High speed, low drag or just lazy?

Today, I'm setting the Wayback Machine to 2008 and digging some photos out of my files. In this case, a couple "bashes" I did of my character, Col. J.D. Wallace, in some variations on a theme. I often tend to go a bit light on the "battle rattle" with my figures, preferring them to not be so piled down with every possible piece of gear. I've never decided if this is because of personal aesthetics or just laziness.

First up, a version I did early in the year with J.D. in desert camo, carrying an SR25 7.62mm sniper rifle.

Next, my first attempt to create a somewhat "standard" uniform for my fictional military unit, Call Sign: Wyvern.

The second version was inspired both by my local Sheriff's Dept. SWAT team and some photos I'd seen of the then-current combat between Georgian and Russian forces. Just my opinion but I feel the USMC has the most effective of the current camouflage uniforms used by US forces, so I bought a number of set of these MARPAT utilities for my guys. The other gear was chosen to distinguish them from real US Marines and suggest a somewhat "foreign" look.

Oddly, I've encountered a bit of grumpiness towards the Wyvern members in their Woodland MARPAT uniforms. I've explained that both police and foreign militaries use a commercial version of this uniform and that, along with its actual effectiveness as a camouflage, was what inspired me. Still, I'll get some grumbling at certain 1/6 scale boards to the effect that they aren't "accurate Marines". Duh! Really?

At this point, I've decided that J.D. and his team will simply wear what uniforms they find appropriate for a particular mission. They wear both MARPAT and older Woodland (BDU) camo, as well as other patterns as needed.

Operation: L.A.C.K.

Sorry for the lack of updates this past month or so. I actually have a couple of posts saved as drafts and have some photos to add but I've been a bit unmotivated lately. Anyway, with that in mind, I have decided to inaugurate Operation: L.A.C.K. which stands for Lame Ass Crappy Kitbash. Basically, it's just a series of uninspired, quickly done 1/6 figure "bashes" (that's "manly-man" speak for "dressing your dolls") made from stuff I have on hand. Mostly, this will use bits and pieces that most "serious" 1/6 scale action figure enthusiasts tend to disregard and/or over-look nowadays. In other words, most of my collection!

First up is this guy, based (as is often the case) on a GI Joe Super Articulated body. He has a head from the GIJ "Joe vs Cobra/Spy Troops" line's Gung Ho. While I like the sculpt, he never struck me as being the character of Gung Ho... eh, so be it!

(Yes, the photos are totally shite.)

Most of his uniform and gear is from 21st Century's Ultimate Soldier line. It's a carded Navy SEAL set that 21C released in the late- '90s if I remember correctly. This one was still on the card until I opened up this afternoon. I added a couple of additional ammunition pouches and a butt pack (heh!) also from 21C but the rest is from the set. I decided to switch his rifle and boots for items from Dragon. The boots are Altima-style Panama sole jungle boots and the rifle is a common M4 with accessory rails and an added optical sight. I like the boots that came in the 21C set but they're a bit small and lack the insoles Dragon boots have, which I believe help the stability of the standing figure. The rifle is simply more detailed than the 21C piece and represents a later version with the Picatinny tactical rails, used for adding various accessories like the sight seen here. The sight is probably totally wrong for this figure and even now, internet experts are foaming at the mouth and bleeding from the ears over such wretched inaccuracy!

Bass solo! Wooo Hooo!

In addition to being a skilled sharp shooter, ruggedly handsome and an all-around great guy, Sgt. Greg Mitchell is also an accomplished musician. (Or at least he would be if he weren't 11 inches tall and made of plastic!) Here he's taking some time to hone his chops on his Fender Jazz Bass.

Sorry that both of these photos came out a bit "wonky". Greg is a GI Joe "SA" body and his bass is from SD Toys (sold through Diamond Comics in the US).

More Ma.K. Goodness!

I'm a big fan of Kow (pronounced "Koh") Yokoyama's Maschinen Kreiger series. 2010's Nuremberg Hobby show previewed Hasegawa's new 1/35 scale Nutcracker hover tank, which is now available but which I haven't yet purchased. This year's show has revealed an equally exciting new model, the Großerhund! I imagine it'll be a while before we see this big doggie hit the retail market but this is one of my favorite walker designs from the series and I'm going to have to get it when it comes out.

This image is © IPMS Deutschland and is from their coverage of the event:

Please see the link here for full coverage including the image seen above:
CLICK HERE

Looks like this kit will allow you to build either the land based or lunar based version, although I guess we'll have to wait a while to know for sure. Anyway, I'm pretty darn happy to see this design finally being done as a mass-market plastic kit.

One more photo of the day.

My collection of 1/6 figures isn't just limited to gruff guys. There are women here too. One of my favorite brands/types of female figures are made by Obitsu. Stay around long enough and you'll see a fair number of both the 27 cm and 25 cm females. For those who aren't familiar with them, they are do it yourself-style dolls from Japan, similar but better engineered than the late lamented Volks Dollfie line. You pick heads, hands and body types to create your own doll. They have a limited number of heads with pre-painted faces but most of them are blank so that you can paint or decal your own face (a talent I have yet to master). The 27 cm bodies are roughly the size of Takara's Super Action Jenny fashion doll body and have somewhat "anime like" proportions.

This lovely lady is Margaret Jane Callahan, otherwise known as Meg. She plays a major role in my action figures' "back story". The character is roughly in her late- 20s to early- 30s and is about 5 ft. 6 in. tall She has a younger sister named Daphne and a sweetheart named Mike (yep, there are figures of them too).

Meg the doll is an Obitsu 27 cm SB-2 Fleshtone body with a W-01 pre-painted head. Her outfit is assembled from pieces made by Azone (another Japanese company) with her purse and (unseen) white t-shirt coming from Dragon. She's also wearing black "engineer" boots from Obitsu.

The visual realm.

I guess a blog about toys and other assorted geeky stuff is a bit weak without visuals. I tend to get "wordy" and often write without adding images or links that would liven up my blogs. One thing I want to try to do differently with RoG is to try and use as much of my own stuff as possible. I can't say that every image I post will be my own but when it isn't, I will make every effort to give proper credit and provide links back to the source.

Towards this end, I want to inaugurate a practice of posting random photos of the day. This will simply be a photo, or photos of items in my collection or things I happen to find interesting and worthy of posting. This won't happen every day nor with every post but I'll try to do it often enough to keep things interesting for me and readers alike.

A couple of my fuzzhead, kung-fu grip Advenure Team Joes. While I had both of these guys as a kid, the two you see here are replacements. In fact, they are modern reproductions that Hasbro did as store exclusives in the mid-to-late- 2000s. Some collectors of vintage Joes grumble that they aren't as good as the originals but I like 'em as much as the old ones. And it makes me feel like my original Joes from childhood are back in action again.

Addendum ad nauseam.

Wow, a "two-fer" today!
It's February and as sure as the sun rises, on various hobby message boards I visit, threads have started with people grousing about prices. You can almost set your watch and mark your calendars for this to happen. It goes through just about every sub-set of collecting but I notice it especially prevalent among people who collect what I call "media property" figures and related items. A media property is, by my definition, a work of fictional popular entertainment and the characters, objects or design elements featured therein. More simply, a character in a movie, tv show, video game, comic book etc. would be a media property, as would vehicles and other original design elements and the very "back story" itself. Star Wars is a media property in all its various forms, as well the characters like Han Solo, vehicles like the X-wing fighter and even the little symbols and design elements used throughout the series (like the insignias for the Empire and the Rebellion). Obviously, the price of a media property license adds to the cost of a product and the only ways to address this are to cut corners or raise the selling price. Heck, some folks even do both!

And I get it, the price of hobby market 1/6 scale action figures has gone up extraordinarily the past five or six years. It's difficult to find them much under $100 US and the media property figures are even more. Some Hot Toys items are now creeping very close to the $200 US mark. You get a round or two or ten of threads on various message boards decrying the price increases, people declaring that they are priced out of the hobby, people angry with manufacturers and retailers over "profiteering" and "price gouging" (often backed up by wild claims of cost vs. profit margins), calls for boycotts and accusations of deceit and apologia from people who try to explain what's going on.

Here's the deal kids: It cost what it cost. If you feel that it's unfair and a rip-off for Hot Toys to charge $180 US for the latest Terminator figure, then don't buy it. If other people DO buy it, they sell out and you don't get one, that's just how life goes. These are toys, albeit expensive and sophisticated toys for adult collectors. They are not a life sustaining commodity and you aren't guaranteed nor entitled to have them. Whether it's a combination of economic and market factors that have been repeatedly explained and rejected, or it's simply "greed" and "profiteering" as the whiners usually insist, it doesn't matter. It is what it is and again, it cost what it cost. If a significant part of the customer base can no longer pay what an item cost, this will either cause the price to go down or, more likely, it will no longer be profitable to produce. Someone else may try to produce something similar but at some point they're going to be up against hard numbers of cost per unit and the need to make money and grow their company. If you make 2000 units of a highly detailed item aimed at a discriminating customer base, expect that the final retail cost will be higher than if you make 20,000 of a similar item for a mass market. That $200 figure might indeed be over-priced but it isn't likely that you'll get anything close to it for, say $50.

Many of these complaints basically come down to "I want what I want but I want to pay what I want to pay for it". I get that desire because I feel the same way. If I had the money for a Chevy Malibu but I could buy a top of the line Mercedes for the same price, which do you think I would choose. Is one car significantly superior to the other? Is one worth 2 or 3 times the price of the other? That's a judgement call for the customer to decide and it's why both cars are on the market. Same with these 1/6 scale figures.

By all means, protest, whine, cry, make accusations and above all, don't spend more than you feel you can afford. I'm an advocate for hobbies being affordable and believe that affording something is one of the keys to enjoying it. (That's a whole other article for another time.) However, be aware that you may succeed in convincing the manufacturer(s) that there's no market for their over-priced items and that your "victory" may be pyrrhic when they quit making said items. Alternately, your protest and refusal or inability to buy such items might make someone else say "great, more for me" and go right on buying as the price keeps going up. That's just life!