Archive Miniature Mystery Solved

Maybe nobody else cares, or maybe everyone already knew this but for me a mystery has been solved.  Back in 2012, I painted an Archive Fuzzy  from their Star Rovers line of miniatures.

At the time I wondered: "It's interesting because if you know anything about these minis, you'll know that many of them are rip-offs of Star Wars characters.  For example, "Hans Self" instead of Han Solo etc etc.  I always assumed that this one was supposed to be an Ewok, but if I'm not mistaken this figure actually dates to around 1977 and as far as I know Ewok's did not appear until Return of the Jedi in 1983. So I guess not."

Then today I saw a book cover illustration that cleared it all up.  This miniature was clearly based on the following illustration of H. Beam Piper's book, Little Fuzzy.

I love revelations like this one and just thought I would share it in case anyone else would get a kick out of it too.

Doctor Who and an Ewok ?

I'm continuing to work on the FASA Doctor Who minis and I have completed the third doctor, Jon Pertwee.

The sculpt doesn't have a bow tie but it does have a cape, and based on that I felt like the Season Eight/Terror of the Autons costume would be most appropriate to base the colors on for this mini.

                                                       

This picture shows that costume and while the sculpt doesn't match it perfectly it seemed like the closest fit.  I have to admit I'm not as happy with this one as the last two.  Something about the face that I just couldn't get quite right.

I also painted one of the Fuzzies from Archive's Star Rovers Line.  It's interesting because if you know anything about these minis, you'll know that many of them are rip-offs of Star Wars characters.  For example, "Hans Self" instead of Han Solo etc etc.  I always assumed that this one was supposed to be an Ewok, but if I'm not mistaken this figure actually dates to around 1977 and as far as I know Ewok's did not appear until Return of the Jedi in 1983. So I guess not.

  I painted this guy up pretty quickly but I think he turned out okay.  He is very small.  I've painted 15mm miniatures bigger than he is.  You can get some idea of how small he is in this picture with the good doctor:

Should be lots more miniature goodness coming up this summer.  I've got an Asgard figure in progress, the remaining two FASA Doctor Who figures and I just picked up a bunch of Grenadier minis as well.  Stay Tuned.

Welcome to my new blog.  Sure, there are lots of miniatures blogs on the web but I enjoy looking at them, and hope that you'll enjoy seeing mine.  I'm particularly interested in vintage miniatures and the initial focus of this blog will be on my current obsession: collecting Archive and Asgard miniatures.  I'm sure there will be other old-school goodness like Grenadier and Ral Partha minis, as well as some more recent miniatures that catch my somewhat eclectic fancy as well.  I've not found a lot of miniatures painting blogs on the web focusing on vintage minis so I figured maybe I'd add my own to the mix.  Feel free to leave a comment suggesting any of which I might be unaware.

So what started my current obsession with Archive and Asgard?  Looking at some old Dragon magazine ads like this one:

I love the little illustrations of the miniatures and that fact that they even used illustrations rather than pictures of their actual products.  (See where I got the inspiration for the drawing in my header?)  Both of these lines were just a little before my time, so while my interest feels like nostalgia, technically it isn't.  Gaming as a kid, it was all about Grenadier and Ral Partha, and I was totally unaware of other manufacturers at the time.  Dave King recently mentioned a similar sort of "pseudonostalgia" on his blog.  Anyway, I find the oddness and clunkiness of a lot of these old miniatures very charismatic.

While I've got a small collection of them, I've only painted one of my Archive miniatures, RV86 aka Hardy Toot Toot:

Expect more and hopefully better painted minis to come, such as Archive's Goblin King, and an Asgard Minotaur.  In the meantime, feel free to check out other miniatures I've painted on my coolminiornot gallery. Thanks for stopping by. -Red Menace