I was pretty skeptic when Hasbro was going back to making Lego knock-offs again, their last attempt was apparently an unsuccessful one, but that was until I saw actual pictures of their latest attempt and was ecstatic. As soon as I could, I went to the store and bought a basic Kre-O Optimus Prime set. I will say this, the pieces work very well and there were a couple of unique ones. They have their own type of ball-joint bricks which are a lot tighter and some nice hinge-joint bricks.
Anyway, after I built his robot mode, it looked a little meh so I decided to change things up as usual. I ran out of Lego ball/joint bricks and pieces that look good and segway'd to using Bionicle parts. I felt they worked out a lot better.
The first group of pictures shows the model's main body, using parts from Glatorian's Malum, Tarix and other pieces I could find. While building, I was going for a design similar to his "G2 Laser Optimus Prime" design. I gave him a sword, added a hilt under his hand and went to work on making a laser cannons-slash-jetpack. As for the head, I used some regular Lego bricks and put one upside down near the neck area to create a flat surface so that I'm able to place the head on a Bionicle torso perfectly.
Great thing about buying Bionicle over the years, is the amount of cross rods and joint hooks that increase every time you buy a set. These helped in making the shoulder cannon/jetpack. By turning the guns a certain way, it gives him a sort of "Ultra Magnus" look. Thanks to the general poseability of that piece, the whole thing just looked a lot better, and I ended up sticking with it in the end.
Regarding other brands, I got some of MB's Halo sets, and though the bloks aren't as good as the LEGO bricks, the figures are quite cool. Since I live in Germany, I haven't seen any of the Kre-O Transformers or K'Nex Mario sets here so far. To the MOC: It looks nice, but I think it would work better with brighter colours and also more Lego bricks, since the design of Bionicle clashes a bit with the piece to which Prime's head is attached. Aside from that, it looks cool.
Thanks. I was a Lego purist myself, then everyone else started getting Halo and Marvel licenses and I realized the pieces are just fine. I even bought one of K'Nex's Mario Kart sets just now. Nice rubbery pieces but Mario's hands can't hold those lego rods.
You must be a Decepticon double-agent, since you bought an (imitation Lego) clone of a genuine Autobot! You will be tried for heresy! :)
Seriously, the Hasbro toy is good, but since it is a Lego competitor, there will never be an official Lego Transformers set. What a shame. I like how you have blended the Hasbro and Lego Bionicle parts.
