Thundercats Origins - Lion-O Custom

As it says in the title, this post features a custom Thundercats Lion-O figure, Origins style. I've seen some people add the head and weapons from a Mattel Classics Lion-O, and the belt from the Bandai figure to Origins bodies and while that works well enough, it's not the way I wanted to go. The Classics Thundercats figures are a bit expensive to raid for bits and I feel the heads are slightly too big, with a bit too much detail and shading for the simpler Origins toys. As a matter of taste, your mileage may vary of course.

In theory, the Funko Thundercats are exactly the Thundercat toys I wanted to be able to buy back in the day when I was a kid playing with my original MotU figures. And while I can understand and respect that people love them, I feel they are for the most part a bit chunky and crude, not as nice as some of the other knock offs done back in the day by the likes of Remco, Sungold or Olmec. So when Mattel announced the Origins line and their WWE crossover, the idea started to germ to use the Funko figures as cheapish custom fodder to steal all the unique bits and details from and add them to the new Origins style bodies. That way, I would finally have the unified MotU and Thundercats collection I dreamed of, that would all be part of the same range. Not having to go places in the weekend due to current events, I finally had some time to start on this. I will get a bit more into what parts were used further down, but let's start with some pictures of the finished figure first.

Origins Lion-O with his accessories (despite what I stated earlier, I ended up swapping out the oversized Funko sword for the more appropriately sized Classics one):

Some posing, with sword and claw:

So far for the eye candy. Since we're going to get a properly sized Mumm-Ra the Everliving Classics figure from Super7, my earlier custom Funko-Bandai mash-up I made for my Classics collection, will likely become my Origins Mumm-Ra. The size difference with Lion-O seems spot on:

I will post a few intermediate WIP shots below, to give you an idea of the various stages this went through. I started with disassembling the Funko figure to see what parts I could use. To my relief, the belt was a rubbery plastic pieces and not part of the hard plastic crotch, so that was going to make the job of converting it to a MotWWEU crotch much easier. I decided the Ultimate Warrior skintone was dark enough to work, so picked that as the base body. I went through the work to carve out the inside of the neck on the original head so it would fit over the Origins neck stump, but decided in the end that it looked too fat and too cartoony to use.

Having noticed the hair and face were 2 separate parts, I considered the possibility of using one of the spare WWE heads and decided the Cena head had the most facial traits in coming with Lion-O. So I proceeded to carve down the sides, top and back of the head and glue it inside the Lion-O wig. The gaps around the face were then filled in with putty and blended into the hair. The resulting head, once painted, would hopefully look like Lion-O instead of Cena in make-up and the added benefit was I had the required cavity for keeping the Origins neck articulation. A quick paint application seemed to indicate this would work reasonably well. Incidentally, I found Vallejo's Color System Panzer Aces "341 Flesh Base" is a perfect match for the skintone on the Ultimate Warrior figure. 

Having take care of the head, I would need to get to work on the chest piece. I initially considered making a press mould of the detail on the Funko torso, to transfer that to the Ultimate Warrior torso with greenstuff. The Funko body is a lot bigger and wider though, so I decided to go for broke and sculpt the armour edges and shoulderstraps myself. I did this in several stage, to avoid destroying the piece I sculpted on one side while doing the other one. It's not perfect, but with a coat of paint, it would do the job well enough. I hoped.

In between working on the torso, I also worked on the boots and crotch/belt. For the boots I used Triple H boots, because they have the middle flap sticking out on top. I cut that down to a triangle and used that as a base to blend in the curved angular top of Lion-O's bootfront. The laces were carved off and sanded as well. As for the belt, it was too wide of course, so I carved out the excess material in the center and removed a section from the side to shorten it before gluing it to the crotch piece. A bit of putty to fill the gaps and then it could be painted. At this stage, it all started to come together and with some preliminary base coats I was starting to think: yeah, this is going to work.

I did some other minor paintwork that I didn't take pictures of: the lighter colour on the hands and lower arms, picking out some details on the claw, I don't have intermediary pictures of that and anyway, you can see them on the finished figure. I did keep my paint applications simple, to stay in line with the simple Origins toy look. Only exceptions are a slight bit of shading along the nose and a wash on the hair as the Funko hair is a bit too smooth looking otherwise.

There you have it. This was a bit of a long winded post, but I figured I might as well write this down while I remembered it in case someone asks later. I will be doing the rest of the Thundercats figures as well, but I will likely wait on the release of wave 1 of MotU Origins as there are some body parts I'll want to scavenge from those.

Thundercats Classics - Ma-Mutt Custom

Ma-Mutt is the faithful pet of Mumm-Ra, and the only living thing that evil fiend cares for. Ma-Mutt Resembles a demonic bulldog. While seemingly a pet, he displays an incredible, almost human-like intelligence, carries out his masters plans without questions and is ferociously loyal. He has the ability to fly as well as grow in size to gigantic proportions. Ma-Mutt ca also be used to to project Mumm-Ra's holographic image anywhere that he desires.

Mumm-Ra in his weakened form, with his faithful pet, Ma-Mutt

I started this one a few months ago, before Super7 revealed there would be a Ma-Mutt included with their upcoming Mumm-Ra the Everliving. I guess that means I'll keep this custom as my Classics Ma-Mutt for now and then when I get the official one, this custom will become my 5.5 inch collection's Ma-Mutt instead.

The model is a bootleg copy of the Staction Ma-Mutt that came with their Mumm-Ra. I picked a few of them up locally when I was last in China. The quality of the copy is good, but the paintjob is very basic. I repainted it to match the cartoon colours.

Here he is in my temporary display, with my custom Classics Mumm-Ra the Everliving (who I guess will become my 5.5 inch scale Mumm-Ra once the bigger Super7 version arrives) and the Classics shriveled Mumm-Ra:

Thundercats Classics - Mumm-Ra The Everliving Custom

I am probably not alone in this, but it seems like a terrible crime that the Thundercats Classics range from Mattel was discontinued before we got a Tygra, Cheetara and empowered Mumm-Ra. Using a litteral translation of local expression that probably doesn't work in English, "I put on my bold shoes" and decided to attempt a custom model.

The resulting figure and its accessories:

Looking for options to complete the line-up, I came upon the Mumm-Ra figure from Bandai's 6 inch line. The figure was almost as big as a Classics figure, which was mainly due to having a bit of a pinhead. His head was smaller than his arms and it prevented him from really being compatible with the Classics Thundercats. The unpainted plastic look didn't help either. Then Funko released their neovintage style Thundercats range, made to be compatible with the vintage MOTU range. They were the toys I dreamed of having as a kid, but that were no use to me now. Or were they? From googling some size comparisons, I started thinking the heads seemed close in size to Classics figures so perhaps it would be possible, with some work, to combine the head from the Funko figure with the body of the Bandai figure. Already having bought the Bandai figure and the Funko figures being relatively inexpensive I ordered one and at first glance, the size checked out and some other bits of the Funko figure might also be used. Out came the blades and the Funko figure was stripped of it's head, cape, weapon and bandage wrappings around it's neck. The sculpted on neck needed to be removed from the Funko figure, but once that was trimmed, a quick dryfit seemed to confirm the bigger head would work so much better on the Bandai body and would lift him up to Classics size.

A quick mock-up as a proof of concept, with Skeletor for size.

Some sculpting was required to blend in all the different parts and to hide some of the more unseemly gaps on the figure that weren't really needed for the articulation and then a paintjob where I tried to match the Thundercats Classics Mumm-Ra in his shrivelled form as best as I could. Painting and shading it also helped to make it look less like a children's toy and more like an adult collector's action figure.

The fully assembled painted figure,  with the sword of Plun-Darr:

Both versions of Mumm-Ra, side by side:

Mumm-Ra fighting his nemesis: Liono. Mumm-Ra ended up being slightly taller than Liono, which is a good thing. The size difference isn't quite as high as the cartoon would dictate, but it is enough to work.

The original figures (left and right) and the end result in the middle:

All in all, the following modifications were done:
- the head from the Funko figure had it's head trimmed down and added some undercuts to detach the cheekguard from his cheeks;
- the flying ribbons and the nose guard/frontal ornament from the Bandai head were added to the Funko head for added detail. Nose guard was slightly widened with putty;
- wrinkly eyebrows were sculpted to increase the likeness to the cartoon version;
- the bandages around the Funko figure's neck were removed and added to the Bandai body, heat formed to lay flat and blended in with putty;
- the neck stump was built up to leave less of a glaring gap and a new socket was added in the Funko head to fit on the neck peg;
- the grip for the sword was extended with wire and putty, and made thinner, to fit into the Bandai hand;
- the Funko figure's cape was cut off and glued onto the Bandai body (after painting). I also included one set of the flying bandages from the Bandai figure as two would be too busy and not work with the cape;
- paint, paint, paint!

A work in progress before sculpting the new wrists and painting

EDIT: apparently this custom inspired the respected customiser He-Bro to do his own version based on the same recipe. You can check out his video's about it below. Some ideas he incorporated that I like as an alternative for a quick-win is to give a wash of the original Funko face to make it match the Bandai skintone instead of repainting the whole and the fact he managed to incorporate the second set of swirly bandages from the Bandai figure that I didn't find a good use for. The use of O-rings to tighten the neck joint is also a clever idea. You can also check out his YouTube channel for more videos on making your own customs.