Most boneheaded childhood customizing mistakes

[Valkfan]

Hello all. I was just curious to know about your worst mistake as a kid in regards to your toys. Basically, is there a toy that, had you left alone would be worth a pretty penny now? I for one have the most regret with altering my original VF-1S Strike valkyrie as a kid.

When I was a kid, my father took me to Japantown in San Francisco so that I could buy Robotech (didn't know of Macross yet) toys. When we arrived at Mikado's, I was extremely disappointed to find that they didn't have any of the valkyries that were on TV. They only had massive quantities of a few valkyries that I had never seen. I asked the owner about this and he said that the Takatoku's had been released a couple of years earlier and that they were harder to find. To me this didn't make sense since Robotech was new. As opposed to buying those ugly ass valks that were in the American stores, I purchased the 3 valkyries that he was selling. Of course, these were the Ostrich, Elintseeker, and the Strike valkyries. I decided that Bandai must have made a mistake painting Skull Leader red. I decided to take it upon myself to paint over the red and make it yellow. I did this with a paint brush and a bottle of Testors paint.

Edited May 11, 2004 by Valkfan

[Blaine23]

The hideious misshapen black Testor's paint attempt at converting a Jetfire to a Skull-One comes to mind.

My first and only attempt at a custom when I was about 12. Thank god there's no pictures.

[Valkfan]

By the time Jetfire arrived on the scene, I had learned my lesson with the Strike valk.

[APU]

not a customizing mistake but it was selling my MIB Transformers Jetfire for a bag of pennys.

[Agent ONE]

I put my Legios stickers all over my Hikaru Bandai Strike.

[EXO]

Marks-A-lot for my Takatoku 1J.

Liquid paper to whiten Stick's eyes, so I can draw in his pupils...

[peter]

The hideious misshapen black Testor's paint attempt at converting a Jetfire to a Skull-One comes to mind.

My first and only attempt at a custom when I was about 12. Thank god there's no pictures.

Haha, testor's paint...that brings back memories. I took a perfectly good Bandai : Hi-Metal 1/55 Strike Valkyrie VF-1S Hikaru Type, and painted over the red with flat yellow to make it look like a Roy type. Aweful. I still have the poor thing...I'll take a picture one of these days and post it here in the hall of shame.

[bandit29]

Lets see. I painted my Jetfire Testors blue with a brush. And then later painted it Testors grey with a brush over the blue. And then Jetfire became a really great swimming pool toy!!! Then after that I set Jetfire a blaze...to create battle damage of course...he turned kinda brown & black...with grey and blue highlights

moron lol

[Sundown]

Painted the Gakken Cycle "Scott Bernard" figure's eyes in, shoddily... then attempted to paint the visor blue like the TV show showed, using metallic blue paint that'd settled so the metal flakes were at the bottom of the jar and the transparent blue solution was at the top.

Except the paint didn't settle completely, so Scott was stuck with a visor that he couldn't see through very well, was sparkly, and marred with Zentradi sized paint brush streaks.

-Al

[JsARCLIGHT]

I was like 14 or 15 at the time (does that still count) but I would go to K Mart and buy an armful of GI Joe 3 3/4" figures... then trade one of them to a guy I knew at school who had these small really tough rubber bands (I think he used them for model airplanes, the remote control kind that is) and I would then proceed to pull the joes in half and cut their center rubber bands. I would then take my dad's small metal snips and cut a link in the torso loop so I could thread on a new rubber band. Then I would play "musical pants" with them until I got combinations I liked. Then all I had to do was reassemble them and set them up. I had Duke with blue jeans, snake eyes with camo pants, the bazooka guy with the beard had duke's pants and so on and so forth. It was pretty cool for about ten minutes.

[sbarrett4]

I was like 14 or 15 at the time (does that still count) but I would go to K Mart and buy an armful of GI Joe 3 3/4" figures... then trade one of them to a guy I knew at school who had these small really tough rubber bands (I think he used them for model airplanes, the remote control kind that is) and I would then proceed to pull the joes in half and cut their center rubber bands. I would then take my dad's small metal snips and cut a link in the torso loop so I could thread on a new rubber band. Then I would play "musical pants" with them until I got combinations I liked. Then all I had to do was reassemble them and set them up. I had Duke with blue jeans, snake eyes with camo pants, the bazooka guy with the beard had duke's pants and so on and so forth. It was pretty cool for about ten minutes.

you know, you could have saved your self a lot of effort by just unscrewing the torsos and mixing and matching the legs, right?

I did a similar thing to my straight arm Joes as a 7 or 8 year old. Snake-eyes and Cobra Commander (mail-in with the Mickey Mouse logo) got their torsos glued their legs because the o-rings broke and I had no idea where to find replacements. Fortunately, I was able to restore them to almost perfect condition years later. Elmer's glue just doean't last forever thankfully.

On a Macross note, this was not my work, but I bought it. An Elint painted red with a paint brush. It was cleaned up and now sits in Kanata's collection as the "Ragu" valk.

[Chronocidal]

Well, I dunno about a mistake, but I did add a custom "ejection seat" mod to one of my Hasbro "Flying Fighters" once.. it consisted of a rubber band wrapped around the tail that hooked around the neck of the pilot.. when I pulled on the band, the canopy would pop open, and the pilot would shoot out, yanked out by the neck.

Can't think of any really bad things I've done to toys at the moment, except for two. First, I gummed up the landing gear of my Millia JM with clay to make them stay up when flying. Second, and much more recently, I tried to paint the cockpit in my GI Joe Space Shuttle.. looked okay, but for some reason at that time, yellow and red fascinated me, and all the controls are those colors.X_X It's in perfect shape aside from that though.. and some yellowing with age. Oh, I also got tired of fixing the pilot figure that came with it, just ditched the rubber band entirely, and taped his two halves on either side of a shelf for laughs.

[Toonz]

nothing to do with customizing but i GAVE AWAY all my gatchaman toys to my neighbours before moving to a new place.....

i miss my gatchaman

[Dat Pinche Haro!]

mine was throwing away all my legos...and letting certain toys (which i know are hella valuable now) go to the dump too....i miss my old power ranger toys (from the first US season)

[warrhead]

Gave all my old school legos to my first GF 'cause I thought I'd get some poonani outta' her over it... I was WRONG!!! Tried to shave down the sides of my 1/35 Legioss's gun-grip so that it'd fit in my Jetfire's hand... WRONG!!! Gave away all of my Orguss, Mospeada, Macross, and TF toys 'cause it was time to grow up and start chasing tail, and toys just got in the way of that... WRONG!!!

[drifand]

Childhood 'mistakes' eh? How about the very FIRST TIME anyone got hold of a 'silver paint marker'? Man, I really put that faux-midas touch on any and every toy I had! Silver painted fists on my Soltic, TT 1/55 VF-1S, Mugen Calibur.... you get the picture?

[Shin Densetsu Kai 7.0]

i used ABC chewing gum fresh from my mouth to hold togethere my 1/100 fire valk bandai model kit....

VERY VERY stupid if not weird.

what the hell was i thinking?

[Druna Skass]

I had one of those ExoSquad destroids (the Tomahawk) I tried to make it a winter camo, long story short I f*cked up really bad on it. I ended up just tossing it into a box. I found it several months ago and decided to fix it and re-painted it Zaku colors.

[Pat Payne]

I was like 14 or 15 at the time (does that still count) but I would go to K Mart and buy an armful of GI Joe 3 3/4" figures... then trade one of them to a guy I knew at school who had these small really tough rubber bands (I think he used them for model airplanes, the remote control kind that is) and I would then proceed to pull the joes in half and cut their center rubber bands. I would then take my dad's small metal snips and cut a link in the torso loop so I could thread on a new rubber band. Then I would play "musical pants" with them until I got combinations I liked. Then all I had to do was reassemble them and set them up. I had Duke with blue jeans, snake eyes with camo pants, the bazooka guy with the beard had duke's pants and so on and so forth. It was pretty cool for about ten minutes.

I used to do a sinilar thing...except I used to unscrew the Joe figure from the back, keep the o-ring intact, and play "musical limbs" with the characters...actually turned a 1991 Wild Bill and a original HAVOK driver (the southern guy--don't remember his name) into a U.S. Cavalry officer...

I also did a repaint on a 3" Exo-Squad Tomahawk. I decided I wanted a Kurita "Sword of Light" Warhammer and so, out came the red paint and a spare Kurita sticker from my BT game...

Edited May 12, 2004 by Pat Payne

[cube]

not a custom...but I tried to make zartan turn "extra-blue" by holding his head directly against a lightbulb til it melted...I probably should have known it would happen because one of my old hobbies used to be...holding plastic army men against hot lightbulbs until they melted.

[Opus]

not a custom...but I tried to make zartan turn "extra-blue" by holding his head directly against a lightbulb til it melted...I probably should have known it would happen because one of my old hobbies used to be...holding plastic army men against hot lightbulbs until they melted.

I was wondering where he got that nice tan.

[trueblueeyes]

One word: FIRE!! Was really fascinated by it as a child. I remember getting a scolding from terrified parents for playing with a box of matches under a butane tank at my grandparents house. I'd burn anything and everything from matchbox cars and transformers to my barbies (after the recquisite haircuts and surgery). I distinctly remember burning poor Raggedy Ann & Andy in my sandbox..great fun! ..even more fun sneaking household chemicals out of the house behind my mothers back or stealing gasoline from the can in the garage to make them burn better... It's a wonder I made it to adulthood without dying or at least being horribly scarred. It's almost enough to make me re-think wanting to have children...

Melissa

Edited May 12, 2004 by trueblueeyes

[wolfx]

One word: FIRE!! Was really fascinated by it as a child. I remember getting a scolding from terrified parents for playing with a box of matches under a butane tank at my grandparents house. I'd burn anything and everything from matchbox cars and transformers to my barbies (after the recquisite haircuts and surgery). I distinctly remember burning poor Raggedy Ann & Andy in my sandbox..great fun! ..even more fun sneaking household chemicals out of the house behind my mothers back or stealing gasoline from the can in the garage to make them burn better... It's a wonder I made it to adulthood without dying or at least being horribly scarred. It's almost enough to make me re-think wanting to have children...

Melissa

Woah....pyromaniac!!

[Blaine23]

One word: FIRE!! Was really fascinated by it as a child.

You know... that's one third of the MacDonald triad used to test for sociopaths, Melissa.

You didn't by chance wet the bed until adolescence or torture small animals did you?

[LurkerX]

how about this in the name of battle damage accuracy.

i would purposely drop my 1/55 valks & 1/35 alphas on the concrete; scrape them against the ashpalt; blacken some parts with a lighter to simiulate laser burns. purposely crack the cockpit glass to simulate even more battle damage.

of course some of my valks survived cause i wanted some of them without battle damage. to simulate how they actually looked before the battle.

[Vostok 7]

Heh, I remember the scourge of the markers and paintpens well.

'course, I never had valks. I was always into matchbox cars and the like, so they felt my wrath. But I do have a transformer stuffed away somewhere that has been thouroghly mutilated over time. It was an F-15 style one that was grey and had a little mini-transformer with a scoop that plugged into the back and made it so it could transform. There was also one from the same series that I didn't buy that looked like a Tornado jet.

Vostok 7

[The_Major]

well its not really a mistake, but it kept a lot of platic moms from seeing their plastic sons again......

I used to collect Micro Machines, the military line to be exact, and one year i bought a sh*t load of fire cracker ranging from the little pittly things to m-80's and Dixi Dynimite for 4th of july, well i had a whole lot of them left over and decided, HEY! Im gonna recreate the Gulf War in my sandbox.... by burying the firecrackers and then setting up a battle sceen over them and then lighting the firecrackers, surpisingly most of them survived, others were pretty realisticly damaged, and others just plain vanished!

then there is this sorry excuse of insanity

Then when i was about 14/15 my uncle the chemist decided it would be a smart thing to teach me a bit of chemistry and how to "experment" with chemicals... well one day he left a large container of Highly Volitile acid at my house, (i cant remember what type it was but it sure disolved plastic) and i had fun the rest of the night torturing Cobra troops and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Talk about mutations lol but luckly most of my TMNT's i left undamaged and still have, but every now and then ill still find the acid eaten head or limb of a cobra trooper.....

[RTShark]

One word: FIRE!! Was really fascinated by it as a child. I remember getting a scolding from terrified parents for playing with a box of matches under a butane tank at my grandparents house. I'd burn

Melissa

I used to use candles and lighters to inflict "battle damage" on my Star Trek models.

Everything from simply using the "soot" in the flame to mark sections of the hull black to actually trying to use controlled melting on certain parts of the hull to make it look like the ship had been hit with phaser blasts or torpedoes...

Never mind the flamethrowers we made from burning rags and cans of spray paint....

[The_Major]

actualy the best flamethrower i ever had was made out of a supersoaker with a screen over the end and lined with foil, you could fill that thing up with gas and toast all kinds of things....

[jwinges]

We used to take a 20oz hammer to our matchbox cars and then use little bits of scotch tape to tape the mangled parts together. They we'd shoot them out of those matchbox car launchers and have a demo derby. Can't say that loosing the cars was a big deal but man your fingers took a beating smashing them up with that big hammer.

[Rabidweezil]

actualy the best flamethrower i ever had was made out of a supersoaker with a screen over the end and lined with foil, you could fill that thing up with gas and toast all kinds of things....

Ok, that's very, very frighting

I hope kids don't read this forum. Or else there are going to be a lot of burn victims checking in over the next few days

[kanata67]

One word: FIRE!! Was really fascinated by it as a child. I remember getting a scolding from terrified parents for playing with a box of matches under a butane tank at my grandparents house. I'd burn anything and everything from matchbox cars and transformers to my barbies (after the recquisite haircuts and surgery). I distinctly remember burning poor Raggedy Ann & Andy in my sandbox..great fun! ..even more fun sneaking household chemicals out of the house behind my mothers back or stealing gasoline from the can in the garage to make them burn better... It's a wonder I made it to adulthood without dying or at least being horribly scarred. It's almost enough to make me re-think wanting to have children...

Melissa

thanks for the "ragu" once again sbarrett4... you did do a real good job cleaning it up

as for fire... I was 5 when I burnt the dog house to the ground. Don't worry... the dog was smart enough to stay away. It only got worse from there. Super soakers with gas worked but once I got in my early teens and was studying college chem things got much more interesting. I won't go into any specifics as I already got yelled at once for listing the various ways to make home-made napalm by a mod. I have lost one at least one if not both eyebrows well into the double digits in my life. Heck... I lost my left one just a few weeks ago. All I wanted to do was get 40 pallets to fit in a dumpster. They did to but the fire department looked at me like I was a dumb-ass . I work for a pool company and they have actually warned our suppliers to never sell me certain chemicals under any circumstances . Set one pool on fire and they never let you forget it . Oh how I miss fishing with explosives

I didn't do to many horrible customs as a child. My intent was to destroy, not customize so I don't think it counts. Gas and flamible liquids were fun, bb and other guns were fun, c-4 was entertaining till I got beat for making my parents have to replace siding on the house. Lord knows I've done some pretty horrible customs in the past year or two but I don't regret any of them. I love my spawn valks, destroids, and all the other poor toys I had enough of to justify gluing odd stuff to. I realy should take a progress pic of my spawn glaug

[Greyryder]

Set a pool on fire?

I remember grafting an extra arm onto my Dr. Mindbender. I think it was from a Powerglide mini TF.

Mostly I just smashed the stuff, but having been a rather odd child, I think that my Duke figure was lucky that I didn't have a Scarlet figure. Can you say "head transplant?"

[cube]

I was wondering where he got that nice tan. 

oh yea, I forgot I posted a pic of it way back when:

http://www.macrossworld.com/mwf/index.php?...opic=4346&st=20

[dr_vandermeer]

Definitely messed up a bunch of GI Joe figures. Lots of switching and painting to make my own new characters...

Also took a red marker to the eye of my green alpha. Didn't like how plain it looked, so i thought I'd color it in. It actually doesn't look TOO bad, IMO.