I thought it would be cool to build the FIKOU spider if I ever ended up with enough spare parts. By the time I did, I had enough parts to do it mostly in purple, which basically meant I had to build it. I made a further alteration by using a black TOA head instead of the grey one, which was my one big gripe about the original design, and I attached a green eye-piece to it to bulk up the abdomen. Why green? Well, it was partly because it’s the darkest, and partly because it comes with WHENUA, which is where I got the extra black head. It’s not the best possible look, but I don’t think any of the other five eye-pieces would be an improvement. If they ever got around to doing the eye-pieces in that charcoal grey color, I’d probably switch it over right away.

The really cool thing about the FIKOU is that if you’ve got a few spare items sitting around, you can build one in lots of different colors. Between ONUA, the NUI-RAMA, and the NUI-JAGA, you can get leg-pieces (ONUA claws) in black, white, light green, and orange. There are eight different colors of PAKARI MASKS right now, and the potential for a lot more in the future. The shoulder/hip joints come in black with all the TOA, dark blue with GALI, white with KOPAKA, orange and light green with the NUI-RAMA, purple and light blue with NUI-JAGA, and if you can find some of the old THROWBOTS™, you can get them in red, yellow, turquoise, and tan. Most of the little plus-rod balls are black, but if you get the TARAKAVA, the turquoise one has two light grey ones. And, of course, you’ve got the six basic eye-pieces, should you choose to use them like I did.

The downside to the FIKOU design is that it’s very costly to just decide you want to go build one. The absolute cheapest way to make one is to buy ONUA (for the claws and PAKARI), POHATU (for two plus-rod balls), and either TAHU, POHATU, LEWA, or KOPAKA (for the third plus-rod ball) and that will run you about $20. To put that into perspective, that same $20 could build you the TURAGA NUI model instead of a spider that’s not much bigger than a TOHUNGA.