Sometimes, no matter how cheap the fodder, some projects are just more trouble than they’re worth.
As I’ve talked about before, with so much transitioning going on in action figure lines, I spent most of last year scouring the Earth for 6-7″ scale vehicles, and found some great stuff in the process. The negative part of that hunt has to be the distinct lack of things I can find at retail. This means lots of ebay, and failing that, lots of garage sales, swap meets and thrift stores– you know, old schooling it.
While doing this, I came across this giant hunk of plastic:
Mattel has made variants of it over the years, most between about 1995 and the early 2000s, but that’s not important. What’s important is five bucks made me the owner of a mostly complete Barbie plane.
I’ve already made peace with the “pink” aisle in my life. My masculinity was a non-issue by this time, thanks to the several dollhouses I also own. Sometimes, it’s just a matter of paint to make use of this stuff- like the various Mustangs and Jeeps and such that can be turned into a more non-gendered vehicle pretty easily.
This was no such case. But, this is still a giant vehicle that can easily hold several 1/12ish figures, and….it was five bucks.
I couldn’t find any way to use it as-is. It’s stubby proportions were beyond the pink, er, pale, for me. There’s no way those wings could lift this bloated-ass pig. So, my first thought was how about a helicopter?
Something like the Mil Mi-8 “Hip” has a similar tubby shape, and would be sufficiently massive to make use of such a big toy, but this came apart on fodder- there was no suitable tail boom that could be had outside of the RC world, and other parts like the wing stubs and main rotor would make it very hard to take advantage of the tub’s best feature: the clamshell opening of the passenger area.
Okay, what about something with a different rotor set up?
Boeing-Vertol Chinook, and Yakovlev “Horse”
The Chinook, or Yakovlev dual rotor heavy lifters completely solve the problem of access to the inside. But where’s the fodder? I can’t use the Tomahawk or a Chap Mei version, because they’re just plain too little to offer parts. And if I thought the RC parts for a ‘standard” helicopter were bad, the dual rotors were way, way worse. The last thought was something like this:
And I admit, I think there’s still some merit to it. Again, fodder would be tough, but not impossible. Alas, short of a Cobra Rattler, I couldn’t think of anything with that type of wing, and that meant engineering a rotating engine. Too much work for a $5 Barbie plane.
So I put this pig in the shed for a while. I worked on other stuff, but was constantly nagged by this stupid thing. It was five bucks! I could throw it in the garbage and be short one cup of coffee. But I still wanted to try to make something with it. Sure, it looked like crap on the outside, but the cockpit was surprisingly nice, and the cabin had a great utilitarian look to it perfect for cargo.
Then I came across one of these guys for $10 at a swap meet, and said, hey, what the hell? Yolo, bitches.
A cargo plane:
comes with all kinds of logistical problems for even pretending to be in scale. They’re huge. While the Chap Mei Hercules is able to bridge the scale with a great deal of charm and preserving the lines of the plane, I have a fat-ass Barbie plane that I’m using, so that’s out the window. Even if it were closer to scale, where the hell do you put something that size? I know I’ve got more room than most folks, but hey, even I have limits.
So, I decided to just take it one piece at a time, like Johnny Cash said. The wings and tail were in good shape (it was missing lots of other parts, cuz swap meet) so I poached those. I needed the wings to be removable, to keep the cabin access, and I remembered seeing this was a feature of the Hercules:
Yeah, I can’t use that. Way too difficult to incorporate into the body with any functionality. So, I drilled some holes, and used the pegs on the wings instead. And I’ll be damned if they didn’t fit. And hold. And look much better. So I used the same technique for the tail- made some holes, popped them off the Herc and plugged them in. Still removable, but not fancy. Perfect for this pig.
So, it’s got (out of scale) wings and engines, a(n) (out of scale) tail, and it’s starting to look a little more like an actual (out of scale) cargo plane. Maybe not a Hercules, but some kind of bastard C-123/Antonov/Mattel hybrid. But it’s still very much (out of scale) ugly.
Okay, here’s where we get a little stupid on a $15 project- we treat it like it’s worth doing, and start slapping lipstick on this pig. First up, I make copious use of styrene. The wings and tail have nice paneling work, the body does not, so I glue strips on to bridge the differences. The primer gray helps hide the pink shame underneath, but this thing is too ugly to leave in low-vis colors, counter-intuitive that may be. So, I get out the airbrush and give it a dirty olive drab topcoat, and weather it a bit. I then hit the bottom and cockpit with a good flat gull gray, and build a replacement nose gear, since neither donor plane had one. The comical, Disney-esque windows get some filler to divide them up, and I put some “glass” in, albeit not the best fitting.
More lipstick. I have lots of sticker sheets, so I use callsign numbers, “no-step” labels, panel markings, whatever I’ve got to make it look like a service plane. I stop short of national insignia, because maybe this isn’t a military plane. This could be a surplus job used by the CIA or the cartels (sometimes that’s the same thing), or a private owner. Then I throw an ejection seat loop on the pilot chair, add some tow-straps and boxes, and I call it done. After all that, it just barely fits on the back of the shelf, stubby wings and all. And I kind of like it.
But I still kinda wish I’d left it at the damn thrift store. There’s only so much lipstick in the world, and I think I used more than my share.