Canadian Transformers News and Discussion Forum

[SMOG]

* using this post to list APOLLYON details *

Hi everybody! As the owner of a sample Apollyon from XTB, here are some of the minor fixes I made...

THE SHOULDERS:
The ball joints are a little soft, but not as loose as the production version. Replacement ball sockets were not necessary in my case.

My fix: I simply added a tiny strip of cloth-tape to the inside of each ball socket, and now his arms are perfect. Nice and firm, and invisible to the eye.

THE ELBOWS:
It initially appeared that Apollyon didn't have any elbow swivel. Then I realized that the joint just wasn't capable of sliding out far enough to free up the swivel without applying excessive force.

My fix: I removed one redundant screw on the inside of the upper arm. This allows the arm to slide out fully with no problems. With the screw in place, everything is too tight. There seems to be NO negative effect to removing the screw. Nothing is loose.

There was another elbow problem. There is a small guide-peg that is used to lock the arm in place when collapsed in gun mode. When turning the elbow swivel inward, the elbow collides with this peg and prevents the arm swivel.

My fix: I used a knife to trim a bit of the excess plastic off the back of the elbow joint, and a bit more off the peg. This affects the toy in NO negative way. Now the elbow turns freely, and doesn't hit the peg.

THE LEGS:
At first I thought the folding black panels on the lower legs looked messy. Then I realized how they're all meant to peg in and lock into each other. The result is actually quite solid, but there was a QC issue here. The hinge on one small section of the gun handle did not allow the piece to fully fold back on itself, which is necessary to locking the other leg panels in place.

My fix: I used a knife to shave away a bit of plastic (almost invisible) on the inside edge of the hinge so it wouldn't collide when you tried to fold it over. Now it folds pretty much flush, and everything locks in place nicely.

Another quibble I had with the legs was with the folding trigger-assembly kibble on the inside of the lower legs. The joints on this were pretty loose (especially on the blade-shaped rectangular silver piece) so the bits flop around a lot. Since these parts are riveted, there's no way to tighten those joints.

My fix: I shaved a little bit of plastic off the blade-shaped piece, making it just a bit thinner, and enabling it to fold fully back on itself into a jacknife position. I find this tucks it out of the way and allows this kibble assembly to fold up more securely. I also think it looks better.

The area that I cut will be a bit more obvious on the trigger in Gun mode, but it's still minor, and I'd much rather have a minor flaw in the trigger guard than have a distracting floppy piece in Robot mode.

That's it! With these minor changes, Apollyon holds together well, poses easily, and looks pretty darn good!

zmog