Long Haul is hard if you're going for fidelity to the 'toon model without partsforming, because of how it's normally assumed that he forms some part of the hips. For all the previous non-pants solutions, they've just used Long Haul's legs to form the hips and thighs, but that's wrong. Long Haul's dump bed forms his robot shins, but the whole thing is supposed to remain intact on Devastator's lower back. So for any of Long Haul's legs to be useful in the combination, you'd have to somehow detach whatever portion of thighs and sub-structure from his shins, which then isn't a significant enough mass to make for convincing Combiner thighs.

Of course, a significant amount of that mess could be avoided if Scrapper and Mixmaster could somehow house the majority of the thigh mass instead. Still a trick to design a sturdy-enough hip system that can still disconnect with relative ease, but less problematic than housing the entire upper leg segments within Long Haul.

Forearms I honestly see as less problematic. DX9's Hulkie stored the forearms within Bonecrusher and Scavenger's torsos, and the same can work at a larger scale. The larger size would allow some room for some telescoping/expanding mechanics so that the forearms wouldn't be so shrimpy. Alternately, borrow TFC's tread forearm solution. With some clever parts inversion, the treads could be disguised, and faux treads could possibly be stowed within Hook.

 

They could have the robot legs become the forearm and hands like normal, and have a flip out panel becoming faux treads.

They could use a faux dump bed for the back, maybe formed from part of Hook's massive crane.

 

Devastator has a pure purple dump-truck bed in combined mode, it changes color like Bonecrusher's treads. It's also huge. You've "already lost" if you're trying to do "toon accurate Long Haul in combined mode" while keeping him green and proportionate in robot and truck mode.

Might as well just "do what works" in combined mode.

 

Challenges to overcome:





Maybe it's doable, but the individual bots will suffer. (Some may not care cos they are after Devastator.)

 

And Bonecrusher's shoulder side will never be color accurate if people want his legs green.

And yeah people shouldn't expect mmc's Longhaul to be a thin toy, I already said on twitter I fully expect him to look like the Devastation character model instead, big beefster.



I guess we'll see how Hook ends up, I might have to insist on silver for his ab and thighs. I reallllllly don't want mmc's to go for bland light grey when the metallics would break up his solid colors so nicely.

It's also pretty damn obvious the g1 animators literally just screwed up and colored his boots wrong:



I am very curious how alex and makoto have managed to store the combiner chest on him. Like is mmc's hook going to need an especially large backpack? hmm.

 

Gawd, light-grey bits instead of silver could be a deal-killer, I hadn't even thought of it being a possibility...

(G1 Constructions didn't have a ton of chrome, but the bits they had were GLORIOUS)

How terrible would Mixmaster look with a light grey front grille instead of silver or chrome...

 

Any chance of a secret IDW extra with an mmc prowl head lol

 

PSX exclusive please!  

 

Shoulder joints and hands are additional challenges. Some extraneous parts they could use and hide combiner parts: Hooks boom (crane arm), Longhauls bed sides

 

No chrome please! Toon grey all the way!

 

Make it silver and split the difference.

 

yes! give us a prowl to swap out for hook.

 

I’m perfectly fine with not being accurate to the wonky thin cartoon models. Make em look cool over accurate  

 

The purple on Devastator's back came from b&w photographs of the Diaclone version. In practical terms it means you don't necessarily have to use Long Haul's legs for Devastator's back as long as a bed type part exists.

 

my concern with the project is that this line has been extremely toon/studio ox accurate and so many of the ideas people are throwing out would deviate from that philosophy.

so either these are going to do some stuff we can't even imagine or they are going to be extremely out of line with what we've come to expect from this line.

 

I would love it if these Constructicons are big and beefy to nail the all in one gimmick coz I always imagined the Constructicons(and Devastator) to be the biggest combiner group because they have 6 members.

 

Just saw this. Oh my god yes.

 

My Jinbao w/Upgrade is staying cause there’s no way that MMC Devy is going to scale with Dx9 Gabriel. That said I need some good looking Constructicons.

 

There is an easy solution, MMC could just do their own Omega Supreme to scale with this. I have no ulterior motive in suggesting that...
 

 

Chrome really doesn't belong on construction equipment anyway. You may see it on a grille of a truck, but typically parts that would be chrome on a normal vehicle are painted.