Here’s the situation: you’ve decided to do a little customizing. Maybe you’re a Doubledealer just waiting to be unleashed. So you get your base figure. You get your “donor” parts. You check the source material, you scan Google for an hour, and you get down to business with the absolute best of intentions.
Aaaand then you get about three-quarters in and go, “Eh, good enough,” and vow never to post this custom because you don’t think it will stand up to scrutiny.
It doesn’t happen necessarily because you’re just being lazy, though. Maybe there’s a problem with function, like if you stay accurate to the source, it’s going to cost some articulation. Or maybe it just looks damn good this way and you’re scared if you go any further… you’re gonna f’ it up.
Everybody who’s ever wanted to make a figure just a liiittle closer to their ideal has gone through this one time or another. It can be as simple as the decision to add a dark wash, or as complicated as trying to build vehicles to real-world accuracy for a scale that spits on your intentions. So, yeah, I go through it constantly.
A good example of what I’m talking about is working with my HM Armed Forces Apache that I reviewed earlier this year. As I mentioned then, it’s got some chunky proportions, so it’s always going to be a little less than accurate. Since getting it, though, I’ve been able to add better wing stubs, a better chain gun, seats for 6-inch figures, and airbrush-up the clean toy finish into a pretty decent-looking bird.
And then I went and stuck decals on it that no Apache has ever flown in.
It was just so plain without something other than the Army lettering on the fuse that I then scrounged through every reference book I own trying to justify it with some historical precedent, but there ain’t one. I won’t bore you with the details of how the US Army’s low-vis verses hi-vis markings break down, I’ll just leave it at it’s inaccurate. But cool-looking and a little G.I. Joe-esque.
It’s no big deal, right? I mean, there’s plenty of stuff in my collection without a real-world equivalent, and it was never going to be 100 percent true to the source anyway.
… or does that mean that I should try harder to make it look real?
Is it a big deal? Not just talking my Apache here, let’s take it to something more relatable: when we were kids, just about every movie or TV show had an action figure line, which no doubt lead to most of us being the collectors we are today. At the time, they were good enough to meet our needs, but most don’t hold up too well to their inspirations, do they? Some were better than others, but, for the most part, they were rudimentary plastic impressions of the characters they were supposed to be. So, when a modern equivalent comes out, we expect it to be much closer to the source than it’s predecessor.
But just how close does it need to be? Transformers grapples with this constantly, and the Masterpiece line is mostly filled with good examples of how to walk that tightrope between on-model and evocative of the original toy and functional to modern standards. But there’s always the first Masterpiece Starscream.
At the end of the day, as Prodigy has told me over the years, I build toys when I make customs. I’m less concerned with how perfect it looks on the shelf, I want it to be functional and fun, like the toys I grew up with, while looking aesthetically pleasing enough to try and pass it of as an “adult collectible.” And I’m very much the same when it comes to buying toys off the rack.
But, the devil is always in the details, isn’t it?