I wasn't gonna post about those siege kits until I looked into it a bit more.

The sweetmall listing acknowledges that the kits are unauthorized, at least.

Anyhow, a paywall isn't going to stop unauthorized prints from happening. Of course, this may result in makers not posting any more files.

 

I just got Kingdom Road Rage (the only version of the mould that I own) and yeah, she does need some upgrades.

Funnily enough, I don't have many problems with the leg side-panels as much as how floppy her hips are which are most certainly harder to fix but it would be cool to have a set that at least makes those panels stay in place. Good thing is that the fists don't seem to be connected with pins so replacements that come with wrist swivels are a possibility and if they come with panels to fill the hollow arms it would be even better. Finally, I hope for a few accessories that are fitting for the character, maybe a shield and a melee weapon to complement her bodyguard background.

 

I ordered the maw light for Unicron. Will report back with thoughts.

 

It's a lot better than the eyes kit. Even without the lights on, it surprisingly adds a lot to the alt mode display.

 

Yikes! I just checked that the there are stress marks around the pin from the left leg panel. Does anyone have this issue too? How serious is it?

 

I wanted to ask, if the set is shipping out yet, does anyone have a comparison between the Go Better Sideswipe kit's spoiler and Nonnef's Sunstreaker spoiler? I'm considering picking up the Go Better kit to outfit my Sideswipe, but I can't find any good side-by-side comparisons between the two sets, since I'd like them to kinda match.

 

Tempting, but as you said, the price is steep.

 

Toyhax labels and a gap filling kit I picked up from Ebay. Fit is a touch mixed on the fillers, most parts incredibly snug, a couple at the back of the legs will require a drop of glue if planning on permanence. Look great regardless, with excellent print quality and colour matching. Combined, the decals and the fillers really set Artfire off.






Ridiculously overpriced - as these things always are - so shop around as I probably got robbed. But fuck it, I'm very happy.

New 18Pcs Replenish Upgrade Kit Filler For Generations Selects Artfire Inferno | eBay

 

For what it's worth, I got my Tracks to be significantly less floppy with a couple very light coats of Pledge/Future floor polish on the various hip/thigh/knee joints.

 

I got new stuff!
First up, arm covers for Jackpot, they are the same as my Jazz ones, just in black.


I also finally got the Fangry leg stiffeners out, I switched over to PETG and print them with a textured build plate, so the side that touches the actual leg has texturing to improve friction.


As for stuff that's close, I have some leg extensions for Doubledealer


And I almost have the feet for Mindwipe/Draculus done


I want to do a wine glass for Draculus as well, but I can't do that until I get the resin printer back up and running, and that's also why any of the resin stuff is still out of stock, I'm still wiring/insulating the new area for the resin printer, so I don't have a place to use it right now. I also have plans to relaunch the Huffer leg panel covers in different colors, I have black basically ready to go for Road Ranger, but I need the Puffer and Pipes in hand before I color match. I have Artfire coming any day now, so I should be able to color match that soon and get stuff out, and I'm still trying to color match GS Galvatron, with all the supply chain issues and just the general holiday rush, it's taking me longer to get things, so it's taking a bit. I was also out sick all last week, so I'm a bit behind again, so thank you for your patience with me getting out orders!

 

DNA Design DK-24 SS86 Grimlock Upgrade Kit

Note: Custom chest window and model-003 head are obviously not part of the kit.


After getting 3 great kits (the first two ER Scorponok and SS Shockwave kits), this one is...a mixed bag.

Contents: The color matching for the grays is excellent.

Feet gap fillers (4 pieces), upper dino front teeth, lower dino front teeth, pair of poseable dino forearms, pair of clear yellow neck pieces, pair of forearm gap fillers, Wheelie figure, additional Wheelie heads, Grimlock sword, extra screws for installation, and 2 dino head screw hole fillers.


I didn't know the set would come with screw hole covers. These come on a sprue.


Note: For installation, one needs a Phillips #0 screwdriver for toys, which has a blunt tip. A regular #0 screwdriver with pointy tip may strip the screw heads. A simple mod is to file or sand down the tip of the screwdriver to remove the triangular point. I've taken apart the head about 50-60 times when trying mods before and the screw heads aren't stripped when using a proper screwdriver.

The forearm covers are nice and detailed, however, they are (too) thick and don't work all that well in dino mode. They do tab into place in bot mode but not really in alt mode. I do like the look in bot mode but not at all in dino mode. Mixed bag indeed. The silver painted details are on both sides of the panel. The kit includes longer screws for installation. Overall, the ZX forearm gap fillers are better and work well in both modes.


Our sword was annoyingly warped. Had to do 2 heat treatments to fix.


The sword has plenty of clearance from the claws. The original pics show a black handle but is now gray, like the figure. Aside from obvious cost cutting measures, this would technically match the G1 box art. Would have preferred a black hilt and clear red blade myself.


The gap fillers for the feet are excellent. One of them caused a bulge due to a sprue bit that wasn't cut off all the way, but after cutting that off, the fit was good. We have tried the ZX and Juqi gap fillers before, but the DNA ones are clearly the best.


The Wheelie figure is...meh. Bot mode looks fine overall and is based off the terrible SS86 Wheelie figure. Obviously, the articulation is much better. All 3 face choices look bad. All the major joints are on ball joints, except for the knees, which are a swivel and hinge combination. The hands are a bit loose when holding the SS86 Wheelie's slingshot.

Articulation: Head on ball joint, shoulders on ball joints, elbows on ball joints, hands have no articulation outside of the hand turning in for transformation, waist is on a ball joint, hips are on ball joints, knees are hinged with a swivel joint right above them, and the ankles are on ball joints. The elbows are able to flex 90 degrees. The hip joints bizarrely don't have enough technical clearance to bend 90 degrees, but you are supposed to forcefully bend them past where the thighs hit the part of the hip sockets to reach 90 degrees. The knees also bend 90 degrees. There's barely any ankle tilt (more so in the wrong direction).

The wheels are hard molded and do not move. The figure suffers from severe hollow plastic syndrome, like the SS86 Wheelie figure. The main focus is on bot mode, so the alt mode suffers quite a bit. The gap where the feet are just looks so bad in person.

Front view of bot mode:
Not a fan of any of the 3 faces. They basically differ from how much the mouth is open.


Rear view of bot mode:


Yep, still quite gappy:
The figure still has the pegs and connectors necessary to attach to Grimlock in either mode.


It is possible to use the stock head as the ball joints are the same. However, the stock head doesn't have enough clearance during transformation unless...


To transform with the stock head installed, turn the head sideways and pull the windshield out to expose the pegs. Now the stock SS86 Wheelie head has enough clearance. One can try to force the head through without doing this, but then that would scrape the orange paint off the top of the stock head. The DNA Design Wheelie heads are molded in orange instead.


Alt mode is, um, yeah...not good. This honestly would have been passable if not for the huge gap in the front from the bot mode feet cavity.


Another view:
There is no secure storage for the slingshot in alt mode. It'll just fall out if one tries to use some of the empty space internally.


Dino mode is where the upgrade kit overall is more successful. The articulated dino hands are a must-have. Each forearm assembly has a wrist swivel and 3 claw parts on a hinge. Each claw part is able to move independently from each other. These forearms work much better than the ZX / MSS forearms that allowed for claw but not wrist movement; our ZX set also snapped and broke rather easily. The teeth add on pieces have some QC issues. The upper teeth on ours were crooked due to a molding issue with how it's connected (fix noted below). The bottom teeth barely have enough grip to stay in place. The bottom teeth can be secured with 2-sided tape. Have tried teeth parts from Juqi and ZX, and the DNA ones are the best once the QC issues are fixed. The clear yellow neck pieces work better than the ZX / MSS ones as well, although they are borderline tight. I wished they used a slightly orangey yellow color like the box art renders but this is good enough. The sword stores on the dino tail 5mm port. Here, the forearm gap filler issues are seen: they don't close flush in dino mode and leave, um, gaps.


The screw hole covers do match properly. I didn't plug in the front one all the way as I want to put some of my custom pieces back on later. They do have slight openings to allow for removal...although that's much easier said than done. The back one has small amount of grip, but was extremely annoying to remove, even with needle nose pliers. I had to use fine sewing pins to remove. Also, on the sprue, the attachment point is right in one of the grooves, which was annoying to clean off. A safer option than a razor is to use a rounded precision file. Also, be careful as the screw hole covers are rather small and easy to lose when dropped.

There's quite a bit of added articulation with the new dino forearms. Again, I didn't plug in the front screw hole cover all the way on purpose as I want to more easily take it apart later for my custom parts.


Our front upper teeth were crooked. The issue on ours was due to the attachment ring on the teeth filler. Ours had quite a bit of extra flash, and I suspect some warping happened in the mold. When the screw post from the dino head goes through the ring, the ring was unable to sit flush on top of the post. Used a razor to carefully shave off enough material from the upper inner part of the ring (a round precision file would be safer to use). Now there's enough wiggle room for the upper teeth to be level.



Overall: The kit is a mixed bag.

What was done well: articulated dino forearms (must-have), feet gap covers (close to must-have), and the clear yellow dino neck pieces.

What was done well but needed fixes: dino upper teeth (removed material from upper inner part of attachment ring), dino lower teeth (2 sided tape to stay in place), and the sword (needed 2 heat gun treatments at 250F to fix the warping).

What was meh: Wheelie (body) in bot mode, screw hole covers, and forearm covers in bot mode.

What was done poorly: Wheelie heads, Wheelie in alt mode, and forearm covers in dino mode.

 

JRC Design is getting more of my money. And I doubt that anyone is complaining about this.

 

Who is gonna do a replacement head for jackpot

 

Great stuff! As a Uni Monsters fan as well as a Transformers fan, could I just throw this idea out there - Rather than a wine glass, what about a candlestick replica like Lugosi had, and maybe you can devise a clip-on medallion as well, just to cover that sprue mark in the center of the chest?

 

I was honestly just doing the wine glass because of Castlevania, it was something my brother thought would be funny.


I've never seen any of the Universal Monster movies (I don't actually watch many movies in general), so I had no idea about the candlestick or medallion. I might be able to get something working, the candlestick is probably more likely than the medallion though. The medallion would almost have to be done on the resin printer to get the best amount of detail.

 

I personally wouldn't hold you to that level of detail for the medallion. Just the basic shape would be fine, like a generic vampire costume piece. A circle with 6 points (or whatever is feasible) would be more than fine.

 

In addition to a new head….jackpot needs wheel fillers

add in some fillers and that’s a package id buy

 

What's wrong with Jackpot's head, aside from the fact that Hasbro gave us Jackpot instead of Ricochet/Stepper? I mean, it's a little smallish, but any bigger and it wouldn't fit through the hole in the hood. Otherwise looks like G1 Jackpot to me.

 

Got my HtB Ark set today. The color match isn't as close as I would have liked, and the quality is only okay. The side fillers don't stay in at the aft very well.

The snap fit for the fore side is good, but one tab broke off while snapping it in. Even with that, they hold in very well. So well that I'm not sure I could get them out without snapping something else honestly. The thruster is very good though. The snap connection helps hold the back end of the shuttle together, too. It's a nice kit, but with a $70 price tag and a 3 month lead time I was expecting better.

 

It's mismatched. One half sits higher than the other.