Charticon Exclusive Baleful Head Upgrade

The final Charticon exclusive I want to cover was one that almost didn't happen at all. Originally I wanted to do something special for the wonderful committee of people I had working on the convention with me. Eventually I decided a "staff exclusive" head upgrade might be a good idea and I was originally going to keep it a surprise for everyone. But obviously that didn't pan out as I expected.


Spinister was one of my favorite figures as a kid and so when Botcon decided to make him an exclusive in 2012 I was stoked! Unfortunately not many other people felt the same way since the figure didn't sell out at the show (sell outs are usually the norm for Botcon) and in-fact sat in their online store for almost a year before finally selling out! While I felt the mold was appropriate, the head was just awful and looked nothing like Spinister. Often a head can make or break a figure, so I decided to give my guy a little love and re-create his head and thus round out the trio of Decepticon Double Targetmasters for Charticon. It also didn't hurt that Mastershooter Collectibles already had Spinister's Targetmaster partners in the works.

During one of our many Charticon meetings during the year I let it leak that I was prepping something special for the staff. Of course it didn't stay secret for very long as I was anxious to find out what everyone thought. What I failed to realize was that most people don't have the Botcon Spinister figure and many of the people on my team were different types of collectors so it didn't really appeal to them. So I just decided to make it an at-show exclusive only and produce 50 to match our other numbers (50 Aftershocks, 50 Snipenose kits). That way everything would stay even.

Since he had done such a great job with Snipenose's head, I got in touch with Wheeljack again for what I had decided to dub "Baleful". Again he delivered an amazing design. Unfortunately the guys at GetRightRobot had their hands full working on their Landshark figure for the show and couldn't cast the heads for me before the show, so I contacted Megatron31 on TFW. Once everything was done all that was needed was a custom tech spec and he would be complete!

Unfortunately I didn't have time to commission a brand new piece of art for the tech spec so I just had to use a shot of the actual toy, but I think it worked out well. Because the head was primarily based off how Spinister appeared in the MTMTE comic I tried to include some personality traits from that character, along with re-creating his G1 tech. All in all I was very happy with how he turned out, and all three figures really compliment each other well.

Please excuse the crappy pic, this was with my phone while I was in a hurry.

See Also:
Charticon Exclusive Snipenose
Charticon Aftershock, A Personal Look
Charticon Exclusive Tech Specs