Best and Worst HMM Kits?

[Leon35]

Simple topic; What are some must haves for HMM fans, and which Zoids should one avoid entirely?

[CeilYurei]

I want everyone to avoid GOjulas and Goj Ogre so I can get one

[ericmd]

Sept 30, 2016 10:05:47 GMT -5 CeilYurei said:

I want everyone to avoid GOjulas and Goj Ogre so I can get one

In that case, everyone avoid the cheap ones on ebay so I can win the auctions.

[LoveGame]

Shadow Fox is an ideal starter. It's reasonably priced and unlikely to become rare soon, a fairly easy build with little flaws and nice poseability, and looks great when finished, even without paint. Plus its a great gift for a fan due to its popularity. I recently got one for my friend for his first HMM.

Personally I only own 4 HMM kits (Shield Liger, Shield MkII, Blade Liger, Gun Sniper Leena) and I think they're all really great, albeit in need of glue here and there. Leena in particular was another very easy build.

[Hanyoutai]

If you can ignore that every model kit iteration of Shadow Fox ever is plagued with misfit nose parts I agree that it's a great start. You also can't see the flaw with the canopy down. It has some of the most excellent articulation seen by HMM yet, while also being fairly sturdy. You might want to glue a couple parts but otherwise (like the booster things on the back of the vulcan gun.)

I also really like Command Wolves. These are pretty sturdy kits, and surprisingly well made for being one of the first.

My most hated is the Iron Kong and Lightning Saix Irvine. The Iron Kong was awful. Everything about it was awful and it should be ashamed of itself. The kit falls apart SO MUCH, and the problem is that a lot of the parts are moving parts so you can't really glue them down. I tried thickening parts with nailpolish or modpodge and it's just not enough to keep this thing together. It also suffers from a lot of shallow part connections so there's a lot more gluing involved than normal.

Lightning Saix Irvine also has a lot of problems falling apart, but its biggest issue is that the part construction was just ... so poor. The additional armor actually blocks some parts that are meant to move. Like, it's placed where if you want to pose the Zoid you might break or pop something off, so you have to be careful gluing. For example, the armor covers the track for the red leg floofies that are supposed to slide when the leg is posed. It also has parts that just sit on there. Like literally they don't connect, they just kinda ... fit over parts. The chest is like this, and so is the bit that goes to the mouth and upper shoulders.

Another bane of mine is Blade Ligers and Shield Ligers. Just not very secure, joint wise, and the bladey mane pieces are so easy to break. Like you better not mess with them, ever, after building. And better not put the head back in the box mid-build.

I like a lot of the Liger Zeros, but all of mine have loose back joints. Where they're fine to start with, but over time you have to disassemble and readjust the joint. Apparently not everyone has this issue? But I have it on literally all of my HMM Zeros which is ... 8- So I'm a little beyond thinking its a couple coincedences. Otherwise they are some of the coolest kits. Panzer was never a favorite Zoid of mine but I love its HMM version more than the others, which are a bit more fiddly.

[CISsuperdroid]

All Molgas- must have

Death Stinger- must have

Everything else- meh.

[LoveGame]

I guess I was just lucky with my Shield/Blade Ligers. I pushed the legs on super hard and now they're easy to pose but I wouldn't dare take them off now. I also never had trouble with the mane pieces but that might be due in part to me painting them which made them thicker.

One annoying issue is that some Blade Ligers' noses don't completely fit together so it leaves a tiny but noticeable gap there. Seriously, if you look at the sample pictures on the box and such, you can see where they used putty or something of the like...

[Leon35]

Sept 30, 2016 18:41:33 GMT -5 Hanyoutai said:

If you can ignore that every model kit iteration of Shadow Fox ever is plagued with misfit nose parts I agree that it's a great start. You also can't see the flaw with the canopy down. It has some of the most excellent articulation seen by HMM yet, while also being fairly sturdy. You might want to glue a couple parts but otherwise (like the booster things on the back of the vulcan gun.)

I also really like Command Wolves. These are pretty sturdy kits, and surprisingly well made for being one of the first.

My most hated is the Iron Kong and Lightning Saix Irvine. The Iron Kong was awful. Everything about it was awful and it should be ashamed of itself. The kit falls apart SO MUCH, and the problem is that a lot of the parts are moving parts so you can't really glue them down. I tried thickening parts with nailpolish or modpodge and it's just not enough to keep this thing together. It also suffers from a lot of shallow part connections so there's a lot more gluing involved than normal.

Lightning Saix Irvine also has a lot of problems falling apart, but its biggest issue is that the part construction was just ... so poor. The additional armor actually blocks some parts that are meant to move. Like, it's placed where if you want to pose the Zoid you might break or pop something off, so you have to be careful gluing. For example, the armor covers the track for the red leg floofies that are supposed to slide when the leg is posed. It also has parts that just sit on there. Like literally they don't connect, they just kinda ... fit over parts. The chest is like this, and so is the bit that goes to the mouth and upper shoulders.

Another bane of mine is Blade Ligers and Shield Ligers. Just not very secure, joint wise, and the bladey mane pieces are so easy to break. Like you better not mess with them, ever, after building. And better not put the head back in the box mid-build.

I like a lot of the Liger Zeros, but all of mine have loose back joints. Where they're fine to start with, but over time you have to disassemble and readjust the joint. Apparently not everyone has this issue? But I have it on literally all of my HMM Zeros which is ... 8- So I'm a little beyond thinking its a couple coincedences. Otherwise they are some of the coolest kits. Panzer was never a favorite Zoid of mine but I love its HMM version more than the others, which are a bit more fiddly.

How is the Lightning Saix Irvine without the armor? Are the legs ok? Is it sturdy? My leg joints have all degraded. And the top gun is such a pain.

Am I just unlucky or should I avoid Koto Saix's?

[Hanyoutai]

Joint degredation is something that'll just happen with HMM kits. It seems to be luck of the draw for all of them. Some hold up fine, but as they are rubber they will wear out over time. I notice really loose joints on most of my HMMs after a few months.

My HMM Irvine Saix seemed grand before the armor, but afterwards it fell apart so many times I decided to forfeit. It is now just a pile of parts on the shelf. I don't know if that's because the armor was too heavy, or if it just degraded too much later on.

[CISsuperdroid]

I guess only time will tell, but the joints on the Death Stinger are VERY stiff, and difficult to pop together at first, so I think they'll hold up well over time. However, they're still rubber, so excessive posing may not only lead to loose joints, but popping apart of joints due to the fitting style. I just make sure to push in whenever I move any joints.

[CeilYurei]

Too bad we can't replace the fittings with plastic or something, perhaps treating the rubber before assembly will do the trick?

[shovelchop81]

Oct 1, 2016 8:01:49 GMT -5 CISsuperdroid said:

I guess only time will tell, but the joints on the Death Stinger are VERY stiff, and difficult to pop together at first, so I think they'll hold up well over time. However, they're still rubber, so excessive posing may not only lead to loose joints, but popping apart of joints due to the fitting style. I just make sure to push in whenever I move any joints.

The Transformers guys use Future Polish on all their loose ball joints as it's acrylic based and thickens the ball and socket joints etc..

[shovelchop81]

insert qLightning Saix Irvine also has a lot of problems falling apart, but its biggest issue is that the part construction was just ... so poor. The additional armor actually blocks some parts that are meant to move. Like, it's placed where if you want to pose the Zoid you might break or pop something off, so you have to be careful gluing. For example, the armor covers the track for the red leg floofies that are supposed to slide when the leg is posed. It also has parts that just sit on there. Like literally they don't connect, they just kinda ... fit over parts. The chest is like this, and so is the bit that goes to the mouth and upper shoulders.
uote here

Isn't it supposed to restrict the movement of the joints considerably? I remember in the anime that it's installed to keep the test pilot safe as a speed restrictor and only breaks/bursts off when Irvine is able to control the Saix enough to access the full potential of the Zoid without blacking out.

[Hanyoutai]

Oct 2, 2016 1:20:30 GMT -5 shovelchop81 said:

Isn't it supposed to restrict the movement of the joints considerably? I remember in the anime that it's installed to keep the test pilot safe as a speed restrictor and only breaks/bursts off when Irvine is able to control the Saix enough to access the full potential of the Zoid without blacking out.

It did not do this by making it physically incapable of moving its legs. If it did, it would hardly go faster than a walk. This is more of a technical design flaw in the kit. After all, in the anime, you can have parts clipping through each other for animation purposes. Not so much with physical plastic.

I imagine they probably didn't intend to make the Irvine saix originally, leading to a ton of issues when they finally designed the kit. The Saix doesn't appear to have ever been intended to wear these parts so they likely had to creatively work around it. Which lead to many parts not having proper connections, or being in the way of parts that were never designed to accommodate the extra armor.

[zombiefriedchicken]

I own the Berserk Fury and the Geno Breaker Raven ver. And my god is there a stark difference between the two. The fury is great. Everything holds together solid (minus parts maybe popping off on the backpack during posing) and the only issues off the top of my head are a loose tail, which I could address on my end if I felt like tearing it apart again (which I don't ha) and the fact that it needs some assistance standing depending on the pose. But given how sturdy it is otherwise and it's range of articulation I came away extremely impressived, since it was my first HMM.

Now for the geno breaker. This thing is a headache. And on top of it it's a headache that doesn't really pay off in the end. The body construction has some strange engineering choices (what is up with that cockpit?) but overall the main body is fairly okay to build, but the tail flaps are gonna need glued, and the foot stabilizers are probably gonna break off upon first pose. Moving onto the bulk of the assembly issues is the guns and backpack. The backpack is obnoxiously over engineered for the relatively restricted articulation you get out of it, and it's connector to the body is a major issue. The guns have so many parts that don't seem to fit where they are supposed to I questioned whether I even used the right parts (upon multiple checks, I did indeed). And on top of all of this it's just a nightmare to pose. Once you start touching in pieces fall off, break, or just simply don't move like the neck.

On the plus side though, it would seem that if you can assemble and pose a geno breaker everything short of the Gojulas is a fair bit easier.