Nice paint work and he looks perfect on that base.

Sharp paint job, great hand. Did you spray the fig with any special primer or stick-to-plastic to hold the paint? I've had good luck with Krylon Fusion, just wondered if there were others.

Yep, polyethylene figures need some sort of primer to get the paint to stick. Since 1979 I’ve been brushing on Red Devil satin finish clear polyurethane varnish. It’s worked well for me, so I haven’t really looked for anything else, although I’m sure there must be other coatings now that that can do the job just as well, if not better.

Handy to know about Red Devil. The fact you've been using it a long time helps. There might be other stuff, but you never know if it will crack and peel off in a couple of years. I'll look it up.

Love these minis, great paint, cool plants. Love the retro look on them.

I'm so sick of seeing the same comic characters rehashed endlessly, as if no toy company has an original idea left for a toy line. It's great to see random characters like this, especially in odd settings, they look so cool. That's something I really like about minis, you can build a little world for them without too much trouble.

I hope someday we'll get a line of original sci-fi themed action figures. People can submit their ideas, their drawings, and the characters can make it into the next wave, something like that.

Back in the early 1950s there were plenty of licensed toys based on the original space themed TV shows. The toy companies made accurate representations of the human characters – Tom Corbett, Buzz Corey, Capt. Video – but the alien creatures, vehicles and accessories were pretty much their original designs. And the unlicensed toys were wonderfully imaginative.

The debut of Star Wars in 1978 ushered in a resurgence of space items to toy store shelves. Besides the official products, lots of old stuff was resurrected, revamped to reflect the Star Wars graphic. Some new, non-Star Wars stuff was highly original, but we got a lot of imitation droids, Wookies and Dark Lords as well. But, looking back, even some of these knockoff figures were more interesting and more welcomed than the twenty-fifth R2-D2 and the fortieth Darth Vader. And you know, that no matter how many new characters appear in Episode VII, all the old ones will be back again … and again … and again.

I certainly had more fun collecting toys and building models in the 1970s and 80s.