Micromaster Optimal Optimus Kitbash

"There he is, my little guy..."--Optimal Optimus, "Cutting Edge" (BW)

Micromaster Optimal Optimus and Hyperdrive Blue-Jackal was the unwitting inspiration for this project. Perhaps best known for her humongous signature file on the newsgroup alt.toys.transformers, BJ's .sig mentions that her most desired Transformer is a Micromaster Optimal Optimus. Well, that sounded like a fun idea for a project, so I dug through my Transformers boxes for old Micromasters to see what I could cobble together.

I should note that this is really the first project where I slaughtered perfectly serviceable G1 toys for a kitbash. Usually, I only modify toys that I picked up on clearance, or that were beyond help in the first place. In this instance, some of them were already broken, so I didn't see and harm in chopping them up. (That's Hyperdrive from the Decepticon Sports Car Patrol, shown for scale.)

Materials Used

Transformers Parts:

Vorath (Mindwipe's head). I had an extra one that I had painted silver when I was a kid (don't ask me why), and since I knew I'd never be able to clean him off and sell him, he became the base figure.
Swindler (Autobot Race Car Patrol). This guy really was beyond repair since his arms were broken off and I had colored him with a permanent marker to turn him into Micromaster Blue Bluestreak. He donated his arms, chest plate, and rear wheels.
Storm Cloud (Decepticon Air Strike Patrol). Another figure I had colored with markers--I turned him into Micromaster Starscream. I used his wings, stabilizers, forearms, and rear wheels.
Nightflight (Decepticon Air Strike Patrol). I only loved him for his jet-mode cockpit. I rationalized using it since the tabs were broken off the cockpit anyway.
Tailspin (Autobot Race Car Patrol). Okay, now there really was absolutely nothing wrong with him, but he was the only Micromaster I had with a vaguely Optimus Prime/al-ish face. Take heart--I used a general anesthetic.
Hook's guns (2). I happened to have two of these laying around, and while I know G1 parts can be a precious commodity, it wasn't worth it to me to sell them and then try to find something else that could work as a double-barreled gun.

Tools:

An X-Acto knife; super glue; a screwdrover; a sewing pin; paints.

Construction

Parts Fabrication and Assembly:

After deciding which Micromasters to use, I disassembled them with a screwdriver (took Vorath's backpack off, too) and chopped off the necessary parts from each one. I kept the full-size Optimal Optimus toy close at hand, and referred to both his robot and jet forms frequently while fitting Micromaster parts together. (I decided to go with the jet mode as the alternate form since the robot mode was already going to have wings on it.)
I chopped off the front end of Swindler's car mode and glued Nightflight's jet cockpit to it. Since the Tailspin head I planned to use was larger than Swindler's, I had to carve out the groove in the chest a little more so he could transform fully.
I wanted Vorath to be the base figure because his legs were the right shape (that and the fact that he had unbroken arm pegs), but I needed the ability for Swindler's chest to flip up. I settled on grafting the relevant Swindler parts to Vorath's body, carving a groove in the top of Vorath's chest to accommodate the new part.
I also wanted the roof to Swindler's car mode to serve as the backpack, since it was about the right shape to mount the guns on. I knew gluing it on would mean that it would pop off every time I touched it, so I took a drill and bored a hole through the center of Vorath's stomach to match up with the screw mount on the inside of Swindler's roof. It was then a simple matter of screwing the parts together (although I lost Swindler's screw, and ended up borrowing one from a junked G1 Megatron). This also helped hold the toy together because Vorath's body was hollow and quite fragile by this point.
After chopping off Tailspin's head, I whittled down Vorath's head to accommodate the new head (Tailspin's head is a bit like the Bumblebee toy--there's no "back" to it, and there was no sense in chopping off Vorath's head entirely).
For the arms, I had the idea of putting Swindler's arms on the toy backwards, so that the wheels would not be clearly visible in robot mode, but the arms could be swung around, fists forward, and still be able to roll in jet mode. I kept most of the side panels, but replaced the puny forearms with Storm Cloud's much larger, robotic-looking ones.
About midway through the project, I decided that I wanted more stable arm attachments. I kept breaking off the arm pegs every time I test-fitted one of his arms, so I ended up chopping off Swindler's rear wheels and using the wheels themselves as arm joints, gluing them to the body while still retaining a full range of motion. This gave him a much better sticky-out-arms look as befits Optimal Optimus.
After carefully chopping Storm Cloud's wings off, I glued the larger ones to the sides of the new arms (making sure not to glue the entire wing, so they would retain the ability to fold). The smaller ones were glued to the backs of Vorath's legs, after scoring a groove for them to rest in. The wheels on Storm Cloud's legs likewise were grafted to Vorath.
I also wanted him to have animal-esque feet for his robot mode, so I used the missile-launcher thingies from either side of Tailspin's head and glued them in place after giving Vorath a toe-dectomy.
For the guns, I chopped off the handles and most of the sticky-out parts from the Hook guns, glued the tops of them together, and glued one of the posts to the middle of the new weapon. I then drilled a hole in the middle of the Swindler roof so the gun could be removed. (The toy can't hold it as a handheld weapon or anything, but I thought the idea of a Micromaster with an accessory was neat.)

Micromaster Optimal Optimus, vehicle mode (with guns removed) Completion:

All that remained was to paint the toy. I tried to stay pretty much with the color scheme of the Optimal Optimus toy, although I had to fudge a couple of parts that OpOp doesn't have, like the chest panel. I mixed a little bit of silver paint into each color to give it a more metallic look, but I went with the yellow colors from the show (and the ptototype toy) rather than the orange that the finished toy has. I had to paint the face with a sewing pin because it's s'darned tiny.
To transform him, the wings unfold, the chest plate flips up, the arms swing up 180º, and the legs pivot up slightly. He rolls freely in this form, and the guns swivel (and can be removed). He's also got a gerwalk form, but it's rather silly looking.

Estimated Man-Hours Spent: Maybe 20 in all. A lot of that time was spent whittling away at a piece, test-fitting the parts, whittling away s'more, fitting the parts together... This project also holds the honor of giving me the most injuries incurred for a single project--I cut two fingers at separate times while carving his chest. Yes, I'll be more careful next time.

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