On Tuesday, December 1, 2020 at 9:30:43 PM UTC-7, Zobovor wrote:

> Like Ironhide, Ratchet's feet poke out rather obviously in van mode, almost like the feet were designed around some other sort of vehicle shape. I've already seen third-party foot replacements that manage to follow the lines of the vehicle shape a little more cleanly, and if I hadn't already spent so much money on plastic robots this month I might consider getting them.

I was waiting for Nonnef Productions to offer their Ironhide/Ratchet kits, because I'm totally a brand loyalist. I hate the look of 3D-printed parts, but all of Nonnef's stuff is injection-molded which makes me really happy.

So now my Ratchet is decked out in all the latest upgrades. The first round of upgrades, which I did a month or so ago, was the new tire/hubcap set ($4.99) and the red fist and pelvis kit (also $4.99). More recently, they unveiled additional kits so I waited a bit until they were all released so I would just have to pay shipping once.

This time, I got the sled upgrade kit ($6.99), which converts the detachable roof/backpack/shield piece for Earthrise Ratchet into a treaded vehicle, similar to the battle platform for the G1 toy. The Nonnef instructions call for you to detach the hinged leg panels from Ratchet to help build the sled. The kit is like 14 pieces, and includes four treads plus an articulated gun that looks like the missile launcher piece from the G1 sled. You can also build a free-standing drone (looks like a Treadwell droid from Star Wars) using the parts.

I also got the weapon kit ($4.99), which includes a pair of those blasters Ratchet was carrying during the shuttle attack in The Transformers: the Movie. The weapon upgrade also comes with a semblance of the static laser gun carried by the G1 toy, so you can add that to the sled as well. It comes with a removable weapon peg if you'd rather have Ratchet use it as a handheld weapon.

The most exciting upgrade kit, though, is the replacement feet ($7.99). Instead of the robot toes poking out obnoxiously in vehicle mode, they feature a sculpted rear window, to match the roof piece, as well as a rear bumper and tail lights. The tail lights come unpainted or you can pay $9.99 for the kit to get painted lights. You need to do a bit of gluing to attach the tail lights, and you can glue the toe parts together if you want. The toes rotate for transformation so the "window" piece faces up in robot mode. The rear bumper also pivots out to serve as a heel strut. The ankle tilt function still works, and the toys are still C.O.M.B.A.T.-ready with peg-holes in the bottoms of the feet. It's honestly a brilliant piece of engineering.

So I got all of these kits for Earthrise Ironhide as well as Earthrise Ratchet (the kits work for the Siege versions, too, and there's a black version I could have gotten for Crosshairs, but I wasn't as interested in upgrading those toys). The colors aren't a perfect match—the white is a bit bright for Ratchet and the red's not a great match for Ironhide... but Ironhide is already like two or three shades of red. Interestingly, I never noticed before that the section of the rear window on Earthrise Ironhide is painted black, which seems like a strange deco choice, unless they were planning at one stage to do new feet that turned into a rear windshield that also got painted to match.

The kits are a little bit of trouble to get off the plastic sprues, glue together, and so forth, but they are so worth it. They improve the toys exponentially, even if you do have to pour quite a bit of cash into the toys to get all the kits. (If you only get one kit for each toy, get the feet upgrades!)

Zob (also got Battle Armor Skeletor today, but I'm very disappointed with him)