There has been an awful lot said about the world of
Transformers customisation over the last few years. Some people blame it for the rise of the
third party toy, some people love them for the ingenuity, some people think the
Radicon section is nowadays little more than a link to Shapeways stores or ebay
pages, to others it’s a hobby and the only way to get that all important niche
figure. Well a few things are for
certain, it’s an ingrained part of the TF hobby and it’s not going anywhere fast.
Like most fanboy hobbies, there has always been a hardcore
segment of the fan base that links to tinker.
Either arguing that something wasn’t done right in the first place, of
that their thousands of hours painting miniature goblins and orks instead of
chasing girls when they were young can be applied to a different hobby, and
that they can do it better than Hasbro can.
As the hobby has grown on - and Hasbros continual desire to alienate their hardcore audience who meant that they still had a franchise to develop into a billion dollar brand – more and more fans have taken up the mantle of customiser in an attempt to Quantum Leap their Transformer collection and finally finish that all important CHUG 1984 line-up. Or they just really need a pink Outback.
As the hobby has grown on - and Hasbros continual desire to alienate their hardcore audience who meant that they still had a franchise to develop into a billion dollar brand – more and more fans have taken up the mantle of customiser in an attempt to Quantum Leap their Transformer collection and finally finish that all important CHUG 1984 line-up. Or they just really need a pink Outback.
There are several types of customiser, and they can be identified using this handy-dandy guide:
The “My Mum says I’m
talented”
Motto: Now I can make
everyone look like Hooligan!
"I'm special" |
Both of whom like it.
The Warrior
Motto: Dude!!!!!!!!!! Battle damage?
For the customiser with the love of random repaints, usually a stoner, who love tweaking toys but are not so good at giving it the perfect finish. No, it’s much easier to filthy up the toy and claim it was intentional. Slip with a scalpel? War wound. Shitty paint job? Duh, off road 4x4 pick up mud, dumb-ass. Burnt a hole with the soldering iron? Carbon scorring dude! It’s battle damage, right?
Yeah, no. Fuck off. I’m sure they’ll blend right in to your official toy collection looking like that.
The Combiner
Harvester
Motto: Hmm, a spare
Unicron body?
They're renaming the episode "Grimlocks Big Wallet" |
Okay, that might be undermining a lot of peoples attempts,
and certainly it downplays the amount of work that goes into these custom,
which still fetch a huge price on eBay even with the recent uprising of third party
companies. As this ebay sale of the recently sold King Octox Computron (pictured) can attest to, with a hefty final sale of $1,575, when they're done well, they're done very well.
For many people, this was the intro and endgame to
customising, but TFC’s definitive Hercules toy has left a million Unicron torsos unloved, soon to be
filling a major landfill site near ET for the Atari 2600.
The Cheapskate
Motto: How much?
And I only had to make all the white black and all the black white. EASY! |
The Cheapskate can make that toy, and dude, it will only
cost ten bucks, which is way more than they should have to pay for a god-damned
deluxe in the first place, and they remember when a basic would cost £7, all
the trees were fields and all these buildings had businesses being all industry
in them and men were men and nothing had warning labels and politicians were
bastards but they were our bastards and...
Yeah, the cheapskate can make that toy, cheaper than Hasbro
can make it. And they only spent £10 on
the toy. Win.
Although, they did spend £12 on paints, £6 on brushes, £2 on
white spirit, £49 replacing the table in the front room they stripped the
lacquer off with white spirit before the wife sees it, and two days off work to make the figure / rebuild the flat-pack table (probably minimum wage, say £48 a day).
Yeah, they're “winners” alright.
The Toy Goth
Motto: Do you do that
in black?
I like toys. I have
some. I’d like more. I’ll buy it again. What colour to paint it? Hmm, black goes with anything. No seriously, anything.
Guilty as charged on this one, but I blame Takara for
launching a million black repaints before I even though about picking up dye or
spray.
Yeah, it’s lazy, yeah, it’s unimaginative. But damn, do they look good? And how well do black base coats turn
out. CHUG Black Tracks? Check.
G2 Drag-strip? Check. Black G1 Overlord…well, give me time.
The Shapeways Whore
Motto: Dude, when you
get a second can you make me…
Damn, I identify with these guys as well.
We all know that one guy who is fucking awesome, and has
recently taken the plunge to full 3D design.
Maybe he has a Shapeways account like Calloway Customs, maybe you can
convince him that it’s really about time Needlenose had an accurate modern day
interpretation and he needs to make the head.
The best thing about knowing one of these guys is anything
is possible.
The best thing about being one of these guys is anything is
possible if there were just a few more hours in the day.
The worst thing about both, is that anything is
possible. Every single toy released
could do with a new head and a paint job to be that guy, or a new set of wings and a
gun, or a new engine block and a strap-on.
Suddenly, the hours go by, the orders mount up, costs go through the roof
and WIP projects keep being put on hold waiting for that one new part which
will make it perfect. The only way to
make it work is to become…
The Mold Master
These guys have taken the love of their hobby and turned it
into a way of making a nice little extra on the side, with add-on kits. Maiden Japan and Venkstas Renderform are my favourite
of these little entrepreneurs. Ingenuity
and knowing your market are the name of the game here, competing against other
add-on kits and third party companies.
Maybe your troop builders need a little more variety, maybe you need to be able to recreate a 3D diorama of “The Carwash of Doom” for next Botcon (Fuck that noise, I’m copywriting this idea now!), maybe these guys secretly have stashes of shit Hasbro toys they picked up at clearance and are trying to raise the market value on RTS Bumblebees??? Hmmm…
Maybe your troop builders need a little more variety, maybe you need to be able to recreate a 3D diorama of “The Carwash of Doom” for next Botcon (Fuck that noise, I’m copywriting this idea now!), maybe these guys secretly have stashes of shit Hasbro toys they picked up at clearance and are trying to raise the market value on RTS Bumblebees??? Hmmm…
The Factory Finish
Motto: Well, I would have done it like this…
I see the flaws...pilgrim. |
I don't like doing this, but it's a means to an end, as I like my custom toys to blend into my shelves with the other hundreds of Transformers as seamlessly as possible.
Never ask to show them your toy, as all they will see is the
flaws. Sure, they might be able to do it
better, but they spend so long talking about it they sometimes forget to do it,
or by the time they almost have the project finished, Hasbro announce an
imminent release of RTS Grapple. Yeah,
been there, done that.
It’s all in the preparation for these guys, but if you get
it right, the end result is well worth it.
The only problem with these guys is they can grow into something much
more sinister…
The Nemesis Sabrina Frenzy
Rumble King X
Motto: Kill me,
please…
Look closer, it's not as cool as first glimpse suggests. |
These guys were trail breaking entrepreneur pilgrims
annoying metaphorical early adopters of customising, and they were fucking good
at it too, quickly realising their skill was a real money maker. These guys can make anything out of a junker
Cy-Kill, half a Firecon and your Mums washing machine, they're THAT good. And they know it.
The trouble is, everyone knows it, and everyone wants one of
their pieces of work, so people approach and try to commission a piece. The customizer (with a “z” this time as most
of the big names seem to be from the Americas) knows they have too much work on
so they just quote an insanely high price.
Knowing their worth is worth it, the customisee agrees, maybe gives a
deposit or pays some up front and gets a rough date of when to expect the toy.
The trouble is, the toy is nearly always going to take
longer than quoted, and there is now a huge amount of money at stake for all
involved. This “fun way of monetising a
hobby” has now become a job: Miserable hard work with deadlines, repetitiveness
and someone constantly on your back to finish your piece of “art”.
Way to go dude, you just killed your hobby. And the notion of fun. And your soul.
So there you have it, we all conform to one or more of these archetypes, which will be explored in more detail in Joesph Campbells first posthumously written book about mythology; "Dissecting the Nerd, Kitbashing the Brain".
Far too many ellipsis...no, ellipsi? Ellipsisses?
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