target having a Siege Thundercracker on clearance. Starscream has been given new life as something Slightly Different! I've seen plenty of people do this by now with Thundercracker and Starscream, and disassembling the siege seeker mold is a piece of cake, so I decided why not. I went further than other people though with the parts swap as I took the figures entirely apart and also swapped out all of the grey and black joint parts. The black looked better on Action Master Starscream because of the contrast. I also went through the hell that was removing most of the battle damage paint. There is still some silver in the fine details of the chest and forearms I couldn't get out, as well as the battle damage that was painted on top of other paint. I'll just go over that battle damage with more paint. For comparison (The Silverbolt /Cyclonus gun was a perfect fit for the original weapons of the action master) I'm going to get around to painting the head and waist eventually, but don't count on an update for that. It will happen when it happens. I'll also add pictures of Thundercracker once I've done all the battle paint removal on him too and reassembled him.
haha thats awesome duno yet. Im not usually one to go all out on custom painting my figures as I'm not all that confident in my ability (and my garbage attention span) I usually like to do smaller simpler things like Starscream here to make sure i can actually finish a project. though I dont actually know what to do with the left over thundercracker. so ill have to see. ill make a whole new post for him though if i go that far. though i will still post the parts swapped thundercracker here.
Awesome awesome awesome! Finally one that has a vehicle mode too! (And it looks sick) Also AM Thundercracker seems nessesary
I’m actually doing the same thing right now. Have all the parts swapped out. Just need to paint it and maybe pick up a CW Silverbolt gun.
You mentioned swapping out the gray plastic assemblies for the black ones. How easy was that? I was looking into the option of doing that and am wondering if popping the pin out is worth the trouble.
Swapping the black parts was just as easy as the normal parts swap in general. Its just makes the whole process take a little longer is all. The pin was incredibly easy to remove in my experience. Ive found that most pins are. (Capped pins i refuse to touch though. They are a different beast entirely)
no heat required, just need to push it out the correct way. regular pins have a grip texture at one end. you want to make sure you push from the other end of that to make sure you don't push that grip texture all the way through. its a hell of a lot harder to do and could damage the figure. its usually easy to figure out which side it is just by looking at it. as for what i used I have a screwdriver set where one of the heads it literally just a point. (not exactly a real pin punch but it accomplishes the same job) i just put my figure on a towel (to protect from hard table surfaces and prevent damage.) hold it steady and just tap it out with a hammer. (you get a feel for how hard you have to hit it when you do it, start off with soft taps and keep getting harder until you notice movement. safer to start soft and get harder then start too hard and damage somehting) once its out far enough to get a grip on a use a pair of plier to pull it the rest of the way through. whole process usually takes me all of 5 seconds, doesn't matter what figure Im doing it to. here ill even pull a figure off my shelf to give a little picture tutorial for you. here is what i used here is how i hold it over the towel at this point you just take the hammer and start tapping away at it. (usually requires more force than you expect, but its safer to start off soft and get harder to prevent damage from one hard hit and missing or having the pin punch shift. it requires a steady stable hand. one ive pushed it out this far i just take pliers and pull it out the rest pf the way. see the grip on the end of the pin? they only have it on one side, this is the way you need to push it out and put it back in. the trick if figuring out which side it is. to put the pin back in, literally just repeat the process in reverse. put the pin in by hand as far as it will go, maybe a few taps from the hammer, but once its in most of the way, use the punch again to get that grip back into the hole.
I don't do it often, but when I have had to do a pin removal, I use a small-headed Torx screwdriver and hold the figure in place with Silly Putty, with the biggest amount under the pin. The way I see it is that it goes hard on impact, so stop the figure moving, but allows the pin to pierce it.
What does the side with the grip end typically look like and what does the smooth side typically look like (before removing of course)? And what do you do if you have a part that you can't lay flat on a surface? A curved part for example and maybe even made out of thin clear plastic.
Generally the side where the pin is level with the plastic is the grip end, so you want to punch it out from the other side. The other side will generally be a little sunken in the plastic. For curved items, my Silly Putty idea would work, or Play-Dough if you wanted something cheaper. I've never tried removing a pin from clear plastic, but I suspect that would be the riskiest pin-removal.
