Opti-Muffin

Muffin is into Transformers now, the same way he was into Star Wars last year. He spends his days playing with his toys, looking at pictures of them and trying to draw them. Obviously, his favourite Transformers character is Optimus Prime and he obsesses about how to draw the Autobot sign, how to turn himself into Optimus Prime and everything that was ever written about him.

So, today, he flips to a Transformers Manga comic that Evan borrowed from the library and asked for arms like Optimus.

Short of buying the costume (which will inevitably end up being too hot for him), he wasn't in possession of Optimus arms. He had used the long plastic container that contained CNY  love letters but insisted we cut out the base of it out, but it wasn't ideal because we wanted to put stuff in it, it would have sharp bits if we cut it and it didn't have smoke stacks.

Smoke stacks. Information that take up precious memory brain cells in my mind.

Anyway, he wanted arms. So we made arms with a box.

Things needed:
1. One Bata shoe box (Need not be Bata)
2. Scissors
3. Lots of thick tape
4. Cardboard strips to make the bracket to hold the smoke stacks (I can't say smoke stacks without rolling my eyes).
5. Marker pen
6. Toy golf sticks, recorders, anything long and can pass off as a smoke stack.
7.  Symbol of Autobot to copy. If only we could have traced them then Muffin wouldn't accuse Mommy of drawing uneven Autobots on his arms.

Instructions for those who have Opti-Muffin type kids,

1. Cut the box and tape them into triangles and make sure the arms can go through.

2. Create little brackets for the smoke stacks so that they won't fall through or move about. 

3. Draw signs

4. Use remaining shoe box to make breast plates because Optimus has breast plates. If you have time, you can paint them Optimus colours; red and blue. 

So half an hour and a lot of scotch tape later, we have Opti-Muffin who can transform at will. 

That ought to keep him busy for the morning plus he's got stuff to bring to school for Show and Tell. The other Optimus arm he tells me, is for his friend who is also Optimus Prime.