Halloween In July

I mentioned not long ago that one of my passions is painting miniatures.  The joy of painting teeny, tiny people started out way, way back when my teenage self was deeply into the swords and sorcery literature of Robert E. Howard and the art of Frank Frazetta.  I concurrently discovered the tabletop game Dungeons and Dragons and a local hobby shop that not only stocked the miniatures but employed a young guy who painted them and was willing to share painting tips with a pimpley geek with more enthusiasm than skill.

Fast forward way more years than I care to think about and I don't play D&D anymore but I still love those miniatures.  What's great these days is that the tabletop gaming phenomenon has expanded WAY beyond the initial scope of dragons and warriors to include space faring characters, superheroes, straight up action adventure characters and a ton more.  You can paint minis to play with or display from just about any genre, film, tv show or game you care to name.  IF you know where to look...

For some characters, there may not enough demand to see licensed versions of them in a 30mm scale.  When this happens, what's a fan to do?

One option is the site I raved about a week ago, Hero Forge Custom Miniatures where you can apply a little creativity to one of their standard figures and create a reasonable facsimile of the character you're after.  I've designed pseudo Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, a pseudo Xena and even a passible looking Original Series Klingon there, all just using the available options and knowing what I can do with paint once the figure is in hand.  That's cool and probably legal...

Another option is to look for a prebuilt figure that's close and modify it.  I did this with a dozen and a half of the figures I used when I built my Marvel and DC chess sets.  Fiddly work that requires a bit of skill and a lot of patience, but doable.

The final option is to look around really hard to find a figure that approximates what you're after.  A lot of figure producers will skate juuust outside of copyright infringement and create a miniature that looks suspiciously familiar.  Since they don't sell these things pre-painted, I'd guess the company lawyer figures there's enough of a grey area to get away with it.  No judgment from me.  I'm just happy to get what I want out of it.

So, what's this all leading to?  A company out of the U.K. called Hasslefree Miniatures.  Their line of minis is superb.  Plenty of beautifully sculpted warriors, adventures, zombies and even a bunch of sexy ladies.  What's great for a collector/painter like me is that there are also a ton of "hmm...I could paint that as..." figures that I can envision as characters like Mulder and Scully, Buffy and Willow and others.  Hasslefree will eventually have all my money, I think.

Particularly when they're this classy:

That's a box filled with metal miniature figures I just received.  Now, I've bought a LOT of stuff online over the years.  Boxes usually arrive with the stuff, sometimes the stuff and a receipt and that's it.  Why would you expect more?  Once in while a retailer will include a business card and very occasionally a nice hand written thank you.  Those are nice.

I was once mightily impressed to receive my order of dvds with an extra dvd that turned out to fit very nicely in my collection.  I know I bought more from that guy.

But.

In all the years I've shopped online, no one has ever included more than that.  Until now.  Can you believe, CANDY!  Seriously.  My miniatures shipped quicker than expected and arrived with bonus CANDY.  Awesome!  Hasslefree Miniatures just shot to the top of my "buy more from these people" list!

And this is what I bought, the penny (Canadian, same exact size as a U.S. penny) is there for scale:

From left to right:  Felicity, Wolsey, the dog Hamlet, Barney and Louise.

A little closer:

Now, that's a familiar looking gang...

Interestingly, Hasslefree also offers the exact same characters but armed for post-apocalyptic zombie killin'.  Zoinks!

Back row, left to right: Felicity, Wolsey and Barney.  Up front: The dog Hamlet and Louise.

Felicity sports a baseball bat (they also offer a version where she's rockin' a HUGE machine gun), Wolsey carries an axe, Barney carries a 9mm AND a sword on his back while Louise has traded her book for a chain saw.  Even the dog Scoo...er...Hamlet is dressed for battle with a computer harness and eyepiece.

A little closer:

I don't think it's much of Mystery just who the sculptor has Incorporated in these figures.

I'm really looking forward to painting these up.  Stay tuned!