Green Army Men - Yoga Joes

One of the things I love most are interesting finds that not only tickle my brain but also make me laugh. One such find was during a visit to the Museum Store at HMNS (Houston Museum of Natural Science). Most museum store fare are overpriced knick-knacks that clutter most desks and shelves. 

The obligatory Museum Store

Then I found the coolest thing while browsing around... 

But first, some background.

A staple for little boys and most budding gamers, I would guess that
most of us have started with the standard Green Army Men in a bag.
This bag of plastic soldiers gave me loads of good clean fun as I simulated
these little battles

Before the advent of computers and tech-toys, these low tech plastic
toys were powered by our imagination. No batteries included nor needed.
With all the standard poses we've come to love and expect, these mini
soldiers were ubiquitous for most boys in my generation

The Toy Story movie franchise featuring these little plastic heroes
made me fall in love all with them all over again. In fact, they
intrigued me so much I re-watched their scenes over and over again.  

So fast forward years later, I was at the HMNS Museum store when I noticed these plastic soldiers displayed on a shelf. I could've missed these bad boys amidst all the other bric-a-brack but they caught my eye.

I nearly missed these bad boys!

Upon further investigation I leaned closer and got an eyeful.

I didn't end up buying them there so I took the information from the card and looked them up online. The good news is that googling them will lead you to Amazon where they can be easily got. So get 'em already!

Re-purposing of a classic. Brilliant!

Funny as hell!

New and Old Toys, Part 4

Dusting off some of my cardboard buildings from DropZone Commander and posing my other minis amongst this urban setting.

(click on the pix to enlarge)

No room on my table,
solution: coffee table will suffice

Lay down a few road tiles and
top it all off with a plexi sheet

  

Voila! Instant urban battlefield

  

An ominous looking dropship
mysteriously lands at an urban center

A hatch opens and a Scout ventures
out as a Command Bug looks on

A rapid response Mech team is quickly
dispatched amid a loud klaxon

The bugs are fanning out and looking to unload
their recon in force pod! The encounter escalates
as the Mechs are reinforced with assault infantry in battle 

Air support!

AT-43 Red Blok Spetnaz Kolossus, why not?

Refurbishing Old Models Part 3

I finally found the proper materials to simulate metal grate flooring that's perfect for skirmishing my 28mm sci-fi miniatures. Go down to your local hardware store and look for 2'x4' clear prismatic plastic lenses. I bought 3 panels that can be arranged to make a 4'x6' playing area. More than enough for skirmishing.      

(click on the pix to enlarge)

They come in different patterns but I found this particular grid to work well. 

The perfect spray paint to give the right amount of texture.

And Voila!

Anyone recognize those rusty robots?
See Refurbishing Old Models Part 2

UTA

UTA

Assorted Red Blok Mechas

Showdown with an ONI Merc Zombie and a UTA Medic 

Refurbishing Old Models Part 3

As posted in Part 2, where the Maintenance Bots were featured, I'm continuing my quest for additional scenic items to populate my Sci-Fi table. I've been wracking my brain thinking about other objects big and small that would enhance the scenery: space shuttles, drop ships and perhaps a smattering of different land crafts. 

Part of the fun of this great hobby is exercising one's noggin and imagination for cost effective (read: cheap) items to grace one's table. Lord knows, I've spend coin aplenty in the past and in other areas of this hobby.

So, off I go a hunting. First stop...

A lot of you have been asking: Where ya get that? 
Well, at my favorite Scav-alert store, that's where!
Look for one in a city near you (that is, if you're in the states).

Here are more finds to add to my Sci-Fi scenery. By doing a lot of squinting, especially since I forgot to bring my glasses, I saw the lines of these bikes and imagined them monochromatic and without the riders:

Another Dollar Tree special. You guessed it:
$1 a pack! So that's 50 cents per model. Oh boy!!

Took out the worthless and out of scale riders

A little black primer, metallic dry-brushing 
and we'll see what these babies will transform into

Next, I go to Wally World!

And looky what I found at the Toy Clearance
aisle. I know what you're thinking,
'What can I possibly use this for?' 

Again, with some more squinting, I noticed that
the lines and shape of this model is excellent
and lends itself to a possible shuttle or drop ship
while my Maintenance Bots look on. Meanwhile the
horribly, garish paint scheme has got to go!

Coming soon, the 'after' shots...

Refurbishing Old Models Part 2

As I mentioned in Part 1 of this post I've acquired these toys from the clearance shelf of my local Wally World's toy section. I usually cruise the 'clearance' aisles of Walmarts and Targets looking for such bargains. Here's what I found. 

When I saw these robots, I immediately saw their potential as effective scenery. And I knew that with a little imagination I'd be able to recycle them. All I needed to do was to paint over these God awful colors, apply some weathering and presto: instant scenery at a very low cost ($2 a package = $1 a figure).

I made sure that they would scale properly with 28mm.
Here they are posing with some AT-43 figures.

Here are the 'After' shots.

After some black primer and recoloring these plastic toys 
are transformed into useful Sci-Fi scenery.

 Here they're depicted as ancient and inoperable
Maintenance Bots with their original creators.

Now they've been abandoned for countless years.

Only to be used as terrain for my repainted Space Commandos. 

 Where they'll be battling it out amongst the bots.

These Space Commandos were bought @ 25 cents each from
the Clix bargain bin of my FLGS then repainted and rebased.

Coming up, more recycled bargain bin toys.

Refurbishing 'Old' Models Part 1

If you're anything like me, you're a collector. And with the infinite variety of the cool toys we now have available at our finger tips thru the web it's a real challenge not going overboard. Oops! Too late.

A smattering sample of my collection posted on my Christmas 2010 blog. 

A great example is AT-43. They've been discontinued for some time now but there's stores out there that carry stock and would gladly sell them for the right price (usually reduced). I love these pre-painted minis. I've been lusting after them for a few years since they were released and have finally acquired a few. There really is a great reason for restraint b/c waiting for the price to go down really helps my budget. I've kept my collection to just the human factions (U.N.A. and Red Blok). 

I gravited initially to the Red Blok whose reminiscent Soviet theme had me hooked.

Actually to be honest, I also have a weakness for Mechs. Growing up watching all kinds of giant robots in anime will have that effect on you. And AT-43 has some good ones. Check out this beauty from my Red Blok collection. All I did was to dip all the minis in Army Painter to give it better shading and 'presto!'

Red Blok Molot

Inevitably, I'll be collecting the Dust minis but I can wait. I'm just a sucker for the ever increasing Weird War II genre that's creating a great variety for collecting and gaming. For now they're cost prohibitive but I'm confident that their prices will go down eventually. 

FCC Housemaster

Same goes for those MERCS figures. Have you seen em? Beautiful, drool-worthy stuff and a must have for any sci-fi mini collector but hard to justify the cost since you're paying almost *GASP* $10 per UNPAINTED lead (I've checked alternate sites and they've gone done considerably since, i.e. $7.50)! For now they're confined to my ever growing wish list. Sigh...

Size comparison of MERCS and AT-43 Steel Trooper straight from the MERCS site.

I digress because I want to feature my latest project of repainting a recently acquired mech from the Operation Damocles Initiation Set (now discontinued). I got this idea and was inspired by a link on a TMP blog post: http://firebase-spartan.blogspot.com/2011/03/workbench-pig-iron-for-5150.html.

Fire Toad in its original paint scheme straight outta the box. The 'Before' picture.

At any rate, I liked what this guy did so much that I decided to do the same. At first, I vaguely recognized the mech by its shape though was different. Then it struck me that he repainted it a monochrome color to match his infantry. Brilliant! It look so good that I had to give it a try. Making it monochrome got rid of the visual noise that made it a less believable mech (an oxymoron). For my version I gave it a different twist and made it more compatible for using on my WWW2 universe and Incursion board.

I snuck in the unfinished and repainted mech in an earlier post that you guys might remember.

Here's the 'After' picture. A few decals and what do you get? A new model!

I know I'm mixing German crosses, Mr. Grognard (Willy aka LTL Dad!). Who cares! It looks fine to me. Not to mention that this is sci-fi and WWW2 all rolled into one.

Performing support role with some of my Waffen SS (Black Tree Design).

Then picked these up at my local Toys R Us for about $2 a package. That's roughly $1 a model. My sole purpose for acquiring and repainting them and is using them as terrain for our game groups Sci-fi games.

  

Here are the 'soon to be' Maintenance Bots next to some AT-43 minis.

Coming up, the 'after' shots...