Matt Doughty’s Custom Transformers Skyfire

So one of the discoveries I made while digging in Matt Doughty’s (Onell Design) incredible toy collection was a completely customized Transformers Skyfire (Wikipedia info) toy. A heavy, heavy toy. I swear, this thing had to have had some metal in its construction.

I should have shot this guy next to some other toys (to show scale), but I think it was about 8 or 9-inches tall. And heavy as hell! Like every custom toy I played with at Matt’s house, there was a lot of weight to this guy; he felt heavy enough to shatter a skull!

Matt said he constructed this toy back in 1999 or 2000, so this thing’s roughly a decade old. And while it’s rough, you can easily see how this is part of the development process in Matt’s career as a toy designer; the joints and durability of the toy demonstrate that even as a hobbyist Matt cared about the playability of his designs.

And you can see — comparing the still from the original Transformers animated series to the close shot of Matt’s custom toy — that Matt stared at a lot of Transformers art while working on this custom toy. I doubt anyone out there wouldn’t immediately recognize this guy as Skyfire.

A great custom, and one that shows how far Matt’s skills have come from his days as a hobbyist to today’s career operating Onell Design. It kinda makes me want to build some custom toys of my own, which is a good thing since I’ve already been working with resin toys and I can always use more inspiration.