The above picture shows Kadabra790’s idea for mounting weapons on TOA backs, similar to how they show KOPAKA and LEWA carrying their weapons in the videos from the TOA mini-CD. I played around with it a bit, and I couldn’t get it to work quite the same way as he did. The idea is that right on the underside of the spindle mount on the back, there is a pit that the hilts of the large weapons can be inserted into. This can work very differently depending on the actual pieces you are working with. Kadabra790 says he was able to get TAHU’s and KOPAKA’s swords to go in flat against their backs (from above the mount would be ‘+’ shaped) but that he had to twist LEWA’s axe 45 degrees (so that it would have an ‘x’ shape from above) to get it to go in.

My experience was very different. I tried it on nine different TOA bodies, and with the one KOPAKA and two GALI torsos, I was able to get it to stick in the ‘x’ position, but with the two TAHU, two ONUA, POHATU (had to turn him upside-down…), and LEWA bodies, the weapons would only fit in the ‘x’ position…but they would fall right back out. To get the picture I had to stuff a piece of paper into the pit to make it tight enough to hold KOPAKA’s sword.

When I first got the TOA, I had played around with the idea of mounting the large weapons on the TOA backs, but nothing immediately popped out at me and I forgot about it until this submission came in. While playing around with it, I figured out that if you remove the large gear and replace it with the weapon (all the TOA weapons have round holes through them that will fit over the plus-rod), you can then squeeze the outer bushings tight enough that you can turn the weapon to any angle without it drooping back down.

This is a totally unrelated custom that I covered a few weeks ago, but at the time I didn’t have regular access to a digital camera, so I couldn’t post an image to go with it. Now that I’ve bought my own, I figured that since EVIL TAHU came down from his perch on my computer monitor, I could snap a quick picture of this modification in case anyone didn’t understand what I was talking about. The arrow shows the end of a #3 plus-rod that has been inserted into the foremost hole in the shoulder section. It sticks in far enough to lock into the teeth of the gear on the side, thus preventing any gear movement at all. If you don’t want it to be as obtrusive, you can stick it through the hole towards the back of the shoulder and the arm will hide it. If you collect the KANOHI packs, you should have more than enough of these to outfit every one of your TOA with them, which helps out a lot when posing them. POHATU especially benefits from this as he will stop doing the splits every time you bump the shelf he’s on.