3D is for Other Blogs, Really!

Or why I stopped worrying and learned to love tolerate the polymer printer!

 

Donation!

Many Thanks to Tom Clague

('Tomholio' around the Internet) 

 

Many years ago, although it seems like yesterday, I just don't know where it goes? And, it goes there quicker every year, but many years ago, 2007/2008, on the HäT forum, which was a very different beast then, it has since been heavily bot-edited by 'H' for perfectly understandable reasons, no criticism, and moved home/platform a couple of times, and is now a more corporate or pro-brand site, but many years ago we used to have a lot of fun on there, sometimes it would degenerate into silliness, other times the less humorous' would take offence, often about something which wasn't actually aimed at them, but there you go, all humour requires a certain level of grey-cells, some more than others, but many years ago, the Brit's, Antipodeans and some of the Canucks/Yanks would have some real fun . . . but we also had some more serious discussions, and many years ago, we had a thread on 3D Printing!

 

Straight out of the printer. 

 

At that time, the first commercial machines were just becoming something a semi-affluent Western hobbyist, within the 10%, globally, could look at affording, and a lot of potential was held by the nascent technology, or series of technologies, as there are various methods employed in Deposition-Modelling, or Rapid Prototyping (which includes CAD/CAM and CNC)*, as 3D printing is known to those at the cutting-edge of the Industry.

 

*Computer-aided design, computer-aided manufacture, computer numerical control['ed machining].

 

When cats'll fly!

I was quite hopeful at the time, but also pointed out that it might end the toy soldier industry as we then knew it, however, and thankfully, time has shown I was wrong on that one, and despite many friends, acquaintances and fellow-Blogger's having 3D machines of their own, or using the bespoke print-on-demand sellers around the place, most of the then new names in the hobby are still going, including HäT Indusrie!

 

This one's got no name!

 

The other criticism I had, or shared with others in that conversation (long since deleted by the forum-police 'bots), was that it would cheapen the concept of figure collecting, by making anything and everything available to anybody (who could afford it) in any scale, at any time, and that has come true!

 

Is there a doctor in the house?

 

Anyone, with the necessary skills, software, or scanner, or a useful mate so equipped, can scan any figure ever made, or design any figure you can dream of, in your wildest imagination, manipulate the file in an infinite number of ways, and print the results in increments of any scale from a couple of millimetres to whatever size you floor, drive or yard can sustain, without damage!

 

Airfix knock-off, and with naked girlfriend!

 

And that printing can be via simple filament feed, liquid or powder sintering, or deposition of layers, or that was the situation when we were having that conversation, with the new, affordable 'home PC' machines mostly being the filament type, now known as Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM), it's probably still the commonest form of home printing. And is also the technology in the rather very disappointing pen I looked at, here.

He used to drive the Millennium Falcon, you know?

But not in these threads!

HO/OO (left), 25mm (right)

 

Increasingly sintering is becoming affordable for the home printing enthusiast, and you can 'sinter' powder or liquid polymer, and metal (now called fusion), they alll have their own jargon! Vat Polymerisation (VP, for liquids) or Powder Bed Fusion (PBF, for powders!), with VP broken down into Stereolithography (SLA, usually using lasers) and Digital Light Processing (DLP), with fusion further divided into

 

Selective Laser Sintering (SLS - for plastics), and Selective Laser Melting (SLM) or Electron Beam Melting (EBM) for metals, these can be called Directed Energy Deposition too, althogh technically that's a sub-type with at least six systems!

 

HO/OO Turkey - incredible levels of detail.

 

Other systems are Material Jetting (deposited droplets of photo-polymer material, are then cured by UV light, we looked at a simple version of it, here), Binder Jetting (A print head deposits a liquid binding agent onto a bed of powder material, layer-by-layer, to hold the powder together, developed many years ago by the movie industry for scenic backgrounds, I believe?), and Sheet Lamination, where, thin sheets of material are bonded together and cut to form layers/shapes.

 

 ♪♪♫ She wants to break free!

She wants to break free from your lies
You're so self-satisfied
She don't neehee'eed you

She's got to break freehee'ee!

God knows!

God knows She wants to break free! ♫♪♫

 

And all the above, is only simplified, for modellers and wargamers! There are more than ten forms of Vat Polymerisation, eight types of Powder Bed Fusion . . . µSLA anyone?That's Microscopic Stereolithography, to you, Sir!

 

Anatomically correct nudes above,

Brazilian Turkish surgeon's 'skills' on display below!

 

And if you can afford a metal fusion printer, you can make yourself an indestructible copy of the Hong Kong/Laramie jungle superhero The Phantom, in a material designed to withstand the strains of motor-racing engines, aerospace components, or satellite thrusters! While meat (pork, beef and fish), replacement skin (also meat!) and concrete are all being successfully 3D printed.

 

The names are Bond, Roger and Shaun!

 

But, another criticism, at the hobby end, a lot of the stuff is manufactured from low-grade polymers, deliberately biodegradable polymers, or polymers with unknown long-term properties! And, a secondary aim of this post, is to explain why I don't really post 3D printing, won't often, and chose not too, back at the start of the blog, really.

 

Aping around, monkeying about!!

 

It's not snobbery or superciliousness, but that the infinite parameters, of scale, pose and subject, along with the possibility that your downloaded figure, posted from South Korea might disintegrate in six months, along with my lack of knowledge of the subject despite following it pretty closely, and - while I was doing 3D CAD - with some interest, just means I'd rather concentrate on existing vintage, and modern new production.

 

"Sonta-haa! Sonta-haa!"

There are two people who do post a fair bit now, Shaun, over at Fantasy Toy Soldiers, has posted some exquisite figurines in the larger scales, which would be a joy to paint, and Russ over at Plastic Toy Soldiers has started posting the odd 'Combat' 3D prints. It's not that I won't post 3D printed figures, I will, from time to time, I have one or two, I think, but I'm not going to collect them, there aren't enough hours left in the universe to get them all!

 

♫♫♪ "We're only passenger, we wanna' get off" ♫♪♪♫

 

And, just in case you didn't get my attempts at humorous captions, here's what Tom said about this lovely little parcel from Down Under, with grateful thanks to him for this donation, and thanks to Adrian for receiving the parcel, while I'm stuck in Limbo! Tom posts some of his 3D prints on his blog;

 

https://tomertonvillage.blogspot.com/

". . . a bit of background: Often the 3D printers i've bought from will include a number of duplicates - ostensibly just to make use of the resin pool they load the printer with . . . in this bag, we have an assortment designed and printed from various places around the world.

Sontarans Designer Wayne Peters has a number of excellent free Doctor Who files on cults3d.com. I downloaded these boys, and had an Australian printer make me a 1/76 set - she kindly included these larger prints. 

 

Movie stars in pink Ebay is awash with sellers from China who have a cornucopia of 1/64 scale figures - to go with Hot Wheels type cars. Along I came, and asked if they could print in 1/76 scale. This caused enormous confusion, and led to them sending figures of all shapes and sizes.

 

Doctor Who piracies Warning: the Tom Baker and Sylvester McCoy in your possession are wanted men, on the run from the law! These are indeed piracies of larger scale game pieces. I won't incriminate my source - instead, I'll quickly distract you with... 

 

Curvy ladies from Turkey, surprise surprise, what do middle-aged men want? Curvy ladies! Designer Phnix3d from Turkey obliges, with thousands of sculpts. His novelty is that he provides both a dressed and nude version of each pose. Model rail companies have done nudies before [I know, I have several of the 'naughty' Noch sets! Ed.] , but never to this quality (or ballooning imagination). The flipside is, he does a handful of male figures, who, dwarfed by their lady friends, frankly look a bit lost and embarrassed. The prints themselves have come all the way from the USA, where printer 'DoubleG Diecast' has these, and hundreds of other figures listed.

 

Planet of the apes, 2001; DoubleG also has these movie characters. As with the pink Chinese prints, I suspect the designs are scale downs from larger multi-part designs (copyright & intellectual property are not well respected concepts in the 3D printing world).

 

'Man who wants to break free', from Vietnam My model village could do with a good hoovering,Ii'll be setting Freddie loose once I've painted him.

 

. . . I've found it fascinating to keep an eye on 3d printing, asit'ss evolved from fairly naff filament types to incredible high-resolution resin machines now. Absent from this bag, I shared you the link to Smart Models UK previously; his are perhaps my favourite 3d printed model rail range, which he sells in neat little sets (alas with no duplicates), recommend . . .

 

. . . One to check out - I like both the style and the subject matter of his various figure sets: https://www.smartmodels.org/" 

 

2001 - The future was many years ago!

 

As a post scriptum, and given what I said about plastics, these came halfway-round the world in a jiffy bag, are all less than 30mm, and the only damage was a couple of bits of Sontaran, which will need glueing, along with Doctor the 7th's umbrella, Freddie's hoover and the wings of the flying Cat'sect. But Clint's cheroot and Connery's gun, survived whatever the international post can throw at a small parcel!

S is for Scurrilous Sleaze, Salacious Sensuality, Sexy, Steamy, Silly Sexism, Stag Skin-Smut, Sexploitation and, err . . . a bit of Racism.

Yeeeeaaaarrrrh . . . read that again, slowly.

 

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If you are someone who for whatever reason claims certain sensibilities of a religious or cultural persuasion, who might be easily offended by nudity or adult themes, or who thinks he or she might be so offended - this is not the post for you, and you should go and do something else with this spare-moment in your life, there will be plenty more for you here another day, but not today.

 

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No, no, I really mean it, and if you are a prude, if you like to condemn people for what they do in the privacy of their own homes, or if you are the sort of judgemental, bob-haired, Karan-type who likes a bit of curtain twitching, who likes to keep tabs on the neighbours, or who tries to do the job of the local authority, police or courts for them - you can fuck-off too. 

 

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If you are a small-minded, bigoted type, well, you might actually like one or two of the following items, but overall you'll hate the sentiments and most of the contents and probably lack the intellect to handle the subject in an adult fashion, so you might as well piss-off now, rather than give yourself a 'he told you so' moment, in a minute or two?

 

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So, some of you are still here, good-oh, because some effort's gone into this post, and I may never be the same again, sullied forever by my search for the more esoteric figures you might expect to find within the wider oeuvre of 'Toy & Model Soldiers and Figures'.

It is a fact that when I looked at the overall output of Preiser and Merten a few years ago, in a magazine style series of themed articles which happened to be mostly wagons and tractors, but also military, shepherds and beach-wear/naturists, I predicted, with the words "Don't deny it, I can guarantee that a year from now this will have had way more hits than any other post this year . . .that's human nature!" that that latter post would probably prove to be the most popular and it was.

 

Indeed, within days I had to get the whole thing removed from a wargaming site, where some onanistic damp-hand had copied the entire post, and it has, so far, risen to fifth-place in the all-time direct-hits table, which, as it was half-way through the Blog's history is quite a quick climb, and thankfully proves me right!

 

And I am confidently predicting here, that within five years this post will have surpassed it to 3rd or 4th place in that table . . . it's the same human nature! And all the wankers are still here too, they've just lost the ability to complain to Google!

 

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To that end, blatant nudity and adult themes, we arrive at this post, one of what 20-years from now will probably prove to be no more than two or three similar posts, there will certainly be at least one update, at some point.

And, most of what we are about to look at is just a bit silly, or mildly amusing, but, there is a racial element to it, and our hobby does attract some small-c conservative types, so it's best to go through this scrolling rigmarole, to - hopefully - lose them on the way!

 

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 OK - I think we're there!

Stag toys, and similar items designed to titillate, usually sold to those we hopefully lost on the way here, who are, to quote Pink; married to 'Fat, psychopathic wives, who thrash them to within an inch of their lives'. Golfers, local council officials, junior magistrates, that sort!

I saw this on eBay, about 18 months ago, and just had to have it, it ticks both the figural and the magnetic novelty boxes, but as you can see is also both hideously racist and sexually explicit, not only that, but the magnets ensure they break a biblical taboo, to boot!

 

It wasn't expensive, even with shipping from the states, which is the first lesson, if you are to branch out to collecting this kind of stuff on the side, as with collecting cake decorations, vintage baubles or old Christmas crackers, ignore the speculative Buy-It-Now's and wait for amateurs to list with reasonable start prices, or low BIN's.

And it would have had to be the 'States, we may have had our fair share of this kind of 'stag-toy', and we may have had a poor history of post-colonial integration, but this kind of 'Jim Crow' thing would have been a bit much for Edwardian Brit's, or even those early Elizabethans of the 1950's, from whence this came I suspect. They've even given them monkey-faces for fuck's sake . . . Somebody spent some time sculpting this, prototyping this, etching the masters . . . you know???

Anyway, that got the search for more of this stuff off the ground, and while this one wasn't the next to arrive (the posts are generally in chronological order, but only be dint of my working on them as they came in, rather than to prove any point), it was another clearly racist one, although not as blatant as the one before, or the last image.

 

One could argue, especially if a pink/flesh-coloured one turns up, that it could be intended for a black audience, through black-owned stores, in majority black areas? But I suspect it's just for lower middle-class white shits on second-hand car-lots, to laugh at, you sort of feel Harry 'Rabbit' Angstrom would like this!

 

It is, however, both amusing (anyway) and quite clever, indeed, I bet there are earlier tin versions, and even earlier wooden ones, which may well go back to antiquity, fucking maquettes (there's no point in prudish language on this post!) are probably something Egyptian pyramid-builders made in their down-time?

 

Obviously, the trigger mechanism gets them at it, while the bottle-opener provides an excuse for purchasing the thing! Remember the Americans, unlike the Brits are a cellar-building nation, and those cellars often ended-up with a man-cave, where the lads would assemble for a beer, there must be loads of these languishing in forgotten boxes of grandad's stuff, about the place!

These tend to be sold as Perspex or Lucite (for the purposes of searches), but are probably just a form of polystyrene, and there is another one, where the girl has her arms behind her head to cushion the floor-action! And the existence of two similar designs suggests they may have been sold as pairs or sets?

Before and after cleaning, most of these got a clean, because, well, given the subject-matter, you don't know where they've been or what they've been involved in . . . euweee! Described as a novelty clothe-peg, it's actually large enough to be used as salad-tongs!

 

This is the modern variation of the pistol toy, similar mechanism, but now just a button in the plinth-base. And by modern, I remember these being sold in Guildford's side-alley shop 'But Is It Art' back in the late 1970's/early 1980's. One hopes the black is for silhouette only, and not with any racist connotation? I'm loving the hippy-graphics of the box!

And the modern-modern take, contemporary or semi-contemporary, these are probably still available from the few 'book shops' still around Soho, but they have nearly all gone now, haven't they? And all the little, parochial sex-shops, I noticed the one at the bottom of Manor Park in Aldershot went a few years ago, and that had been there since forever, serving the soldiery!

 

The push-button is under the plinth on this one, and my comments on the bed-bound dude lower-down, pretty-much apply here to, it's not very nice is it? And the box-art totally fails trading standards, like anyone would complain!

Oh, do we have to? Yes, Hugh, if you embark on this nonsense, you have to see it, and all it's branching, through to a conclusion, or just the bitter-end!

 

This - more for foreign readers - is a knock-off piracy, of the equally stupid (I just never 'got it' at all) 'Wicked Willy', one of those phenomena of the 1980's which will cement that decade as the beginning of the end of humanity, for all time - time which is actually running out fast, in part because of the decisions made, in that decade! I see the Devil finally relented and let Kissinger in last night?

 

Wicked Willy was the creation of a cartoonist far better known for far better stuff, he was a regular in the national newspapers and always had something genuinely funny, sarcastic or satirical in Private Eye, but then he decided willy's were funny! Now I may be doing the original concept (conceit?) a disservice? But that fact that it has disappeared without much trace, says I was probably right to find it all a bit odd? 

Of course, at the height of its popularity there were a gazillion tons of merchandising, and with it knock-off's like this piss-poor effort at funny toothbrushes, I mean, the willy looks more like someone's attempt at a vagina, and he's got tits almost as big as hers? And this shite wasn't in sex-shops, it was in Clinton's Card, Boot's and Woolworth's, and not on a high shelf either, it's an awful statement of how base we actually are!

Another piece of modern titillating nastiness, you-know, some of this stuff has creativity, or some ephemeral 'class', or just build-quality, but this is naffness personified! The Nurse's bum (I guess it's supposed to be a nurse) goes up and down when you pump the rubber bulb.

 

There’s another version, where he's wanking himself, presumably the nurse having been called away! Cheap and nasty, it has no redeeming features in my eyes, even the box is horrid!

Totally the other end of the spectrum, this has a certain charm or innocence about it, and I notice we have Gift Republic in the Tag list already (fridge-magnet / bottle-opener), this was an Amazon buy I think, but it's the sort of thing you might find in a larger department store's gift section. I think 'risqué' rather than erotic is the working word here? Poured-resin plant-pot spikes, and with racial equality rather than racism, almost sweet!

A couple of scalers taken as the collection (or sub-collection) took shape, Peter Evans had no idea I was building this post when he sent me the stag key-ring, which folds into a skull, and unfolds into a mildly erotic nude, while the Marx figurine (here a reissue - grey, prone figurine) is a stag-gift he (Louis Marx) originally gave his cronies, I think it's based on a more neutral 'bathing beauty', who was standing and had a more obvious bikini, although this poor girl has no nipples?

 

Gives an idea as to just how big the 'clothes peg' couple are!

 

That Marx babe, with a couple of the QuattroX (Japanese Scalextric) grid-babes, we saw a while ago, these are definitely the tamer end of the whole exercise, and there are quite a few of the clothed variety, most - it has to said - also Marx!

 

We looked at this briefly after the Plastic Warrior show back in May, grabbed from Steve Vickers stall, and a more gentile stag-toy novelty, what my father (who had two 16mm stag movies, much to my mother's chagrin) would have called a rudie-nudie!

 

"For the man in your life"? Was this sold through Avon or something? Ladies (if you're here?), real men don't need this stuff in their lives, if they have you.

 

Pull on the little piece of faux-chiffon and the arms bend, revealing a naked lady who's plastic surgeon clearly hasn't a clue how breasts look, or work! I actually saw a variation of this figure at one of the Sandown Park shows earlier in the year, can't now remember the difference, I think a skirt was pulled-up instead, something like that, and it was 'Japan', so some age to the idea.

 

She had garter-belts or a hint of stocking, but in a thin layer of some rubberised or rubber-sensitive paint which is now a sticky mess, only still is situ due to the limited protection of the sheer nightie!

 

And . . . back to the worst of humanity for the finish . . . oh how they would have laughed, those Willy Loman's and their shrewish wives? I sincerely hope there was never a 5 or 10, and anything over 40 is going to be pretty grim, the way this set progresses, by age, obviously, and obviously cocktail sticks - or tooth-picks? Beautiful faux-tortoiseshell polymer, horrid subject-matter.

 

And, on the subject of a potential follow-up, if you have some of this stuff, and don't know what to do with it, send me decent images . . . 

 

maverickatlarge@gmail.com (not currently the hotmail account)

 

. . . with a name/nom-de-plume/anon' to credit, and we'll do them here sometime? They all deserve to be presented or saved for posterity, however cruel, nasty or naff they are! They reflect the times they were made in.