Orange Thing

The Hero Clix Thing painted up in orange.

It does look a bit like an underwear commercial.

The original Hero Clix Thing vs the repainted Orange Thing.

Here he has the Fantastic Four uniform painted on.

All three of them together.

The Battle Dice figure cut off the base.  The Hero Clix will be glued on this base eventually.

Orange Thing

The Ever Lov'n' Thing, from the Fantastic Four, Hero Clix in 28mm.

Removed from his base, a simple pry off with a heavy thick blade.

Soaked in Goof Off to remove the paint.

Goof Off is very strong and I only rinse the figure with it and monitor the paint removal.

Not an Arctic Thing, rather the Thing painted in light grey primer.

The Battle Dice Thing is in a funny bent over posture and is smaller than usual making him look too small for 1/72nd scale.

My plan is to repaint the Hero Clix figure into a more orange color like the Battle Dice figure. 

MPC Cleaning

More of my hobby show haul, I really got an unusual mix of stuff and filled in a lot of little holes.  I got many dogs, a few Renwal tank commanders, some Marx accessories, an MPC missile launcher, a space version and tank version.  I got some odd figures here and there too.

These guys were in my collection, they are mostly MPC figures, not ringhand types.  I use these blue guys for Air Force, or naval landing party.

These white guys are the American presidents, with a couple exceptions.  I have nearly all of them now.  The green and tan figures are American generals.  The silver, white and blue are a variety of personalities, including a Pope, first lady and Churchill.

MPC Germans soaking.  While they are WWII, I use them as East Germans to oppose my Pentomic Army.

These are some very old dark gray MPC Germans.  The man with the weapon at waist level his holding an unknown type carbine or submachine gun. 

MPC Ringhands

60mm figures soaking in OxiClean in the boxes.  Figures soaking in beach in the round plastic jar.

The bright color figures were cleaned and then soaked in bleach, MPC ring hand figures.

MPC ring hand and African natives with their little rafts.

MPC ring hand Confederates, Cowboys and Union troops. 

Blue MPC ring hand soldiers.  I use them for Air Force and Navy.

Note the accessories include submachine guns, and ray guns.

African native figures and hunters along the bottom.

Operation Storm

Operation Storm by John J. Geoghegan is a great book!  It is about the I-400 class submarines of the Imperial Japanese Navy and their secret missions.  These submarines were designed to carry aircraft and were intended to attack targets as diverse as New York City and the Panama Canal.

This book is told in a very personal style, discussing individual sailors, the construction and operations of the incredible weapons systems.  The research is great, there was much here and I had not read before.

 

 

I got this book free as a review copy, but I would recommend it to anyone interested in the IJN, submarines, and WWII.

Mock Up

In the 1930's there was a magazine article that proposed an electro gun tank.  It was to be propelled by Archimedes screws.

This is my 1/72nd scale paper mock up of the tank.

In WWI there was a mock up of a tank for the US Army to use in WWI.  One source says the Army purchased 50 of them.  Here is my paper mock up.

When trying to scratch build a model, I often make use of paper mock ups to determine size and shape and figure out the difficult parts.

Soaking

They yellow figures like the white ones are very bright.  After cleaning they all went into the bleach bath too.

I inspected each figure and those that were brittle or damaged were removed from the collection.

This peanut jar was used for Simple Green.  Soaking Simple Green to remove paint from the figures.  So first Simple Green, then OxiClean and finally bleach for painted white or yellow figures.

I used a generic bleach to clean the figures.  They soaked in straight bleach without any water.

These figures are much cleaner, brighter and nicer than they were when I started.  Many looked brand new!

Drying

After soaking, I rinsed the figures in running water and then sat them on a towel to dry.  When my wife replaces the kitchen or bathroom towels I get the old ones for hobby uses.  Like this.

Terra Cotta color slot and ring hand figures.  Notice the huge differences in shades of brown.

The white figures were dried and then soaked in a jar full of bleach for 24 hours.  It really perked up the faded ones.

More figures soaking.  The figures were sorted by color and by type.  I am doing an inventory as well as a cleaning.

The boxes were not filled by the figures.  I left space in the bottom of each plastic box so the figures could be stirred up.

60mm Cleaning

I am cleaning my 60mm armies.  The newest ones are recasts, but the vast majority of them are 40 to 60 years old.  I have had some of them since 1958 and got many off eBay.  Many are very dirty.  I am using these clear plastic boxes on my patio to clean them.

After a lot of experimentation I found OxiClean seems to work best cleaning soft plastic figures.

Here are some of the troops in ZipLoc bags waiting for cleaning.

Troops go into the water along with a scoop of the OxiClean.

The troops were soaked for 12 to 24 hours, sometimes with an extra scoop of OxiClean.

I stirred the figures every few hours to make sure they were all covered with water and cleaner.

Super Hero Update

I have built a Batman and a Robin in 1/72nd scale for my Battle Dice figures.

Taking a HaT figure from the Spanish Guerrillas I intend to make Uncle Sam.  The Human Torch will become the Sub-Mariner.  The Invisible Woman will be both Catwoman and Batgirl.

Here the Invisible Woman has had a cape and Bat Pouches added to make Batgirl.

This Roco motorcycle is becoming the Batgirlcycle. I added a cape, bat ears to the figure, a bow to the rear end and an Atlantic Russian Maxim machine gun shield to make the faring.

Catwoman; kitty ears added and claws too.