Sorry I meant zeta

 

Zeta’s isn’t a floppy mess or breakage issue outside of 1 area. The shoulders on screws. And the issue isn’t even breaking, it’s the fact it strips and unscrews itself.

 

Well about that... Their WWII Hotrod is a mess. All of their release are a floppy figure except the first release Bulldog. That figure has a joint that's too tight. And their jetfire is being delayed for no one knows. Their QC is a hit & miss.

In conclusion: Toyworld is a company that uses great weathering effect at the cost of figure quality.

 

So we are we already sure this is from BMB? it seems that if it is then they have way too many releases on the pipeline, moreso than normal. Not complaining though.

 

Got mine today.... WOW.

I dont normally gush over figures and build quality but holding this with the TC original and it's night and day. The TC feels like the undersized KO. This is up there with Bandai's Chogokin figures. Diecast in all the right places, really well painted and the right amount of heft. Not fanstoys heft where there's big chunks of metal but just used in areas such as supports, joints and hinges. It feels absolutely great

I havent transformed it yet so not sure on QC but this thing has really impressed me out the box.

Only drawbacks for me are the super clean paint & dead eyes. I'll be reproducing some eyes in blue resin I think to get around that

So I didn't like his cold dead eyes. It was one area TC did really well.

I don't like ruining original figures so I remodelled the eye section and did a few resin prints. I sadly think he came out a bit murdeery... Atleast his eyes are alive now

I'll give it another go later

 

That looks really good. Ever thought of using glow paint? I've done it on figures in the past and the colors look good in the daytime and glow all night long. Recharged by light And you can even seal it.

 

Eye replacement attempt v2

No I haven't but that's a great idea ! Will take a look

 

Those looks great!!
Excellent work, will you by chance be selling these at all?

 

Wasn't planning on it but if you're in the UK pop me your address and I'll post one out. I made a couple of spares

 

I am sadly in the U.S. but cheers for the kind offer though! Much appreciated.

 

I usually paint the dead eyes and they don't looses the light up function, just less brighter.

 

I wonder is it possible to design individually articulated hand for this figure? Not an entire hand maybe just the palm part.

 

Here he is with WJ M09 and BS02 Skybreaker for scale. Looks good with them

 

Just got this in. First impressions are that he's a lot bigger and heavier from the die cast, but it's too early to tell if that's enough to overcome the fragility of the smaller figure. It feels like the hips are already loosening considerably from the extra weight in the legs during transformation. A couple of other panels seem to loosen up considerably on 1st transform, though I don't see any signs of stressing yet.

In particular: the silver shin panels, which were the most fragile part of the original figure (typically cracking and breaking around the yellow tab) still seem to be plastic, and the triangular ankle covers are still not pinned. Why you wouldn't immediately convert all of that to die cast if you're trying to prevent breakage, I have no idea, especially since the piece that attaches it to the big yellow kneecap seems to be one of the new diecast parts.

Other than that, it seems like a straight upscale with a couple of odd mold changes; the baseplate for the head looks completely different, while the molded detailing on the abs has been subtly changed. In terms of transformation, it shares the same strengths and weaknesses as the previous design; getting the arms and hips positioned and aligned correctly so all the panels tab in (particularly the roof panels) is still a bit tricky.

 

Thanks for the opinion. I hope to have the figure this week. Can you take a picture of the silver shin panels? Thank you.

With the new year, the postal service is working very slow... I want to put my hands on this now.  

 

Sure, here ya go.

 

Thank you! So we will need to be careful with those panels.

 

Just arrived today.

 

So I now have an answer for whether or not CE-01 is more durable than TC-02, and it's a resounding no.

While overall there are fewer super tight joints on this figure than TC-02, there are still a handful. The two breaks I've experienced happened due to ball joints seizing up and overwhelming the plastic, however there are other joints (forearm rotator, window wing pin joint) which seem to be tight for no particular reason, which would probably also fail over time.

Let's start with a minor break. I noticed one of the fender pieces coming out of the ball joint, and it eventually just fully fell out.



What you're seeing there is a two piece ball joint. The ball and the fender are meant to be attached together by a very short pin. Unfortunately, this ball joint doesn't move as it's supposed to, which caused the plastic to stress and eventually give out. There's no good way to remove the ball inside the joint either.

This isn't that big of a deal, as the part in question isn't structural, and in fact isn't even visible in bot mode. I debated gluing it in, but decided that if the joint is binding up, that would probably just wreck the plastic further.

That leads to this break, which is the post of one of the window wings breaking off after the ball joint seized up:



I had noticed previously that the ball joint on that wing seemed to be a little tight, but not excessively so ... until it broke without warning. I'd transformed the figure a number of times without issue before this happened.

Because it's a post break caused by a seized joint, it's not really fixable. I think I need an entire new back assembly with new window wings as a replacement.

For the record: I had 0 issues with ball joints on my 2 copies of TC-02, which means this is a new issue to me. It's not consistent either; some of the other ball joints work just fine.

I've filed to get replacement parts, but at this point, I think the only thing to do is to write off the entire design. I have 3 copies of this figure now, and they're all unreasonably fragile. Even in a best case scenario, the transformation was always trying to do too much with too little, and the ongoing tolerance issues are just the final nail in the coffin. If you already have this figure on the way, you should check all the parts with ball joints, and sand and silicone lube them as needed to keep them from seizing. You should also lube any joint that feels too tight in general.

There's a couple of other minor issues I ran into, which you'll want to watch out for. The first is that you may have noticed that the hole in the front of the right foot is no longer present. On the original TC-02, that was because it was used to insert a pin that the foot slides on for transformation. On CE-01, there's a mold change where the pin doesn't go all the way through -- but it also tends to come out during transformation, so you'll need to periodically push it back.

The second is that the skullcap of the head tends to pop off easily, resulting in the antenna pieces falling out:



This is a consequence of the head now needing to disassemble for the LED batteries. You could theoretically glue the cap in place permanently, but I wouldn't do that unless you'd already sorted out a solution for the dead eye look.

-XCN-

 

This came just in time. The ball joints of the door wings on mine seem fine. The right one is a little tighter than the left though. Regardless I'll be sure to loosen them up with silicone grease. Do you know which set of batteries goes where? There are several in the box.

Edit: Nevermind, figured out the whole thing with the batteries.