Thoughtful Toys: Mugenbine Candy Toy Series

This time we are going to follow a continuation of the Mugenbine line. If this is your first time here, I had done a bit on the earlier Mugenbine toys. Check out the old article if you haven't. Where you had a somewhat limited approach with the older toys, the candy line is more versitile for making bots that are large relative to their basic pieces. They also have a lot more parts designed for heads and limbs and geared towards possibility. The great thing about this line, is you can still find them online, and they may still be producing them. There are other bandai toys with similar sized pegs you can use to combine them with, so its a great line to experiment with and see what kind of bots you can make.
With this line it is not as essential to locate doubles as they are already including multiples of each component for the sake of symmetry. Having doubles would better suit providing smaller components for larger combinations for more complicated designs. There is a good variety in the line with the designs and lend themselves for some great combinations. The real draw backs in the line are there was a slight change in the peg size so some parts may be more loose or tighter than others when making combinations. Another issue is I found the ankles tend to be on the loose side when it comes to supporting the weight. Unless some modification is made, these really lend themselves to display after something is made and less for play.

Here are some of the Mugenbine sets I have and the combined modes they are meant to form.

Mugen Holy Beasts of the Sea (ムゲン海聖獣)

Mugen Five God Beasts (ムゲン五神獣)

Mugen Phantom Saint Beast (ムゲン幻聖獣)

Mugen Ryufire (リュウファイヤーバイン)

Below are a few custom creations. The first two are just to experiment with part swapping, and the last is to make a fully custom design with a variety of parts.

Below you can see a couple of vbuilds where I show some examples of building with these sets. They give you a better idea on how they go together and some of what you can do with them. Follow us on YouTube for future Vbuilds, and Deviant art for images of new construction toy designs.

I find them to be a good construction toy to use to make custom creation for blocking up robot designs that can inspire some concept designs. Its worth checking out their info on wikipedia to find out the names of other collections and toys that might be combined in this line. They are fun, but can be tricky to pose depending on how you design your joints. Its still a good toy and can be more easily found than some of the other toys I have mentioned for concept design. I'll share future creations here, youtube, and instagram so stay tuned for this and other toys I will review that can be used for inspiration and creation.

#MarchOfRobots 2015

Here are some sketches from this years March of Robots fun draw. I planned to participate daily, but I had a lot come up this month, so here are the few drawings I managed to do. I also filmed some of the drawings. You can see the ones below that are already online and follow our YouTube channel to see the others I will be uploading. You can also check out these sketches and more at my Deviant Art as well.