 Kim, is she black? Spanish? Who knows? Who cares? The diversity of the 70's pet detectives, gotta love it.
0 Comments
 Puggsy has very extreme proportions; huge chest and short. He uses a bulked up chest block and slipper feet. The hat is a Lego piece. I wasn't sure how he would turn out but he's fantastic. The bulked up chest block wouldn't work well for the leading men like Alan, Biff or Freddy but for Puggsy's odd shape it works great.  Ok so Fangface isn't Hanna Barbera, it was produced by Ruby-Spears but the pet detective formula gave it the same feel as a Hanna Barbera cartoon so it was another favorite of mine from the late 70's. Biff is another of those male designs that have unrealistically broad chests. Not ideal for the block figure design but I prefer the female characters be more accurate and they are so I'm happy.  Shelly, the Alexandra of the Jabberjaw Gang. If it weren't for the shark there wouldn't be anything original about this show and we have Jaws to thank for him. I loved it all the same. 
Clamhead, the Shaggy of the group. He uses a Lego sailor cap and a belt piece to create his look. Perfect and he looks great next to Jabberjaw 
Where Biff lacks, Bubbles makes up for it. She is short and stout and the block figure translates her look perfectly. She uses a Dana hairpiece from the Ghostbusters box set with some sculpt to capture the curls. The rest is paint and a facial decal. 
Biff is another one of those Hanna Barbera leading men that has an unrealistic bulk to his chest that doesn't translate well. A bulked up chest block would make him too buff and he's just a bit to small without it. Regardless he looks great with the rest of his group. I really need to make some instruments for them. 
I had to share them as a team. You can't have one without the other. It took me a while to find the right scale Bassett Hound for Wimper So they were done a couple of months apart. Woofer was easy, he's a lego cap on a Mystery Mates Scooby Doo with some sculpt for his brow. Psyguy does the Minimates and I handle the non-Minimate animals to complete the teams. 
I tout Minimates as the best toy ever because of its adaptability & versatility. There are a few things that someone has to get past to see it; you have to enjoy block figures and you can't be preoccupied with scale. Dottie is a perfect example of this. In the Cartoon Dottie is half the size of the Gang because she's half their age. Needing a sculpted hair piece and and a belt piece to extend her baggy shirt even the slipper feet she uses can't take away enough from her height to keep her from being the same height as Larry & Pepper. Oh well. She stays at home anyway and isn't much more than face on their TV screen. Scale be damned, I love her. 
Larry is a perfect example of the type of artist Psyguy is. There aren't a great many clear photos of Clue Club on the Internet. The show ran for one season in 1976, 16 episodes and there wasn't a great deal of merchandise so finding the best pictures for him to work from was challenging. Even with an eye for nailing color hues, Psyguy struggled to decipher the color of Larry's shirt so I got TWO chest blocks! Both look correct. It made me laugh when I got him because I too struggle with the exact shade it should be. I love the way this man thinks and I love having the extra display option. |
A Custom A Day....
Since
I began toy collecting as a hobby back in 1990 I have always had a
need for custom figures. Toy companies begin action figure lines, begin
to release individual characters to create teams and, more often than
not leave them incomplete. Many collectors find that custom figures
pollute their collection's authenticity by not being mass produced
creations from the toy companies that created the preexisting toy lines.
I disagree. I feel a quality custom action figure enhances a
collection and help create a complete picture. Archives
July 2016
Categories |
RSS Feed
