Presenting: Alternator Hoist

Finally, he's here. From the moment Alternator Optimus Prime was announced, I was so annoyed that they had wasted Hoist's transformation on a completely unrelated character. Because it's so obvious that this mold was intended to be Hoist (oh, and I guess Trailbreaker, but who cares about him?), with the high shoulders, the chest and, well, the entire car mode.

Hoist has a very special meaning to me. He wasn't my first Transformer, heck, I didn't get him until 2004, first as a junker and then as a reissue. But he could have been. My mother who bought my first figure back in 1988 told me how she chose from him and Smokescreen. And of course I was very happy with Smokescreen, but I still kind of wonder what my life would have been like if she had went with Hoist. I wonder way too much.

As you can see, I didn't match the original color exactly. But at least it's better than the first color I had picked out in the store. My color memory must have been broken, because it was a raging neon green. I got it replaced and got to work.

Hoist was (obviously) created from an Alternator Optimus Prime. The head was from my first junker Hoist (may he rest in peace) and the cannon was a spare one from the reissue, glued to the original hand balljoint to be removable in case I'd want to transform him. The shoulder wings were made from pieces of a Micromaster base ramp and are removable. Since I couldn't find any spray paints for this one, I painted him by hand with acrylic gloss paints on top of a grey primer. In hindsight, I should have used the orange spray paint on his leg guards because they look fairly bad, but...