stinkycrayons
New Member
- Joined
- Aug 3, 2014
- Messages
- 6
For this project I choose a cheap McDonald’s toy to customize. I paid a whopping .25 cents at a thrift store for this not knowing what it was from. I love recycling old toys into modeling projects! I started to repaint this toy then I looked up what it was from. Unfortunately it’s from Night At The Museum 2, maybe that’s why the Roman Empire failed because they watched this film?
Having chugged my way through the first film I stayed far away from the sequel. Anything Ben Stiller is in just is not entertaining. Of all the 90’s young-gun SNL like actors his over-the-top acting just gets on my nerves. Combine that with a pseudo improve style of filmmaking and ya, I will just skip it and eat my popcorn in the hallway and gather peons in hopes to siege the theater so these kinds of films stop being made. What is a fantastic concept is ruined by bad acting and not taking the material seriously. Kids want to be scared while being fascinated as things come to life in a museum. Well anyways on to the toy.
I’m not going to let the source material stop me from making a crappyily painted toy damn it! This toy is rather fun. A solider ridding upon a squirrel – that’s a kid’s dream come true! This toy has a gimmick that when you wind him up he jumps around as if hoping around like a squirrel. Interestingly squirrels hop around to limit their tracks and make less impact on the ground. The gimmick fails much like that of the Roman Empire. I’m not sure why, just like the Roman Empire it fails but it easily falls over with the slightest bump. The toy came with a trading card with trivia on it that would activate the jumping mechanic yet it works somewhat without a card inserted in the tail.
I began the project by washing the toy then applying several light coats of primer. I roughly filled in the screw holes with white putty. I find that it’s better to prime it after the first round of putty so that I won’t scratch the plastic when sanding as easily. But I don’t think they will be a problem for what I have planned for the figure.
In looking at the squirrel I thought how awesome would it be if it were covered in felt or fake fur! I’m not sure what to use for this effect. Right now I’m thinking of tearing apart a few old paint brushes for the hair and gluing them on. I’m sure I will find something that works better. Another idea is to put a fine yet poofy foam over it like felt. To give it that cheesy fake fur look! It still boggles my mind that fur trading is banned, I mean its recycling and yet we slaughter and eat millions of animals a year but we can’t use their fur?
I painted the solider with chrome krylon paint and it turned out well. I’ve found this paint tarnishes rather fast if you touch it so keeping that chrome look as it first dries is about impossible. I could have used a metalizer but come on it’s a McDonald’s toy, is it really worth it?
The last things I did were apply a base coat of blue for the accents on the solider. A two tone color of browns for the squirrel. It looks more like a chipmunk to me however. And a badly applied wash over the chrome just to get a rough idea of what I should paint. With the fake fur I hope to cover some of the wind-up mechanism but leave it so I can still have it jump around. I wish there were more details on the suit of armor as compared to the character in the movie but adding my own details just seems like to much work. I feel it owe it to myself to be a bit lazy, again it’s a McDonald’s toy after-all not a badly sculpted movie monster kit for the low-low price of $49.99 plus shipping. Go recycling toys!
So that’s what I have done so far. Please if you have any ideas, suggestions, critiques or just need to laugh at something please comment below. I’m always open for new ideas and small diorama ideas are needed for this toy! I will post follow-up pictures as I continue to work on this toy.
