These aren't the droids you're looking for...

The term "droid" is a registered trademark of Lucasfilm Ltd, and is the Star Wars universe equivalent of the word "robot". Star Wars droids come in a wide variety of forms, but most if not all, seem to be installed with some degree of artificial intelligence and personality.

I personally use the term loosely to refer to all cute, quirky, or comic relief robots from popular media. The majority of the various miniature versions of such robots that I've collected are droids from the Star Wars line of MicroMachines made by Galoob.

The first group of figures include four R-series astromech droids – one standalone, and three others on a single base. The fourth droid on the group base is a mining droid, followed by a gonk power droid (a couple of 1/72 resin kit from RetrokiT and Green Strawberry Models are available, but I don't know how they compare in size to the MicroMachines version). The last two figures are a LE-series repair droid and a ASP-series general-purpose labor droid.

R2-D2, R1-G4, R2-D2, R5-D4, LIN-V8K, GNK, LE-BO2D9, ASP-7

The next image has three 3PO humanoid protocol droids and an assassin droid. The 3PO droids are tiny, and seem to be 1/87 scale. I think the E-3PO droid is a custom repaint or factory error of C-3PO since I don't think that there was an actual MicroMachines version of E-3PO.

C-3PO, C-3PO (god mode), E-3PO, IG-88

The droids that I like the most from the MicroMachines line are the B1 battle droids.

The duplicate poses are from the various playsets, and are distinguished from the standard figures by having a small hole through the middle of the base.

The battle droids are most likely 1/76 scale, so may appear somewhat under height, but overall, they still look fine with 1/72 figures.

Larger scale battle droids were made for the Star Wars Action Fleet line, but they don't have the spindly look of the droids from the films. I think that the S.T.A.P. (Single Trooper Aerial Platform) looks okay with the smaller figure riding it, so I'm fine with calling it 1/72 scale.

I have two other Action Fleet droids from the Pod Racer Hangar Bay set. Both are DUM-series pit droids. The tan colored droid has the pivoting hips of the typical Action Fleet figure, while the brown droid is a fixed pose figure.

At 21mm in height, they are about 1 scale foot taller than they should be, but I'm willing to let that pass.

In metal, Ground Zero Games makes a WorkBot pack (SG15-V13), with three small robots who are expys of R2D2, WALL•E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class), and Dewey (or Louie) from Silent Running.

I misplaced the other miniatures, but had WALL•E on the workbench for quite some time awaiting modifications.

The front and rear of the model are not really close to the Pixar design, but it's not a big deal to me.

I wanted a little better detail on the models, so I added some eyes and upgraded the arms.

Then I carved out some rudimentary hands from plastic sprue and glued them to the arms, but had to widen them with plastic strip because I went overboard with my file.

I glued some plastic scraps littering the workbench into a rough square as a load of waste for my second robot to carry.

Some plastic strip that I marked with a Sharpie was added to the arms, and an unmarked strip was added to the rear.

The figure on the left fell on the floor, and the head ended up tilted, but it actually looks pretty good that way.

Not as good as the 1:1 version created by Mike McMaster, but close enough for me.

Chalawan

Chalawan (ชาละวัน) is a crocodile spirit from the Thai folktale Kraithong (ไกรทอง). The story was adapted into a lakhon nok play credited to King Rama II, and has received a number of film adaptations over the years.

The story is so popular, that there is even a Thai craft beer named after Chalawan.

Anyone think their logo looks familiar?

In the story, Chalawan lives in a cave containing a magical crystal that gives all the crocodiles within human form. Outside of the cave however, he appears as an enormous crocodile. On occasion, Chalawan is also depicted as being half-man, half-crocodile.

A Cambodian take on the story can be seen in the film Kropeu Charavan (ក្រពើឆារ៉ាវ៉ាន់) aka The Crocodile Men. In this film, Chalawan (Charavan) is fully human, but knows a spell to transform into a crocodile.

The spell is very reminiscent of legends about the Indonesian power of tiang maleh rupa that allows people to change into crocodiles, or crocodiles to change into humans. And in fact, these legends are often credited as being the source for werecrocodiles in RPGs. In the Indonesian horror movies based on these legends, these creatures always seem to be albino crocodiles (buaya putih).

For more inspiration on magical crocodiles, I turned to the first issue of the zine A Thousand Thousand Islands, by Zedeck Siew, with art by Mun Kao.

MR-KR-GR describes a land of crocodiles and their human subjects. The zine introduces us to the Place of Crocodiles, but does not delve deeply into detail so I'm not sure I can characterize it as a gazetteer. The setting is painted with broad strokes, yet is evocative and tantalizes the reader with bits and pieces of the wondrous and grotesque.

Zedeck doesn't have any plans to make a comprehensive guide for his setting since he prefers the open-ended feel of the different locales introduced in his zines, but I personally would want to do a lot of research into the culture and mythology of Southeast Asia to do justice to the setting. Nevertheless, there are many people who can take off running with it just fine, so it is certainly not a hindrance to not have any sort of detailed background.

I'm not sure if there is currently any stock of the latest printings of the zine, but you can always contact Zedeck to check on availability.

Anyway, on to miniatures. There are several companies that make crocodile-men, including Privateer Press (Gatormen) and Crocodile Games (Sebeki), but the only series of miniatures that are close in size to 1/72 scale figures are the old C19 and RR11 Lizardmen from Citadel.

Grenadier also made the Caroc (Monster Manuscript Vol.II 1502, MM10) which I think matches well with the Citadel miniatures.

For regular crocodiles there are a lot of different plastic toys that can be used, but most of them are probably too large for use with 1/72 scale figures.

I only have the Airfix crocodile from the Tarzan figure set (01733), while all my other figures are actually alligators. The adult and baby alligators are from the Airfix Zoo Animals No. 1 set (01724). Next is a Galoob alligator from the National Geographic Collection Swamp Adventure set, and at the end is the Marx alligator from the Noah's Ark playset.

Last but not least is the D&D Icons of the Realms Crocodile (Waterdeep Dragon Heist #30), which can be used as a large saltwater crocodile.

Imperial Probe Droid

The Imperial probe droid made it's debut in the film The Empire Strikes Back. Subsequent fluff designated the machine as the Arakyd Viper.

According to rumor, the design was inspired by art that Mœbius created for the short comic The Long Tomorrow.

I think that many people found the looks of the droid to be both sinister and elegant, though functionally it was rather over-sensitive, and likely to self-destruct at the slightest insult.

In any event, I recently picked up the Galoob MicroMachines version of the probe droid. I'm not sure if it originally came with a stand (there is a hole underneath that looks like it is for a flight stand), but it stands okay without one.

I had been hesitant about this particular model in the past because I thought it did not match the 1.6m height specified for the probe droid. Then I saw a picture of the 1:1 scale model used in the film, and decided that the toy probably was fairly close to being 1/72 scale.

Bill Hargreaves and probe droid

A 1/72 resin kit for the probe droid is also made by RetrokiT, but it's roughly triple the cost of the Galoob version, and likely unsuitable for gaming.

Fuzzy sapiens

Fuzzies: Small aboriginal creatures of the planet Zarathustra which first appeared in the novel Little Fuzzy, by H. Beam Piper. They are known as Gashta in their own language, and stand about two feet tall.


Fuzzies made their RPG debut in Ultima III: Exodus. For some reason, I seem to remember that they were in Wizardry as well, but I may be mistaken about that - it's been a long time since I played either game.


Fuzzies armed with their traditional weapons, as well as with blasters were made by Archive miniatures as part of their Star Rovers line. Below are a pair of Fuzzies with their hodda. They stand about 15mm high, so are actually about foot and a half taller than a Fuzzy should be (in 1/72 scale).


Ewoks: Shameless products for merchandising, or symbols of the triumph of resourcefulness over technology? I was neutral about Ewoks when I first saw Jedi, but always thought that the Battle of Endor was rather ridiculous. If they were consistently portrayed as primitive man-eating (why do people keep saying Ewoks are cannibalistic?) savages, they would have worked for me, but unfortunately they were flanderized with respect to their "cute" characteristics, and I've developed somewhat of a bias against them.


Galoob made a number of Ewoks as part of their MicroMachines Star Wars line. The first four poses (starting from the left) come from the Ewoks figure set (66080), while the last two poses are unique to playsets. They stand about 15mm high, and come painted in typical MicroMachines fashion.

So who would win in a fight? Me, I'm partial to the Fuzzies.


To crush your enemies...

...see them driven before you...

...and to hear the lamentation of their women.

Boooooooyyyyyyyy!!!

For my Halloween post, I've decided to debut my near-finished first complete sculpt. The figure is the Tall Man from one of my favorite horror films, the 1979 cult classic Phantasm. I've always wanted a miniature of the Tall Man to use as one of the baddies in gaming, but I could never find a figure with the right look. I finally decided to take matters into my own hands and sculpt a figure myself.


More John Houseman than Angus Scrimm?


The arms are actually removable at the moment, because I wanted to cast up the body by itself so I could have the figure with different arm poses. I initially scaled the figure to 6'8" in height, because that was Angus Scrimm's actual height with 4" lifts, but I decided to go a little taller because he just didn't seem tall enough in 1/72 when compared to other figures. To go with the Tall Man, I rolled up some 1mm balls of Kneadatite to create sentinel spheres. The ball in his hand was glued to a short segment of clear sprue that was stretched over a flame.


Below is another silver sentinel spheres on a longer piece of sprue. Follwing it are two gold sentinel spheres which are just round head map pins painted in gold. I would have liked to find some 1mm round head pins for the silver spheres as well, but I couldn't find any (I know it is pedantic, but the silver spheres are smaller than the gold spheres). The paint was somewhat of an issue because I could not get the chrome-like finish on the spheres like in the films. I discovered that my "chrome" silver spray was not chrome silver, and that the metallic golds that I used was too dark. I gave the gold spheres a wash with a lighter colored gold, but it made the spheres lose their metallic luster.


This final picture is of Star Wars MicroMachines Jawas, which can be used as Lurkers - the compacted reanimated zombie slaves of the Tall Man. The first four poses of Jawas comes from the Jawas figure set (66076). The fifth Jawa came from one of the Mini Head sets, but I don't remember which one, and the final Jawa came from one of the large MicroMachines playsets, again I don't remember which one.


Now what do I do for a balding ice-cream man with a ponytail and shotgun?