Replacing What Wasn't There, Part 1: Cyborg's Hand

If you joined us last week, you caught my rather belated review of the KB Toys exclusive DC Universe Classics Wave 4 Cyborg.  Oh, there was some guy in a bat suit, too, but my wife took care of his accessory woes a long time ago.

At any rate, Cyborg is a good toy with a pretty major problem: he's missing a hand.  Sure, he's got a sonic cannon instead, but that's just not good enough.

So I got to thinking.  If you collect toys in any kind of quantity, you wind up with bins full of accessories and weapons, most of which you'll probably never use anywhere near the toy they came with.

I pulled out a few bins and started sifting, searching for anything that could conceivably attach to Cyborg.  It took me a while, but in the end I found one or two things.
 

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Then I found another dozen.  But two objects jumped out at me pretty fast.  First, there was the incredibly odd gun/jet pack that came with the 3 3/4 inch Mark II Iron Man.  It made no sense on Iron Man (the character's guns are a bit less conspicuous, after all), but the back end was the exact right size to fit on Cyborg's arm, popping into his wrist as if it were meant to do so.  On top of that, even the coloring fit.  While it wasn't a perfect match, it was awfully close.

The other thing of interest (if you can't already guess comparing the two photos) was a sixth scale light saber that came with a prequel Star Wars figure bought on clearance years ago.

It took some gentle persuasion, but I managed to dislodge the blade from the hilt.  Then, much to my surprise, I discovered it snapped into Iron Man's gun.  It even fires (better than the ugly peg it came with, in fact).

But why stop there?  Sure, the gun worked all right like it was, but it was plain, simple, boring.  I started wondering what else I had in my bin of spare parts....

Remember this?  It's the ammo belt that came with Deathstroke.  At least I think it is.  No matter: I'm happier displaying Deathstroke without it, anyway.  Which is probably best, because I managed to break the belt in a matter of seconds.

But that's okay.  Turns out, it was far more useful in a couple parts.  In fact, I managed to find something to do with both the belt and clip.

The clip, intended to hold Deathstroke's quarterstaff, got threaded with a tube (possibly from an old McFarlane Ghost in the Shell toy who's got more than enough as it is).  A little crazy glue later, and voilà!

Just to clarify, the clip is glued to the gun: nothing is permanently attached to Cyborg.  I didn't want to trade out the sonic cannon for something else: I wanted to open up options (although I don't mind saying that if I had to pick between what he came with and the above gun, I'd take mine in a heartbeat).

So now I had a figure who I could display with one of two guns.  Well, it was an improvement, but I still wanted a hand.  I came up with two possibilities from my bin: the thing on the right (I think it came with a dollar store toy or something) and the extra hand I got with 9.

The hand from 9 was kind of fun and even sort of fit.  The "sort of" is because it's loose in the joint, but it seemed stable in some poses.

The larger issue was that it looked out of place.  For one thing, 9 only had four digits, which would have been odd even on Cyborg.  Also, the stitch-work style meant a very different look, and I didn't really want to paint it, since I'd rather not permanently change that particular accessory.

So it was time to turn back to that claw.  I borrowed my wife's Leatherman, and snapped off the bottom.  Then I decided to see if it fit Cyborg's hand.
 

I swear: I'm usually not this lucky.

The picture to the right is skewed a bit by perspective, but while the peg fits, the hand is definitely larger than it probably should be.  Not much I could do about that.

The color, however, could be improved.  I grabbed some paint and got to work.  The great thing about silver is that you don't need to be precise: as long as you're close, it'll work.

And, while there are certainly limits to the poses I'd use with this, I came up with a few that conceal or even play off of its awkward size and shape:

At some point, I made an interesting discovery: the spear point I'd broken off of the bottom half of the claw was the right size and shape to clip into Cyborg's gun.

I had an ice beam from... uh... I don't really know where it's from.  At any rate, it had a hollow shaft leading to the beam, so I inserted the bottom part of the spear.

This one didn't go off without a hitch, unfortunately.  In retrospect, I SHOULD have sanded or shaved off the edges of the bottom peg.  Unfortunately, I didn't do this, and you can see the result.

Fortunately, it still works, and the break isn't noticeable unless you're holding it up to your face.  I am a little concerned that the piece won't last forever, though, and I'll probably want to reinforce it at some point.

While I was really happy with how the gun came out, I felt like Cyborg still needed some added muscle and firepower.  Then I remembered the pack that came with the Predator I reviewed recently.

It's not something I really want to use with my Predator: first of all, it barely stays on, and secondly, he looks cooler without it.

So I checked to see if it could somehow balance on Cyborg.  No dice.  However, I did like how it looked when I had it in place.
 

Once I decided that I didn't need this for the Predator, I turned to extreme measures and grabbed the crazy glue and the remainder of Deathstroke's ammo belt.  After verifying everything was the right size (eerily exact, actually, down to an extruding piece on the pack that perfectly matched the indent in the belt), I started pasting.

At some point, I should probably go over the pack with some paint to match Cyborg's silver, but even mismatched I love the effect.

In my opinion, the alien tech from the Predator fits in pretty well with Cyborg's plating.  Of course, there was still more to play with.

I played around with a few more accessories and laser blasts for Cyborg's cannon: while it won't shoot, I have a translucent red peg that can plug into the end.  Also, it turned out I wasn't quite done with those Iron Man figures.  The shoulder blast from War Machine was close enough to the right size that I was able to get it onto the end of the gun on the Predator's pack.  In addition to looking cool, that helps remove the pack from its original context and make it seem more like an extension of the character now wearing it.

And, like I said before, all of these accessories are removable, so I can display Cyborg the way he came out of the package whenever I want.  But, honestly, I think I might stick with this.

That's my first finished custom project, by the way.  I can see how this gets addicting.

By the way, if you want to see what a REAL toy customizer can do, my wife's got a blog you should check out.  More photos below, including some other experiments.