Grand-Prize Winner!
From Wizard November 2001

The November 2001 costume contest winner gives new meaning to the phrase "More than meets the eye."

Using an array of materials ranging from cardboard to aluminum bars and taking up for over a year of his free time, 29-year-old Akihide Fukui created this sweet-ass Breakdown costume (from Transformers: Generation 1) --which actually transforms! (Yeah, we know Breakdown's a Decepticon, but...) And in case you're wondering, Fukui's in the car when its fully transformed, and can also change back to his robot counterpart if he so desires.

Naturally, building the November 2001's Grand-Prize-winning costume was no easy task. "The easiest part was drawing and designing it all in paper," explains Fukui. "Obviously the hardest part was making it transform. It was very frustrating trying to find solutions to problems that came up."

However, Fukui's has some practice in creating costumes based on Transformers. "I've made a total of seven Transformers costumes, but nothing that could fully transform," says Fukui. "I chose to dress up like Breakdown because of the colors, the car doors as wings and because the robot and car designs hold true to the first generation of Transdformers."

Fukui's currently playing around with designs to build another, fully functional Transformers costume, but in the meantime check out his current one --and feel free to add in your own "transforming" sound effects.