>>5897132From the looks of it they are painted, unless the paint is only on the back side (because its grey on one side and it looks like a match to the grey plastic, not easy to do with paint not without a difference in sheen)
But not individually, as in a whole blob of paint.
Really the problem is astrotrain in g1 and MOST shots of real trains (as in older models) have them the same color as the actual train, what I thought takara MIGHT do was paint the little...um line things above them in silver like those bars that move when the steam engines move (I'm not a train expect so I don't know the name).
But they didn't, but really, it could be worse like...pic related
