....Or as I like to call it the Art of Kit Bashing. One of the statements I hear most often is "I wish I could do that!" Or "I love to make that but I just don't have the skill." Let me be the first to say, yes you can. Now there are full scale customs I do that require molding, casting, painting, and at times fabrication. Now, that might be out of most people's skill set but I'm here to talk about kit bashing. What's that you ask? Well in the most simple terms kit bashing is the art of taking existing parts and making a piece that never existed before. Pretty simple huh? Nowadays with so many 1/6 scale parts available to collectors the sky is the limit. To show you how, I'm going to make a figure for my own personal collection. I'm a huge Robocop fan...my better half would call that an understatement and an addiction. You can look for a companion article that I have about my favorite 1/6 scale figure of last year (2016)....which ended up being a Robocop piece. Anyway back to our Kit Bash, I always wanted a Dick Jones 1/6 scale figure. If you remember the first Robocop movie, Dick Jones was the main member of OCP (the evil corporation) and the brains behind the ED209 project. If you're a fan...he's a pivotal character. The chances though of Hot Toys or any other manufacturer of 1/6 scale figures to make this character into a 1/6 scale piece of plastic love are about as good as me winning the lottery. With that said I'm here to tell you that you don't need Hot Toys or anyone else to do Dick...literally. You can make one yourself. All it takes is a little time and patience to hunt down the pieces and parts that you need. So first things first....we need a photo to be our guiding light and benchmark...easy enough - Google to the rescue.
After finding a couple great shots of Ronny Cox as Dick Jones - we can see some of the finer details. In two different scenes we see him wearing a three piece suit. One in black and one in gray - so that's our benchmark for his clothes. The hardest part would be locating a head, but not so fast. A few years back a company called Saturday Toys put out a generic figure. The figure was meant to showcase the suits they were selling, but apparently the sculptor must have been a Robocop fan because the head on this figure was a dead ringer for Ronny Cox. To be fair a lot of companies have been doing this over the years. They release a generic body or even a fully dressed figure and the head sculpt on these pieces resemble famous actors. If there is an actor your looking for...then chances are someone... somewhere has made it. Again, back to the bash as the really fun part begins the hunt. If you're a collector this is always the most rewarding part...looking for that missing issue or the missing figure or just finding that piece to complete your collection. Kit Bashing is the same thrill as you hunt and find piece by piece to make your figure. Slowly I found the head and a three piece suit at Urban Samurai. A Robocop figure stand off of evilbay...I mean eBay. As for the 1/6 body all I had to do was go to my parts bin...the joy of being a customizer is you have more bodies and body parts then a graveyard...except in 1/6 scale. In my bin I had an amazing body by ACI TOYS INC call the "B5 Edward" that I did a review on last year but had yet to use for anything because it was a slender build. For Dick Jones it was simply perfect.
My total cost was about $75 for everything. Which in 1/6 scale community a custom figure for $75 is unheard of. Again I'm doing nothing but putting the pieces together so in modeler terms this build would be a level 1....anyone can do it. I did later decide to add a 1/6 red designer tie because it went more in line with the production still. So how do all these ingredients come together? Remarkably well, but you can be the judge of that.
Personally I love the figure and he fits in perfectly with my Hot Toys Robocop collection. Anyway I hope this article took some of the fear out of venturing out to create your own figure. Just know time and patience always pay off. I spent close to 5 months to make my figure and that was just taking the time to search for parts as they became available. Once I had everything in house it was literally a 10 minute build. So, if anyone ever tells you that you can't make your own custom figure...just know, they don't know Dick... ...Jones that is.
Thanks again for your time and as always,
Take Care ~ Jase Marshall
Jase is a Customizer, Reviewer, Fabricator, Toy Broker who has been running Marshall Made Collectibles (MMC) out of the foothills of NC for close to two decades.