I woulda eBayed my Unicron by now, but I need to locate one of his missiles and his Dead End.
EDIT: Hey, why did I bold “RATHER”? That’s weird. I think I meant to bold “SET FIRE” and missed.
Shortpacked! by David Willis
Toys are serious business.
Convention appearances:
Calgary Expo Calgary, AB: April 26-28
Phoenix Comicon Phoenix, AZ: May 23-26, 2013
BotCon San Diego, CA: June 28-30
San Diego Comic-Con San Diego, CA: July 18-21
SPX Bethesda, MD: September 14-15
Phoenix Comicon Phoenix, AZ: May 23-26, 2013
BotCon San Diego, CA: June 28-30
San Diego Comic-Con San Diego, CA: July 18-21
SPX Bethesda, MD: September 14-15
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Sorcery 101
Templar, AZ
The Transformers Wiki
Hail to the Slash
80 page GIANT
Axe Cop
The Book of Biff
Butt-Taco
Comics Curmudgeon
College Roomies from Hell!!!
Diesel Sweeties
Dinosaur Comics
Dr. McNinja
Dresden Codak
Fans!
Fleen
Gastrophobia
Girl Genius
Girls with Slingshots
Goats
Hark, a vagrant
Hijinks Ensue
Intrepid Girlbot
Legend of Bill
Medium Large
Not Invented Here
Octopus Pie
Overcompensating
Penny Arcade
PhDcomics
Power Nap
Questionable Content
Real Life
Rob and Elliot
Bad Machinery
Schlock Mercenary
Sheldon
So Far Apart
Something Positive
Two Lumps
Wapsi Square
Wonderella
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Frumph.NET
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Hooray for being charitable.
And the poor cat goes hungry again
It took me exactly 37 seconds to figure out what you meant by that… then I fell out fo my chair laughing… I’m sad…
My thoughts exactly. After the first 2 panels I was hoping things would turn out that way. Then I imagined it would become a regular occurrence for Ethan to feed the kitten his older toys and in exchange it would keep away from his newer ones.
Oh well, this works too.
Can I have the Old unicron? I won’t kitbash it, promise.
Maybe I’m missing something here, but, kitbashing doesn’t sound like a BAD idea. I mean, if the parts are junk. If it’s in good condition, what’s the point?
Speaking only for myself (well maybe Ethan, too), but Devatator kitbashes using Unicron thighs are made in such great quantity that I’ve started to loathe them. So the knowledge that my previous possession had become one of them would make me a little sad.
Is “Devatator” what you get when you combine five Optimash Primes into one enormous Über Tüber?
(someone please do this)
“Uber-tuber” is the best phrase ever.
Does that measure up to the same standard as, say, “refudiate”?
He could any one of a dozen other potato-headed guys.
Hey, answer this to someone who doesn’t know shit bout action figures… what is kitbash??
Kitbashing is adding or modifying parts, or sometimes combining parts from two or more figures to create a custom figure. Fans do this to make characters not offered by the manufacturer, to make figures more accurate to the source, or just to have something unique.
Yeah, and I’ve always hated the term “kitbash”. To me, it demeans what a custom action figure is. I dunno, it’s hard to explain.
The term comes from plastic model hobbyists, who would take parts from multiple model kits and bash ‘em together. Like making a custom muscle car by using the engine from one car in the body of another, and then adding custom bits (including hoses and struts made from sprues) to make it all fit. For instance, most of the original Star Wars ships were kitbashes, put together out of model boats and tanks and planes along with random scraps.
I expect that part of what helped the term infect the geeksphere more generally was its use as a game mechanic in the original Marvel Super Heroes RPG. It was used to refer to the sort of thing where Spidey would cobble together a magnetic inverter to make Vulture plummet out of the sky, etc.
Oddly, deviantArt has no category even remotely like “kitbash” or “figure customization.” I finally settled on Artisan Crafts, Miscellaneous.
How can you demean what an action figure is? They’re plastic toys.
*gasp*
You did not just say that
Just kidding, I don’t care lol
Hah. I’ve don’t that at Goodwill. This made me laugh.
Hey, 20 bucks is 20 bucks… I could eat for a couple of days with that…
here’s my grocery bill from last week.
Ramen Noodle packs x12 $2.00(reg price 5 for $1
Royal(brand) Cherry flavor Gello x3 $0.89(gotta have desert
Store brand Croutons 16oz x1 $0.99(excellent snack and goes with the next few items
Local brand Meat Company’s Chicken Nuggets 35oz x1 $3.99($1 off
Ready-Pac Salad mix x2 $4.00(saved a $1 here too,
Aunt Jemima Frozen Waffles 10 waffles a carton x3 $5(excellent sale price and its very common at all supermarkets for 30 frozen waffles to be $5.
You’ll see that I am under $20, and I got some healthy food I can add the nuggets too and croutons for a tasty dish, a snack food, desert, a quick anytime “meal”, and breakfast. I coulda used some syrup and salad dressing though.
Almost none of that is even remotely healthy.
At least its not that weird looking Energon version. Heaven only knows what Hasbro was thinking with that recolor…
The great Faz would like to see a Galactus action-figure approach and disrespectfully hump the discarded Unicron in the toy charity bucket to show him how things are in toy jail.
Faz imagines a disembodied Orson Welles voice emanating from the discarded Unicron: a dispirited groan conveying a sense of “cosmic” horror at this undeserved assault on his newly abandoned and sensitive robo-keister.
Or perhaps the groan will instead convey something more akin to deep “cosmic” inebriation, perhaps sounding to the trained ear a bit like, “AaaaaaaaaAAAA…aaahh the FRE-e-ENNNcch! *Burp*”.
This is the glorious fascinating moving picture, with surround sound, that envelops even the farthest corners of Faz’s mind like an I-MAX theatre screen only it does not cost Faz $12 to see it, which is good, because Faz does not have $12 on him at the moment.
Can I buy some pot from you?
Not in California.
I had to really focus, and it took multiple tries, to read the phrase, “disrespectfully hump the discarded Unicron in the toy charity bucket” without picturing “toy charity bucket” as a euphamism.
Theno
Well played Mr. Willis……this is one of your most clever and amusing strips I’ve read in a long time. Back to basics….funny and relatable jokes about TOYS and toy collecting!! I dig it.
While I don’t sympathsise with Ethan’s predicament at all and find it silly (plus had to look up what a kitbash was!) all I have to say I really liked how Leslie and Ethan came across here, this in combination with her assisting Ethan on his first date with a guy means I get good brother/sister vibes from them. I love it. From earlier strips and at points they didn’t get on but I really like how they are now.
I think they might be my favourite platonic relationship on shortpacked now.
To every thing, turn, turn, turn.
Is it just me or did this seem like something out of Hoarders…?
Ahahaha, I’m glad I’m not crazy thinking that choice of bolding was weird, and that you yourself noticed it. I read that word balloon over and over, thinking “Man, that is some Mark Trail level of arbitrary and awkard bolding.”
I also know the feeling of kitbash rage. I bought a cheap group of toys from someone online, and he threw in a “failed menasor custom” With motormaster made from a spray painted black cybertron metroplex and classics deluxe cars with hard apoxy globs holding it together.
The wild rider actually did’nt have a choice of paint. If I could ever get the apoxy off it would be presentable.
This is just a example of the horrors I think ethan is thinking of in the second panel.
Ok, maybe I’m missing something, but why would anyone need to kitbash a Devastator? Aren’t there several already available? I’m pretty sure I’ve seen knock-off kits at dollar-like stores even that could be pretty easily repainted.
The idea is to have a Devastator with modern articulation. There was a REALLY good one a few years ago that used Unicron’s legs (it might have been Jin’s, I forget), and now everyone wants to copy it.
Personally, I prefer to do customs that no one else has thought of, or ones they thought of but turned away from in horror.
It was a guy called ptitvite. http://forums.tformers.com/talk/index.php?showtopic=81414
(To be fair, that thing is really fucking cool.)
That’s an impressive bash.
Gaah!! More of the Kitbashing!
Wrong, wrong, wrong Ethan! Just because you have G1 accurate Unicron is no reason to discard the Armada one. This just gives you the opportunity to display one in planet mode and the other one in robot mode, since he is awesomeness squared in both modes.
And all those bashers will be devastated when in the near future all but 25 Armada Unicrons are destroyed for bashing, making him super rare and valuable. Then they all shall gaze upon those thighs with pain and suffering. HAHAHAHAHAHA!
That last panel is funny, but what would have been glorious would have been if it was a father saying to his son that it would be perfect for the father’s bash and forcing his son to get it.
You are stupid.
Well thank you for the constructive criticism, Einstein.
At least you appear to have had enough schooling to not write “U R stupid”
Would you care to elaborate as to what you find ‘stupid’ about my comments?
You are both stupid and I am stupid too. We are stupid. Stupidity abounds .
You think he only has *one* G1-accurate Unicron?
Well at approx $150 a pop, it isn’t likely that he got two considering that he needs to budget his toy store pay so he has enough for his TF and Batman collecting (and now rent too).
Also, the 9-28 comic (http://www.shortpacked.com/2010/comic/book-12/03-minorities-report/unicron/) seems to support that Ethan only bought the one and that he only has the Armada and Energon versions of Unicron besides this Takara one.
I still say that, when you find Dead End, instead of selling him you rename Dead End ‘Mike’ and Unicron ‘Yourmom’ XD
Keep the Armada Dead End and make a Groovinator disco ball TF. Before he went off line due to the Boogie-Woogie Blues.
The FrenzyRumble is strong with this one….lol
“I’d RATHER spit in your face. But, as I haven’t got any spit…”
That’s the emphasis I read it with.
On a Transformers note, has Mr. Willis said anything about the new Transformers Prime show coming up on the Hub? The artwork looks pretty interesting.
In the words of the Internet *ahem* FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-
What is a kitbash? I’m not toy collector so that is over my head.
modifying one thing to turn it into another, or alternately taking parts from several different things and combining them to create one intended thing. In this case, cutting off Unicron’s legs to make a home-made devastator.
(coincidentally, I’m not a toy collector either, but I am a player of tabletop wargames. Unicrons, Warhammers, all fall before the hobby saw…)
Thanks.
Heh, if you ever find the moon minicon (I could live with one missing missile), I’d easily buy it for $20ish. I am poor student, but would still like a Unicron. And I am quite willing to trust you would have kept the toy in reasonable condition, unlike Ebay where condition and trust would be more of a crapshoot.
You bolded a random word in your comic? Do you have Mark Trail-itis?
Noooooo I caught up with the current comic!
no more binging.
I think ‘rather’ is a perfect emphasis. It gives me the feeling that this isn’t entirely hyperbole. He’s really considering setting fire to it.
You know, I’ve seen that sort of thing before, and I never knew there was a word for it. “Kitbash”. Interesting.
I’ve kitbashed when I was a kid and had some broken toys. I had a Batman with a green ranger leg and Venom’s arm.
O yah? I used a bunch of Legos, mostly Technic and Bionicle for the frame, and assorted for the armor, to make a custom Devastator based on the ROTF version (I had no idea how to create any of the other ones, as I could only find clear enough designs of the ROTF one). He came out reasonably well, but his arms occasionally fall off or apart. My biggest annoyance is that I had to give him a tail-type thing to be able to keep him upright, but it’s better than a scrotum.