Oceanic Flight 815 Playset

Today is the tenth anniversary of what remains, despite everything that has been said since the finale, my favorite TV show of all time. 

After 4 years I finally have finished my Flight 815 playset. If you followed the original blog posts you know I took a 1973 Barbie Friendship, one of the all-time greatest vinyl carrying case playsets and wrapped it in custom printed vinyl graphics. The big hang-up was seating, which I recently overcame when I picked up spare seats form 1990s Barbie planes. Overall I really love it. My only quibble is the overhead compartments are too high, which I might fix, but I like the extra headroom for placing figures. 

I think this is it for Lost Mego projects. I have loved sharing the work with my Lostie friends and I am glad to share my office with my Lost Mego displays. Namaste, brothers!

Down the Hatch: The Swan Station is finally finished!

12/5/11 UPDATE: Thanks to Badassdigest for getting the ball rolling on spreading this link around, io9 and ThinkGeek have likewise picked it up. It's been tremendous fun to have so many Lost fans take a look at my playset.

9/15/11: After a year and a half of design and redesign, illustrating over 16 square feet worth of artwork, extensively customizing Dida Displays parts and creating/sourcing numerous props I'm officially unveiling my custom-built Lost Mego Swan Station Playset. When packed up as a  carrying case it weighs 20 pounds, and when unfolded and assembled it measures 45x30 and 20 inches tall at the top of the backdrop.

I unveiled this at the Barracks party at San Diego Comic Con two months ago, but needed to put the finishing touches on it and properly document it to give you a true sense of what it's like. You can find a huge gallery of photographs with notes at Dida Displays and you can check out this video tour of it right here.

Can you have one? Mayyybe. Check the DidaDisplays website for more information. 

Full Gallery of Swan Station photos at DidaDisplays.com

 

 

Lost Home At Last! Wave 2 shipping NOW!

I've been so busy with other projects I haven't had a chance to report on my trip to San Diego Comic-Con. It was a blast, and it was a fitting way to wrap up the adventure of Wave 2 of Lost. I was in fact the very first person in line at the Entertainment Earth booth on Wednesday's Preview Night and the first buyer of Wave 2 of Lost. If that wasn't exciting enough I got to attend a party of hard-core Lost fans, including the 2 biggest supporters of Lost Megos, Bonnie "andalone" Craft and Rob Perrin.  I had been crunching to complete my Swan Station playset and was able to set it up at the condo where the party was held and show it off to some of the most enthusiastic Lost fans in the world. The reception was overwhelming. I will be doing a detailed guided tour through the playset in another post later and will do a final review of the figures themselves as well. Oh! And I handed Damon Lindelof a flyer for The Mego Museum and Lost Megos, I asked him if he was a Mego kid but alas he was not. 

Long story short--the figures look really good, they are more successful than the first Wave as I predicted they would be. In the meantime here are some pictures. 

Wave 2 is now shipping from Entertainment Earth! So if you didn't pre-order get an order in now, because they are limited to 1,000 pieces. Jack and Sayid, Miles and Claire, Sawyer and Juliet

Dharma Brick in the House

The long awaited Brick Mantooth doll from Plaidstallions.com has arrived. Brick comes dressed in smoking 70s duds, but he looks damn fine in a Dharma jumpsuit. Jack and Sawyer don't stand a chance, Kate's felt the bite of the Mantooth now. The first set is already sold out, but keep an eye on the MegoMuseum forums for the next batch to go on sale!

Swan Station Nearing Completion

2/3rds of the Swan Playset is built. Finally seeing it all assembled like this is really exciting! I think I've been planning this for a year and a half at least.

Much more to come! I'm crunching to take it to Comic-Con!

Older posts about the Swan Station

Swan Station Nearing Completion

2/3rds of the Swan Playset is built. Finally seeing it all assembled like this is really exciting! I think I've been planning this for a year and a half at least.

Much more to come! I'm crunching to take it to Comic-Con!

Older posts about the Swan Station

Swan Station Nearing Completion

2/3rds of the Swan Playset is built. Finally seeing it all assembled like this is really exciting! I think I've been planning this for a year and a half at least.

Much more to come! I'm crunching to take it to Comic-Con!

My Costume for Comic-Con

Well, actually, I'm not really a cosplay type of guy, but here's an outfit I will be taking with me!

 Comic Con is almost 3 weeks away now. I'm going to be meeting up with a group of Losties, including a few of my Lost Mego buddies.  Some of us have been preparing ahead of time to redress the new Wave 2 figure's we'll be picking up at Entertainment Earth's booth (Wahoo!) I wanted to have an island outfit for Jack Shephard most of all. So I commissioned this amazing set of jeans and t-shirt from Mego Seamstress Jessica. 

Now, I feel like I have gone a bit crazy with Jessica's clothes. But really, it's just been the Hurley's so far, and those were a must have. Certainly, there are a number of jeans and t-shirts available from CTVT (see photo below) and other sources that are perfectly acceptable for redressing Jack and Sawyer when the time comes. CTVT makes a white t-shirt that can be easily dyed to whatever color you like. 

But the detail on these jeans is amazing, and the fit is so much better and more lifelike. Look at the way they gather around the ankles! The pockets really work. I gave her some promo photos of Jack that look almost exactly like the finished product. I can't wait to get them on the star of the show! 

Man In Black

With the excitement of San Diego Comic-Con 2011 coming up in just a few weeks it's a good time to revisit one of last year's SDCC Exclusives, the Man in Black.  There were a few things I wanted to change about Jacob's dark brother. Primarily, I wanted him to be darker!  Both figures had a funky jaundiced skin tone, and for MIB as played by the well tanned Titus Welliver this needed to be tweaked.

Another issue for me was wanting to put MIB in removable sandals. Mego's Friar Tuck came with sandals and they've been extensively reproduced, I think CTVT, Dr Mego and Castaway all carry them. I didn't like the sandals molded to the figure's foot and painted. It's a logical enough choice for a toy manufacturer, but it's not Mego enough for me. Problem is, if I take his head and put him on a spare Dr. Mego body the difference in skin tones will be remarkable. So, off to the tanning salon with him.

When I tanned John Locke I tried it first with MIB. He got too dark. I touched up the contrast on his paint, and that helped, but then I dunked him in some RIT color remover and he lightened up enough to match the body nicely. 

Run Kate! Run like a Cheetah!

Yay! Got to do some customizing this weekend. I've been wanting to take a crack at fixing Kate from Lost for awhile. Long story short: She's hot....

The BifBangPow Kate was not my favorite. I've always thought the sculpt was there but the paint job was weird with mint green eyes, brown pupils and the regrettable freckles, and the hair was quite roughly modeled in comparison to the hair on the other Lost females. 

Rose

Okay, so this custom project is a decidedly mixed bag, but it was so interesting to try it and I'm glad to add her to my band of Lost castaways. 

The character is Rose Nadler, a survivor of Oceanic flight 815. She's a beloved figure in the story, a wise lady who was healed of her cancer when she came to the Island and who ended up spending the rest of her life there with her husband Bernard. 

It's a Tropical Island, Get Some Damned Sun!

One of the problems I've had with the BifBangPow Lost figures is the very light skin tone they chose to use. It seems to be a trend across the board with these ReMegos that they are all several shades lighter than their 70s forebearers, but the BBP figures are especially light. I asked about this in our Mego Museum interview with Jason Lenzi and he said it wasn't a conscious choice to make them lighter than old school Megos, this is what they went with. I think for some of the figures its fine. Ben Linus was always a pasty little creep, but John Locke was a fairly well tanned outdoorsman. The BBP head is very pale and a lot of the great facial detail doesn't show up at all. So this week I finally took some time to experiment with fixing it.

Introducing John Locke: Tanned and Ready for Action!