BzzzBeep.

The nominal theme of the BioniWars series has been that the characters are built around the TOA torso. There have been a few exceptions (BatToa Droids & 4-LOB), but for the most part I’ve stuck to that concept. I wanted to build a ProboToa, but I didn’t want to cheap out and do it entirely from basic TECHNIC® pieces, so I stuck with building it around a TOA torso. The result is that the legs are a bit too short, the main body is about three times as tall as it should be, and the upper 2/3rds of the body appear as if they are actually an extension of the head.

The head on this is even worse than the one on 4-LOB, being comprised of four completely unattached sections (center wafer between two side eyes, center wafer behind front main eye, center wafer behind rear eye, & main “disc” section) that merely wrap around each other. It may look very stable, but you can jiggle the head quite a bit. There is one big main eye in the front and six secondary eyes. The three secondary eyes on the diagonals are all articulated with about 30 degrees of side-to-side pivot. The fourth diagonal is where the antennae are located, and they prevent the inclusion of a seventh secondary eye.

One of the coolest features involved is the articulation. Aside from the six legs (which are all mounted with ball/socket joints) and the three secondary eyes, the entire head actually rotates on a blue friction peg. In the above picture you can see the body is oriented the same way as in the first image, but the head is rotated so the main eye is looking right at you.

I originally considered just propping it up on it’s appendages. Not only does it look silly that way, it also tends to fall over. A lot. Especially while you’re cleaning up whatever it may have knocked over when it fell down. My solution? I built a custom Hoth terrain base and used a few of the transparent “control sticks” to float it over the snowy terrain.

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