Brian Nelson wrote:

> There was a time in the Transformers world when we were basically peasants begging for scraps of our favorite characters. You want Thundercracker? Here's an Action Master that a 4 year old colored. You want Hound? Here's Sgt Hound, an arctic themed payloader that we will show you a picture of but you can't have. You want Ironhide? Here's an elephant.

> It absolutely baffles my mind that 35 years later we are now more spoiled than we will ever be. You want Tetrajet Rainmakers? Sure, we'll even package them together for you. You want Sixshot? We can't sell the gun mode anymore so we found a loophole and here you go! You want impossible to even consider because the CGI cheats so much Masterpiece Dinobot? Done.

> And that's just Hasbro/Takara. Throw in Third Party and it's unimaginable what we can have delivered to our doors in just a few days. Case in point, I know how *three different Masterpiece Seasprays*. I'm not even all that attached to the character. I enjoy Transformers for the puzzle of figuring them out, and I absolutely love the concept of different companies taking the exact same robot and alt mode and somehow coming up with completely independent transformations to get there. So even though I had avoided Third Party for a looong time I've started to dip my toes in. When FansToys Seaspray 2.0 was announced, their 1.0 version and the X-Transbots version both could be grabbed for reasonable prices. I grabbed both of them and was really impressed. I even thought they were just about perfect Masterpiece representations, at least as far as I needed them to be.

> And now I just got the FansToys 2.0. You might be thinking, it's Seaspray, how much can they actually do that's all that different than the G1 toy? I'm here to say, a lot. And it's fun, a lot of fun. A few months ago I got their Beachcomber and I think it's...*perfect*. Seaspray isn't quite at that level but he definitely has the same feel.

> I've got it in my head now that I'm going to try and different repaints from the different companies. Something like Takara Inferno, Maketoys Artfire, Ocular Max Hauler, and X-Transbots Grapple. That way I get to experience all the different molds and still flesh out the collection. In that sense, if I had to go back and do it all over again I don't think I would actively try and have three Seasprays. Maybe have one regular, one G2, and the other the blue and red prototype from 1985? Which sounds ridiculous. I would consider buying a $100 MP prototype Seaspray that's only been seen in *one* picture ever. What a time to be a Transformers fan!

I finally did it, my first custom!! Well I guess I should lay the groundwork first. Since I started collecting in 1984, I've always "customized" the display of my Transformers, trying to get them to look as close as possible to how I wanted them to look. So things like the cones on the coneheads went up, I tried awkwardly to wrap Megatron's barrel around to his back, and I stuck the back half of the van on Ironhide's robot mode - all to varying degrees on success. I would add Superion's chest to Silverbolt. Sometimes I might even omit accessories like Prowl's launchers or Galvatron's black gun. In fact, why does that thing even exist? I haven't look at that model sheet of all the TFTM weapons in a while, but I'm nearly postive it wasn't on there. It's not a leftover from Diaclone or Microman or anything. It's hard to imagine somebody didn't know his huge orange cannon was his primary weapon. I dunno, I think it's weird because it might be the only weapon that came with a movie toy that wasn't specifically designed for the movie. Um..now that I'm thinking about it, maybe Gnaw's too?

Anyway, my "customization" (at least thoughts of it) got a boost during G2! By this point my G1 collection looked like everybody in Marvel Comics #76 and tons of accessories had gone missing. But G2 presented a unique opportunity. Some of the Constructicons weapons like the chrome bits and four of the individual weapons matched the G1 ones, same with the Aerialbots' weapons, Roller's pump, etc. So in theory, I could buy an extra G2 Fireflight and give that extra Photon Displacer Gun to my G1 version to make him complete again! I didn't actually do this, but it was a neat thought for 12 year old me to have. What I came closer to doing was usings G2 to repair G1. I had a Bumblebee with a broken foot, and thought if I bought an extra G2 Bumblebee I could repaint that foot to match and my G1 would be complete again! I went so far as to bike down to the local hardware store and look at paints for this, but I think I couldn't find a match close enough and started to feel overwhelmed and ultimately abandoned it. Maybe if G2 had been the last Transformers released ever I would have tried to follow through, but new figures were stilling coming out so I had to prioritize. But the
thought was there!

Fast forward almost FORTY YEARS LATER and I've got three Masterpiece Seasprays and it's driving me nuts. You know how the hardest part of a project is actually just starting to do the project? It was like that for about 2 years where I kept thinking I would either send one of them off to be repainted by another fan or do it myself. By chance, a repaint customization tutorial popped up on my Youtube and finally gave me the incentive to try.

I said before that there was only one picture of this alternate colors Seaspray, but I lied, there is actually two.

https://tfwiki.net/wiki/File:Ehobbygobotscatalog.jpg
https://www.tfw2005.com/boards/attachments/1463943_228992973944486_1573155277_n-jpg.27401727/

To this I still don't know if these colors schemes were just prototype colors or considered for running changes or all new characters. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen a definitive answer on whether the season 2 Minibots and Seeker wings were developed specifically for Transformers or leftover ideas from Takara like Scramble City and Octane. But this blue/red Seaspray was what I decided to try. Picking which one to repaint was fairly easy. The Fanstoys 1.0 was the most toy-ish, so that made sense. It even had an approximate paint app of the chest stickers (more on that later).

Disassembly was a breeze. Due to the nature of the color scheme I was attempting and the way the toy was built, I really only had to remove screws and didn't have to bother with any pin removal. Then it was off to the hobby store (not the hardware store) to buy some paint. The photos show that the yellow bits would become kind of a deep pale blue and the white would become maybe slightly orangey red. I am usually a stickler to accuracy to the nth degree, but something interesting happened when I was looking at the different paints. A slightly lighter blue with a teal hint and a slightly dark red really spoke to me. It was weird. I knew it wouldn't be 100% accurate to the source material but this is what I wanted to go with, it just felt better. It kind of a gave me a whole new perspective. Sometimes a new toy will come out and something like the elbows will be a different shade or color than the animation or original toy and I'll wonder why - this gave me a bit of a new way to look at choices like that.

And I grabbed some silver for the face that I wasn't really picky with at all.

Another modification I made was the top of the chest. Whereas Seaspray's head sits on yellow piece, the way the Fanstoys toy disassembles, it would be easier to make the whole chest area the same color. This is disingenuous to the blue/red Seaspray prototype, but it also offered a bit of a contrast to regular Seaspray (so it wouldn't be a straight one to one color swap) so I thought that would be ok.

And I'm glad I did because masking was where I had the most trouble. I was trying to cut these tiny pieces of tape to cover up the blue/yellow/red details on the chest and the face on the helmet and it was not easy at all. But I did the best I thought I could do.

And then after the better part of half a century, I finally started painting a Transformer! It was nervous but kind of thrilling! Did a couple of coats, put him back together and...

The Good - I love it! It feel like a whole new character and looks awesome and different next to regular old Seaspray. The body type is how Seaspray might have looked if he was in Season 1, which is a big bonus.

The Bad - He's basically crumbling before my eyes. When I was reassembling his about four pieces broke. I don't think it's because of tighter joints because of the added paints, it almost felt like the paint itself reacted with the plastic to make it brittle. I used Tamaya Color for Plastics, but maybe there is something I'm missing? Anyone have any insight on this?

The Ugly - My masking was bad. Paint bled into the chest details and the face. Any suggestions on masking tiny sections? And I messed up the face plate. I used a tiny brush to try and get some silver on the face plate but it was too big of a blob and then as I tried to even it out I made it much worse. Any the overall paint isn't perfect. It's sparce in some places and looks almost runny in others.

The Good - I'm still wicked happy I actually did it! I'm terrified to touch him, almost like an old G1 figure with Gold Plastic Syndrome which is a bit of a bummer - but the experience I think was well worth it. I knew transforming him after wouldn't be ideal and I will definitely miss that aspect so I'm really interested in knowing what I did wrong and how I can improve.

brianjnelson wrote:

> I finally did it, my first custom!!

Well, this is exciting!

> I might even omit accessories like Galvatron's black gun. In fact, why does that thing even exist? I haven't look at that model sheet of all the TFTM weapons in a while, but I'm nearly postive it wasn't on there. It's not a leftover from Diaclone or Microman or anything.

Ultra Magnus already existed, but Galvatron did not. I think the Galvatron toy was designed to scale properly to Magnus, so maybe they threw in the rifle to give him a slightly higher parts count. It's weird when a Transformers toy doesn't come with anything to put in his hands. And, you know, Megatron came with weird accessories that he never used in the show, so why not Galvatron?

I do all the same stuff with my displays, by the way. Coneheads, Silverbolt chest shield, all of it. No naked Silverbolts allowed in this house!

> So in theory, I could buy an extra G2 Fireflight and give that extra Photon Displacer Gun to my G1 version to make him complete again!

This isn't an awful idea. But, now it makes me wonder about the provenance of G1 units that people are selling off on eBay now. I wonder how many of them have been repaired or restored using G2 parts. It probably doesn't matter a LOT, but I imagine it matters a little bit.

Of course, when I shuffle off this mortal coil and my kids are tasked with selling off all my plastic robot junk, they're likely not going to know that I cobbled together a 1986 Hot Rod and a 1987 Hot Rod to make my Targetmaster toy, for example, so I suppose I'm just as guilty of playing mix-and-match.

> To this I still don't know if these colors schemes were just prototype colors or considered for running changes or all new characters. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen a definitive answer on whether the season 2 Minibots and Seeker wings were developed specifically for Transformers or leftover ideas from Takara like Scramble City and Octane.

My understanding is that the 1985 Mini Autobots were developed by Takara for Microchange, but they didn't make it to the production stage. Early photography for the toys seemed to be hand-painted mock-ups... there weren't the necessary seams where parts meet during transformation, and toys like Warpath were missing a lot of the surface detail. So I think they got as far as the carved wooden prototype stage and then stopped. Then Hasbro came along and finished whatever work needed to be done, and switched around the colors, because why not.

> And I'm glad I did because masking was where I had the most trouble. I was trying to cut these tiny pieces of tape to cover up the blue/yellow/red details on the chest and the face on the helmet and it was not easy at all. But I did the best I thought I could do.

I have not had the best luck with masking when it comes to custom projects. I'll use masking tape when I'm painting the windows or molding in my house, or something like that, but I find it too imprecise to be of much use when it comes to painting toys. But, pretty much everything I do is self-taught, so there are probably a bunch of techniques that I've never bothered to learn.

> The Good - I love it! It feel like a whole new character and looks awesome and different next to regular old Seaspray. The body type is how Seaspray might have looked if he was in Season 1, which is a big bonus.

This is very cool. When I first started customizing, there was a huge disparity between what I *could* do and what I *wanted* to do. Of course, I was also using things like permanent markers and pieces of paper instead of actual paints.

> The Bad - He's basically crumbling before my eyes. When I was reassembling his about four pieces broke. I don't think it's because of tighter joints because of the added paints, it almost felt like the paint itself reacted with the plastic to make it brittle. I used Tamaya Color for Plastics, but maybe there is something I'm missing? Anyone have any insight on this?

I've not heard of paint reacting to plastics that badly and that quickly. There is a problem with using oil-based enamel paints on rubbery PVC plastic, because the soft plastic absorbs the solvents in the paint, and you end up with painted parts that are sticky forever. But that's not what happened to you, obviously.

Could it have been a pre-existing condition? Prior to painting him, did you display Seaspray in a place where he got a lot of sunlight? I have definitelty seen plastics crumble like that (some years ago, my G1 Sinnertwin broke apart like a Jolly Rancher candy), but it was the result of prolonged UV exposure, and not anything to do with paints.

> The Ugly - My masking was bad. Paint bled into the chest details and the face. Any suggestions on masking tiny sections? And I messed up the face plate. I used a tiny brush to try and get some silver on the face plate but it was too big of a blob and then as I tried to even it out I made it much worse. Any the overall paint isn't perfect. It's sparce in some places and looks almost runny in others.

Painting tiny details takes skill and practice, for sure. It sounds like you've already learned a few things about what to do and what not to do. Sometimes for very small details, I'll skip the paintbrush and use something like a toothpick or a sewing needle to apply the paint. Also, sometimes I find that for super small details (like the eyes on a Heroes of Cybertron figure for example), I basically have to paint outside the lines and then go back and paint around that small spot.

> The Good - I'm still wicked happy I actually did it! I'm terrified to touch him, almost like an old G1 figure with Gold Plastic Syndrome which is a bit of a bummer - but the experience I think was well worth it. I knew transforming him after wouldn't be ideal and I will definitely miss that aspect so I'm really interested in knowing what I did wrong and how I can improve.

Yeah, you can't really manhandle painted projects the way you can with Hasbro toys. But, it's a transformative work. You've literally transformed it from a mass-produced factory product to a one-of-a-kind work of art!

> Since we refuse to leave the stone age of posting boards I can't show a picture but if anyone is interested I could email one over!

So, remember that there's always r/AltToysTransformers on Reddit, which does allow pictures to be posted.

And, I was thinking about this... it appears that NovaBBS only archives posts for roughly two years, and then they vanish. I'm not aware of any other Usenet archive that retains records indefinitely the way Google Groups did, and it would be a shame for our messages to just disappear into the ether. I do keep records of my Comics Reading Club reviews (I write them locally on my PC and then copy-paste them) but that's still a lot of content that will just vanish into nothingness. So now I wonder if perhaps we should still entertain the notion of transitioning to Reddit within the next couple of years. They retain stuff forever.

> Now what about the future? At some point I'll take the XTB version and make him G2 purple, that's easy enough. But if Takara ever makes a Seaspray I'll have to pick him up as well but I'm running out of repaint material.

What about a Golden Lagoon Seaspray? That's a canonical thing that happened. Or you could do a white hole Seaspray, who was not seen on-screen in "The Killing Jar," but certainly must have existed somewhere in that alternate Universe.

Zob (I'm trying to remember if there were any coloring mistakes where Seaspray appears in somebody else's color scheme, and I can't think of any)