Optimus Prime & Co.: A Newbies attempt at Gunpla

A few months back I was able to pick up Arcee, on eBay for a steal, still brand new in shrink.  I’ve been deep in a priority project since then, but I finally finished that recently, and caught up on my immediate backlog.  I build and primed my next project, but then found myself with an afternoon with nothing to work on, unless I didn’t want to wait for my primer to cure fully.  Seemed like a good time to get Arce of the shelf and build her.

It was a good build.  Took about 4.5 hours, all in.  She mostly went together without issue.  I only had 2 problems.

1: I needed to shave some plastic off the peg to connect the transparent eye plate to the head as it was slightly too wide.  The transparent plastic seems like a different material to the rest of her so I’m happy to give them the benefit of the doubt here, and say the engineering requirements for cross material connection are harder, as materials expand and contract differently to each other.  It’s a simple fix anyway.

2: They did not mention the stickers while building her.  They told us to apply them after fully assembling her which made it infinitely harder.  Why they couldn’t mention each sticker as we built each limb I do not know.  it’s a really dumb choice.

As for the final model, she looks cool and is on my shelf with the others.  When reposing she feels more likely to come apart than Optimus was, but I haven’t fiddled with him in a while so perhaps I’ve a rose tinted memory?

Her gun can be built as a small or medium pistol, or as this 2 handed rifle.  I tried to pose her holding it across her chest, but I could not find a way to move her arms to allow this.  Every time I try to bring an arm across her it pops out of its socket, or the hand holding the gun comes apart.  I’m assuming she’s not designed to do this, which is a shame.

For £20 definitely worth it.  Full price?  I’m not that rich.  I’ll keep checking eBay often for deals.