While rarely spotted on the snowfields of KO-KORO, the TAONIHO inspires constant vigilance in those who wander far from the safety of the village territory. While they’ve never been known to prey on MATORAN, the ferocity with which they’ve been witnessed to dispatch the local fauna is reason enough not to tempt fate.

I’d long wanted to make some sort of cat suited for the KO-KORAN environment, using a KOPAKA torso as the base, though I didn’t really start putting any great thought into it until the BOHROK feet provided a better alternative to the THROWBOT feet. Even so, I let the idea (and the KOPAKA torso) sit on the shelf until after the BOHROK-KAL had been released. This resulted in a rather noticable change in the resultant color scheme.

I could have made this without using any grey or PROTODERMIC pieces, but I’d forgotten that while there aren’t any white double-bevel 12-tooth gears, the R2-D2 set does come with some single-bevel ones. Of course, I would have had to go out and buy two more KOHRAK just for the feet, and I already had spares of the BOHROK-KAL feet sitting around. I actually kind of like the mix of white and light-grey, especially as it helps the trans-light blue eyepiece blend in a bit more.

I’d be happier with a less obtrusive way of attaching the tail, but it does enjoy a limited amount of posability. The base of the tail is mounted to a white friction plus-pin combo, and the individual tail segments can be swapped around or exchanged with others to reconstruct the tail in a wide variety of poses. I chose this shape because it goes very nicely with the pre-pounce pose of the rest of the model.

The head design is a bit tricky. Early on I decided that the KAKAMA was the most cat-like KANOHI, but I didn’t have any satisfactory ideas for how to do the ears with it facing forward like normal. So I flipped it on its back and used the “whiskers” as the ears. Days later I realized this might also afford me the possibility of adding in some BOHROK teeth as fangs, though it requires some delicate dental work to get everything attached without damaging anything. Technically speaking, the “jaw” is free to pivot, but the pressure of the teeth against the eyepiece is enough to prevent this from happening.