Customized Zoids

Being abandoned swap ideas, all I have are the crappiest pics imaginable. Actually, 6–14 aren’t totally abandoned. I’m hoping that posting these horrible ancient pictures of awesome swaps will shame me into taking better pictures. Seriously, my phone has a better camera than the one that took these.

1-7: This is the combo I didn’t think of, but ended up being the best one.
8-14: This didn’t turn out as nice as I expected (and is a pain to photograph), but it does look good in the dark! (#14 is all glow power, no blacklight.)

1-4: OER “Red Mutant” stylee!
5-8: Now that’s a BLACK rhimos! The weird burnt metal color of the guns really stands out now.
9-12: Hebby R, with a black undercarriage.
13-16: Black R, with metallic underbits and orange cockpits. This one’s my favorite of the bunch.

1-5: I didn’t like the red bits on the Command Wolf HT, so I swapped them with parts from an NJR woof.
6-10: Lately I’ve been interested in the idea of clear bits over shiny bits (like the G1 dinobots). Then I remembered I had some leftover gold bits from my leoshop Woof. I know that your eyes are hurting right now.

Genesis Decalto with the original’s red armor. It looks good, but I still like the white better.

Dark bits are from the NJR, silver from the O.G. The remaining pieces formed a combo so hideous I could not even photograph it. This guy was my favorite, before the chromie Gator came along.

I’ve been wanting to do this swap ever since the dawn of time—aka, when that other guy did it. It needed a bit more contrast, so I kept some of the silver bits instead of doing a full swap.

Is there anything blacker than this spider? No, none more black. Well, if I could have popped the transfer ring cockpit’s glass off, I could have used the Z2’s smoke one, but Starrior canopies are usually glued on. Another option (see #5 and #6) is to use a clamshell cockpit (Zillon and Molga Canory have black ones).

So far, all I have here is Dark Horn / Green Horn. I used to put the black parts from an NJR Red Horn on Dark Horn’s armor, but trying to get pictures was impossible. Not enough contrast. This would have also looked a lot better if the Dark Horn parts didn’t have those distinctive stickers.

TakaraTomy commemorated the 10th anniversary of the anime by releasing more anime-accurate versions of certain kits. One of them was the Iron Kong of a certain Germanic colonel who likes gatling guns. The upside: a clear green gearbox, and inclusion of the super ultra mega rare CP-A1 (a sprue of connector parts that lets you affix CPs to Zoids they were not meant for). The downside: too flippin’ expensive, and I don’t like how high the gatling mount sits (neither of which will stop me from trying to get one).

Since I’ve had a PK for a while, I thought I’d try to make my own, via the magic of plastic swapping. I also had a spare hacked CP-03 I didn’t feel guilty about hacking up, since it was already in bad shape, so I thought I’d take a stab at a slightly better gun mount (though still pretty half-assed.)

If you take out 3/4 of the colors used in the Fuzors MK-II, you get a pretty decent Woof. Especially if you have some extra black caps lying around. The last pic shows what you get when you do the opposite swap: USA! USA!

I combined my crystal Molga with a RoboStrux Kreep to make a half and half zoid. It’s easier to see the internal workings now, but the Kreep is kind of ruined, because the pieces didn’t fit quite right.

1-5: Here’s a close approximation of the Schubaltz Kong’s colors. The upper arm should be dark, but it’s molded in one piece with the shoulder. The hands aren’t quite right either, but it’s close enough, eh? Sorry, no gatling just yet.
6-10: Here is a very red kong. You can also make a very black kong with the remaining bits, but such a beast would be impossible to photograph.
11-14: Using some parts from the LB Gojulas MK-II, I made an approximation of the non limited Kong MK-II.

I replaced the unsightly red parts with clear ones from the Blox Customize Parts packs that came out a while back.

1-6: An OJR Merda and a RoboStrux Runna can make an all silver runner. The leftovers make a red/blue oddity.
7-12: Throw a Zoids2 Hellrunner in the mix, and you get these two! The blue/black one almost looks like something that could have come out in the NJR (except that they wouldn’t have bothered to make a black head, with all the silver-grey ones laying around). The red cockpit is from an OJR Sinker, btw.

I finally got one of those Guylos Molga limiteds, and the first thing I did was take the glowy bits off the sprues and put them on my clear Molga. This is a swap I’ve wanted to do forever! Maybe I will have to build my spare clear Red Horn, and do a similar swap with it and a Dark Horn.

If you use the body pieces and chest plate from an LB Gojulas, you can actually make a Raptojaguar that has some substance to it. Not much, but “lean and mean” is a lot better than “EMACIATED”, yes?

As soon as I got theNJR Sinker (back in 2000), I made these swaps. I think I like the silver one better. Due to slight mold differences, the back vent piece is incredibly difficult to remove, post swap.

1-5, 6-10: New and improved Z2 Stego/NJR Gorhecks swaps! This time I added the NJR’s grey underbits, for a little more contrast. The pilot is my custom mini micronaut.
11-14: By request: a swap of my OJR and Fuzors Gorcheckseseses. I think this one turned out pretty sweet.

Quick and dirty plastic swap: Leoshop Gator plus Zoids2 Tarantulon. This is the luxury SUV of zoids. I posted some pics on the ZoidFans Mailing List, and one Major Kong wrote for me a beautiful writeup, as he does for his own customs.