Prometheus Rising Studios   Ben Mininberg's models, toy customs, and design work.

Union Fighter Blockman is an obscure little Takara line that came out in 1984 as an offshoot of Diaclone and the SF Land stuff.  The line featured two inch tall plastic and metal robots covered in 5mm pegs and ports.  The bots were cute little pocket warriors that could combine together and with a whole range of accessories to create everything from jets to massive gestalt robots.  The story behind Blockman was that the Combination Droids were built to help human space colonists explore and settle.  The Blockman sets came with little one inch tall chrome pilots with sculpts reminiscent of Diaclone drivers, which were the same size.  I have always enjoyed Blockman as a fun building line with neat little bot figures, but thought that the Combination Droids could be pushed further.  I also love the way the different Takara SF Land lines (Henshin Cyborg, Microman, Diaclone, …) were interconnected and related even though they were different scales, so I wanted to see how a Blockman would look scaled up to Microman (1/18) scale.  While I was at it, I figured I should take advantage of the added room the large size would afford to add some new live to the design.  A few days and test prints later, and the Micro-scale Blockman is ready to roll.

The fully posable Blockman features ratcheting joints in the shoulders, elbows, hips, and knees, with additional articulation at the shoulders, biceps, wrists, waist, and hips.  The extra room on this huge figure gave me the opportunity to try out a couple of new articulation tricks that worked like a charm, and I could not be happier with the results.  The first CD-1-L Blockman prototype is available at the “My Friend the Micronaut 2013” show at Grasshut.  It’s a huge figure that takes a bit to print, but rest assured I am working around the clock to get some more made for public consumption.  The best part about this guy is that he is 100% printed ABS parts, including all of the articulation.  That means no more fighting with fit to existing joint parts or worrying about running out of supplies.

More details and comparison shots after the jump!