Elephantus- fixing a 30 year oversight
Nov 2, 2016 0:33:17 GMT -5
Maethius, Leon35, and 1 more like this
Post by aceoftherebellion on Nov 2, 2016 0:33:17 GMT -5
So I recently had the opportunity to pick up a couple of very old Zoids- some of the original white-heads. While I always thought these guys were pretty cute in their quaint sort of way, there was one thing that always bugged me- I kind of hated Elephantus. How could you be an elephant type and not have any sort of trunk? That's like a fundamental lack of one of the things that makes an elephant an elephant. Sure, it had the ears, little gun tusks, sort of, but... come on, man!
Anyway, I was given a fair deal set that happened to include a mostly complete but very badly sun-damaged Elephantus, so who's to complain, right? A Zoid's a Zoid. All I needed to do was pick up one trunk gun and I'd have a complete version of it, my distaste aside. Now imagine my surprise when my favorite local family owned toy-store (I used to work there, and am still friends with the owner, but they sadly very rarely get in anything Zoid related) has an incomplete version in much better condition? Not only can I complete mine, I can swap out most of the sun-discolored parts with much prettier, cleaner ones! Win!
....But that still left that non-trunk. Maybe this is just my OCD kicking in, but it just bothered me. Something had to be done. I now had a number of spare parts, and I've got years of scratchbuilding experience from building other kits, surely I could whip something up! The one thing is, part of my promise to myself on returning to Zoids is that I wouldn't be customizing or painting anything. I used to do that extensively, and it took up way too much of my time and energy. I also didn't want to do anything that would damage or change the zoid itself- it's a small collectors item, right? So my real challenge was, make a trunk that could be assembled onto the kit without changing the kit itself- that is, nothing could be glued to the zoid, nothing on the zoid could be cut. A minor but fun challenge- here's what I came up with!
As you can see, it has a trunk! So, what did I do? I had an extra tail part, and tbh, the Elephantus tail looks more like a trunk than a tail, IMO. The way it was designed, there's an extra peg under the white-head that doesn't really do anything. It was a fairly simple task to cut up the extra tail's connection tab to create something that could plug seamlessly into the toy-
Not bad for an evening's work! I guess that makes it an Elephantus Mk II? I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. The previous owner didn't apply his stickers very well and I can still stand to clean up the sprue nubs and retrobrite the head, but I'm done with the mods. The best part is, since I didn't really do anything to the toy itself, it's reversible and doesn't even ding the 'collector's value'!
Anyway, I was given a fair deal set that happened to include a mostly complete but very badly sun-damaged Elephantus, so who's to complain, right? A Zoid's a Zoid. All I needed to do was pick up one trunk gun and I'd have a complete version of it, my distaste aside. Now imagine my surprise when my favorite local family owned toy-store (I used to work there, and am still friends with the owner, but they sadly very rarely get in anything Zoid related) has an incomplete version in much better condition? Not only can I complete mine, I can swap out most of the sun-discolored parts with much prettier, cleaner ones! Win!
....But that still left that non-trunk. Maybe this is just my OCD kicking in, but it just bothered me. Something had to be done. I now had a number of spare parts, and I've got years of scratchbuilding experience from building other kits, surely I could whip something up! The one thing is, part of my promise to myself on returning to Zoids is that I wouldn't be customizing or painting anything. I used to do that extensively, and it took up way too much of my time and energy. I also didn't want to do anything that would damage or change the zoid itself- it's a small collectors item, right? So my real challenge was, make a trunk that could be assembled onto the kit without changing the kit itself- that is, nothing could be glued to the zoid, nothing on the zoid could be cut. A minor but fun challenge- here's what I came up with!
As you can see, it has a trunk! So, what did I do? I had an extra tail part, and tbh, the Elephantus tail looks more like a trunk than a tail, IMO. The way it was designed, there's an extra peg under the white-head that doesn't really do anything. It was a fairly simple task to cut up the extra tail's connection tab to create something that could plug seamlessly into the toy-
Not bad for an evening's work! I guess that makes it an Elephantus Mk II? I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. The previous owner didn't apply his stickers very well and I can still stand to clean up the sprue nubs and retrobrite the head, but I'm done with the mods. The best part is, since I didn't really do anything to the toy itself, it's reversible and doesn't even ding the 'collector's value'!
