Legsies

A rohbut stands on its legs

Assembling Optimus started with the legs, the left shin to be more exact. As I've only lived through the G1/G2 properly, those box-protected wheels were a bit odd to me. Still, it looked plausible enough for me.

The thigh was almost ridiculously easy to set up and attach, as there were no fancy details or submodules. In the upper part of the leg, those two fan-like bits made me slightly cautious: had I prebent them at proper angles or was I going to have to fight them later on?

Right leg

The next identical but mirrored component was pretty quickly done. With these second copies the biggest problem in my mind has been that, even as they've been faster to do becaues I've known what goes where in which order and I have spotted some optimizations in my build process, it has carried a risk of overconfidence. That's why I've actively slowed myself down, to work on these a bit more calmly.

Project III/21

Freightliner FL86

Just behind the previous project the gift series also contained the leader of the Autobots. I almost used the word iconic here, but caught myself in time. According to the illustration, this was a bit more modern design than G1.

The difficulty-o-meter in the back cover was a more of a rare sight in MEM sets. This one was supposed to be just about the most difficult set they made. Sadly not all these had a scale, so I couldn't compare my own thoughts about the challenge provided.

As usual, an eight-stage guide and two sheetfuls of pieces. Nothing looked depressingly difficult at a first glance, so the surprises provided by the round pieces were going to shock me as they came.

Finished: Project II/21

Bumblebee

Of the usual Autobots, I had this idea that Bumblebee was just about the second-best known, right after Optimus. He used to have a bit more modern head at some point in the eighties, and returned to the original look after the Underbase storyline when Ratchet rebuilt him. Only because the medbot just preferred the old one. Why would you ask the guy himself what he wanted...

Partial assemblage: arms

No more armlessness

Who knows why the arms were the last things to build to this rohbut. The hand, forearm and the elbow were straightforwards builds and quickly connected.

These remaining pieces were quickly smashed into Bumblebee's upper arms and then shoulders. This was a joyfully nice wrap-up for the build. The other cat was also interested and came to oversee my work - and I guessed, to pressure me to feed them for the evening.

Partial assemblage: lower torso

Legs and hips

Half a hood of a VW Beetle wasn't the simplest thing to build, but on a general level it didn't end up half bad. The curiously shaped curves raised the challenge a bit. Nicely the instructions didn't suggest the fender/wing needed to be bent into the final shape from the start, but it got tweaked in three stages whenever another thing was installed first. These feet were much more impressive to view from the front than the ankle side.

The most special thing about these knee modules was that they were attached to the rest of the legs with only three studs per side. At least the thigh module could've, in my uneducated opinion, fit four studs. Nonetheless they got tight enough with just three.

The full legs consisted of four submodules. On the right side the connection between the shin and the foot ended up wobblier than I wanted, even though I felt I had squeezed the modules together well, before the tightening of the connectors. Maybe I had been a bit too cautious in my fear of breaking things.

The process of the left leg went just like the first one, and according to custom, a bit faster. That didn't have any visible difference to the looks of the results, which was positive especially for the first assembled parts.

When both legs were done, the first one was clearly less sturdy-feeling and a bit more flimsy. I trusted that when they were both attached to the baseplate and the torsto, the problem would cease to be one.

Craftily Bumblebee's legs were first attached to the baseplate and only then to the hip module. Personally, I would've appreciated more fumbling space when connecting the legs to the hip, but maybe this approach prevented some breakage.

There was a funny effect with the legs: Bumblebee seemed like he was hovering, even though the attachment studs were tightly on the baseplate. As we all knew, Transformers could fly, so a bit of a hover wasn't out of character. Again this post contains a few sessionfuls of building and such.