Custom Robo-Force Wrecker (Life Size!)

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This is not your typical custom action figure. I have a 6 year old son who love's robots. Last year for his birthday, I bought him the entire line of Ideals Robo-Force from 1983 which he plays with and loves to death so I took on kind of an ambitious project and decided to make a life sized one for him. I had an idea of how it would look and went to Home Depot and a few other stores and assembled this guy out of random parts I thought would work. In the end, I came up with the now finished almost 5 foot version. He took us a little over 2 weeks to put together and cost about $165 to make. He sits in my living room. His eyes and base are wired to light up (by using a remote control) and if you press the center button on his chest, he can talk and makes robot noises too. He's great at holding keys and sunglasses on his tray and whenever someone comes over, it's the first thing they notice. I guess it's kind of hard to ignore the 5 foot Robot in the room. We call him Bumblebot and these pics really don't do him justice as he's way cooler looking in person.


To get the idea of his size, he's holding a baseball



Here he is with his inspiration on his tray: Wrecker from Robo-Force


Lights off


Best Glow In the Dark Feature Ever!



He's always smiling







The original Wrecker close up.

[GaryPlaysWithDolls]

That may be the coolest thing I've ever seen! Great work!

[EMCE Hammer]

Dad of the year! When you have time, I'd love to know how you pulled off the head dome and base. Did you find a couple of things in translucent yellow and then use black paint and masking? I've been toying with the idea of making my son a big Lego guy, but nothing so ambitious as yours.

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When you have time, I'd love to know how you pulled off the head dome and base. Did you find a couple of things in translucent yellow and then use black paint and masking? I've been toying with the idea of making my son a big Lego guy, but nothing so ambitious as yours.

Total accident. I was going to make the head all yellow at first. I found a clear dome that would make the perfect head I though it be neat if I could keep the eyes clear to let the light pass through and applied some round stickers first before spray-painting the head. It didn't work as whenever I removed the stickers, they would always take a bit of the paint around the edges with it and after 3 attempts and some wasted money, I gave up. Since yellow is a very unforgiving color to work with my second thought was to try and make the head darker so I did the same thing only with black spray-paint. Black hides all sins and it worked great. When I went to wire the lights I had mistakenly placed the black head over the yellow one that I was intending on throwing away but hadn't realized that the yellow head was underneath the black one until I screwed the head on. When I turned the light on, the yellow dome underneath reflected right through what was supposed to be clear eye holes on the black head. It made for such a cool effect, I decided to keep it. So it's basically two layers...a solid yellow part under the black dome and it was total accident I did it that way.

As for the base, I always intended for that to light up the way it does. That's actually a stool from Ikea. It's molded in yellow and had that ribbed effect to it and I simply taped up every other yellow band and used plastic spray paint to get the black stripes. The black paint doesn't allow any light through but the yellow plastic does.

[boss]

WOW! My 7 year old has decided he wants to be a "robot builder" when he grows up. I can't wait to show him this tonight. Great Job!

[Werewolf]

That is wicked cool.

[EMCE Hammer]

Thanks for sharing the details - it really came out well.

[ouijaboard]

that my mego friend is the baddest thing i have ever seen, thats sooooo cool.

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WOW! My 7 year old has decided he wants to be a "robot builder" when he grows up. I can't wait to show him this tonight. Great Job!

Start out with the Maxx Steele Erector set from 1985 if you can find one. I bought mine sealed in the box and opened him right up. He was a blast to assemble. I'd love to get another one to make the other thing they suggest on the box and rovide instructions for. We built him first and he was sort of the catalyst for the big guy.

[toys2cool]

so cool

[Meule]

That looks awesome, way to go

[piecemaker]

Awesome job!!! That is really cool!!!

[drquest]

The light up and glow details just set it off so well!

You have a lucky 6 year old!

[palitoy]

brilliant! I have a soft spot for life sized toys, as evidenced by the 7 foot tall Lincoln Mummy in my garage.

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Wow, I gotta say this is really cool. I wish you could have seen my sons reaction when I showed him the picture of Bumblebot in the "Custom of the Week" box on the home page. His first reaction was a worried "Are you selling him on ebay?" to which I said "No, he won a contest." His whole face lit up and he went over to the robot and said "That's so cool" and gave him a big hug. Today at school when I picked him up, his teachers told me he kept telling everyone about his robot that I made him. I think this made his day more than it made mine. Between getting COTW and finding that one of a kind Robo-Force figure, I'm declaring May official Robo-Force Month!