Quick follow-up: I was mistaken about how the crane gets secured in alt mode. The upper legs peg around the base of the piston, which fixes all the looseness and alignment issues in alt mode. (My bad, sorry.)

The general feel of the figure being slightly off from Inferno's build quality still persists, but it's not too big of a deal.

I forgot to mention that the hands are hidden slightly less well than on Inferno, because there's open space around the fists where the base of Inferno's ladder used to be. (The hands aren't hidden well on either figure in general, so YMMV.)

Attached is a quick and dirty height comparison between Inferno and Grapple.

-XCN-

 

Couple of updates:

Two of the subtle but low-key major mold changes in Grapple are:

- The merging of the front wheel well piece with the side piece that folds around to the back of the leg,
- The wheel pegs being moved far forward, instead of towards the rear.

The first change eliminates the kibble that blocked waist articulation on Inferno (which you worked around by popping the torso). The second change creates entirely new blockage that's just as bad.

Basically, if you want waist articulation on Grapple, you HAVE to unpeg the wheels and move them farther back. They'll end up resting on top of the pegs they're supposed to go on; you'll just have to live with the wheels being loose. Also you'll have to move the butt plate as far back as you can (which isn't much).

Doing these things won't get you a lot of waist articulation (the butt plate is an unavoidable obstacle), but it's better than nothing.

After having him for a day, I've definitely warmed up to him, especially now that I've sorted out alt mode. But at the same time, I have to acknowledge that his transformation is nowhere near as elegant as Inferno, especially with regards to the crane. Where Inferno's ladder had a simple and stunning collapse and fold transformation, Grapple forces you to grapple with a whole bunch of extra crane kibble -- particularly when going back to alt mode, for which there are no good instructions. It's a whole lot of extra work and parts management, and it's definitely not as elegant as Inferno's design.

A couple of tips:

- When building the base of the crane out of the legs, make sure to "pre-fit" the sides/foot bottoms around them, so that they're already lined up for later steps.

- Fitting the crane to the base should be the last step of the whole transformation. The base of the crane is basically two parts: a fixed base, and a top piece that rotates forward and back. You want to rotate the top bit as far back as it can go. Extend the piston on the crane all the way, then lower the crane arm until it notches into the base. Lock them in by lowering the side flaps on the crane arm. (I find it's easier to do it this way than to have the base all the way down, and trying to extend the piston just enough to reach.)

-XCN-

 

No. The base of the crane takes up a fair amount of the side room that was empty on Inferno, making it impossible to fit the nozzle in there.

-XCN-

 

(EDIT: Corrections.)

Ugh, I'm probably going to have to do another photo dump to explain this, but I've finally sorted out how to do the equivalent waist hack on Grapple as on Inferno.

If you have Inferno, you know that the entire folding ladder mechanism is a giant long red strip of plastic, that ends at the front. There is a gray base in the middle that you can tab and untab the whole thing from, which gives him a slight ab crunch, but also gives him waist articulation IF you then ratchet the hips back by one click. The downside to doing so is that the joint that allows the ab crunch is just a friction joint, so it's gonna be a little loose.

What I missed on Grapple is that the crane piston ends up serving the same purpose. The piston sits just above the waist, and IF you unpeg the front wheels to unlock everything, it allows for the same sort of ab crunch -- but slightly better, because the piston is ratcheted. This ends up being a tighter connection because it's effectively two friction joints for the crunch (front joint, pivot joint on piston) instead of one, and it feels a little bit like a ratcheting connection (but isn't; both joints are friction only).

So if you angle him forward, then ratchet the hips back by one click, you get about the same waist articulation as you would on Inferno, since it's effectively the same hack.

Bonus: if you reverse the butt plate so it's yellow side out, you get slightly more clearance. This doesn't matter that much in practice (since you're getting the needed clearance from the piston already), but it's an additional option.

-XCN-

 

Received my MP-35 yesterday from Amazon Japan. I'm stunned by how good this figure is. I do not have Inferno, but I feel like I got an impressive value with Grapple. The joints are, at times, crazy tight, but I think those will loosen with time. The accessories are fun, and the inclusion of the solar tower is a stroke of brilliance in my opinion.

 

Got my Grapple today from FedEx.

I've only fiddled with a little so far and as much as reviewers like Bobby Skullface would shun me for saying this...sometimes there is such a thing as too much paint. I've been trying to move Grapple's crane up a bit here, but it is SO dang snug due to the paint. I'm having flashbacks of worrying when I transformed MP Inferno here with all the paint making everything so hard to move. The paint looks nice, but definitely makes the transforming parts a worry.

 

Agreed! I'm REALLY tired of this paint-everything aesthetic. I'd like to be able to handle these things without worrying about scraping paint off with each twist

 

MP-35 Grapple Crane Extender
MP-35 Crane Extender by VF5SS on Shapeways

 

I bought this a while back but for the life of me, I can’t figure out why his hand cannon won’t sray attached. It’s super loose as if there’s no friction at all.

Anyone experience this?

 

Yup, mine was very loose too, had to apply some future to make a secure fit.

 

Thank you. I was paranoid that something broke or I lost a piece.

 

With all this talk about how the paint is a problem with the figure, any know what paint I can use to touch up grapple's dark grey paint on the legs?