Tags and Stuff

There were two variants of this kit, but since I never look in the box, I keep forgetting which one I have. I picked it up in a tiny shop in Seattle’s Chinatown (ahem, International) district back in 2001 and haven’t had a chance to open it since.

Back when Zoidfans was THE place to shoot the breeze, a bunch of us got together and made a custom order to Leoshop. There was a run of the black chrome shown here, and also a blue chrome one, which I passed on. Black chrome is hard to photograph, so it’s taken a while to get good pics (4 years!?). The last three were done in my apartment with a long exposure, to show the weird purpleness that “black” chrome really is.

These are two chromed OJR Deathpion auctions seen on YJ.

This one originally came with gold underbits, but I did not want that, so I grabbed a Command Woof AC for the black parts. Much nicer.

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.

Some versions of this zoid came with a black head, and others came with a grey one. Both of mine came with grey, lucky me. So I borrowed a black one from Zillon, for illustrative purposes. Before I got a Zillon, I wanted something black, so I used the head from a Clawgut (which is actually a Starrior). Pic #4 shows the alternate weapon, for suicidal pilots. The last pic shows the garish stickers that come with all Zoids2 kits, that I choose not to apply.

A nice example of black and chrome. The crazy Zoids2-style stickers don’t bug me too much on this one, which is good, since they were already applied when I got this. Someday I’d like to do a plastic swap with my NJR Arosaurer. And then I’ll sell it.

I’m not sure why they didn’t make the body armor chrome too, but oh well. I love the orange wings on this one. Though the box shows black under-parts, and my model has them, the standard issue was grey. I gave away my gray parts, thinking I had spares, so for these pics I raided the under-bits off an NJR Redler. (Some Redwings did have black parts, but those were factory escapees and never officially released.)

This Redler is another custom order. The orange eyes are from a Zoids2 Red Wing… just because.

If you don’t count the OER, since it’s identical to the OJR, and if you don’t count that hyper-limited “Dark Molga” from Wonderfest 2008, I now have EVERY DAMN MOLGA VARIANT! Some Slithers came with a clear smoke colored cockpit. Mine did not :(

The english version of the box (mine has every language BUT) for this one calls him a “cool customer”. I normally don’t “do” Zoids2 stickers, but the ones on the plates actually looked pretty good.

My Tarantulon was missing the fangly guns, so I used the leftover Shield Liger guns from Blade Liger BI. Phenotype sent me an extra set along with an auction I won, so I didn’t have to worry about hacking up my set. Hoo-ah! I think I like these guns better, but I’d still like to get some originals (for completeness’ sake).

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.