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Okay, so this one is a 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. An action figure never would have been made of her unless the Lost line had gone 6 waves or so. She wasn't high on my list, but I kept looking at this Ethel Mertz figure from CTVT's I Love Lucy. I won a set of these at Mego Meet one year. After I got into dying the vinyl heads to warm up their skin tone I wondered how far could you go with that and how horrible might the results be? There were enough facial similarities between Ethel and Rose it just might work.
So yep, I dyed the heck out of the head. About 5 minutes or so in a hot solution of Rit Tan dye and the skin tone just about matched the Star Trek Uhura EMCE figure I'd use for a body.
Obviously it's a bit like blackface at this point, but...
Some paint on the lips and eyeshadow and it looks pretty good.
I cut the top of her head off and removed the rooted hair and then added a Magic Sculpt hair piece. The other Lost females are a combination of vinyl face and hard plastic hair. So if it works she'll fit right in.
I ditched the padded Ethel top but kept the padded pink pants and added a pink shirt and white slippers from CTVT.
So, obviously, she's smiling wayyyyy too much. The facial expression is all wrong for the character, but I'll take it. I like that she's got a vinyl head and I don't think I'd sculpt this figure otherwise. If I had it to do again I'd try to shrink the head down a touch, but I haven't tried that process yet. No idea if after shrinking it in acetone it would still take dye. Will experiment. I'm going to try the same thing with a Katy Segal head from Married with Children but will try to shrink it a bit first.
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. An action figure never would have been made of her unless the Lost line had gone 6 waves or so. She wasn't high on my list, but I kept looking at this Ethel Mertz figure from CTVT's I Love Lucy. I won a set of these at Mego Meet one year. After I got into dying the vinyl heads to warm up their skin tone I wondered how far could you go with that and how horrible might the results be? There were enough facial similarities between Ethel and Rose it just might work.
So yep, I dyed the heck out of the head. About 5 minutes or so in a hot solution of Rit Tan dye and the skin tone just about matched the Star Trek Uhura EMCE figure I'd use for a body.
Obviously it's a bit like blackface at this point, but...
Some paint on the lips and eyeshadow and it looks pretty good.
I cut the top of her head off and removed the rooted hair and then added a Magic Sculpt hair piece. The other Lost females are a combination of vinyl face and hard plastic hair. So if it works she'll fit right in.
I ditched the padded Ethel top but kept the padded pink pants and added a pink shirt and white slippers from CTVT.
So, obviously, she's smiling wayyyyy too much. The facial expression is all wrong for the character, but I'll take it. I like that she's got a vinyl head and I don't think I'd sculpt this figure otherwise. If I had it to do again I'd try to shrink the head down a touch, but I haven't tried that process yet. No idea if after shrinking it in acetone it would still take dye. Will experiment. I'm going to try the same thing with a Katy Segal head from Married with Children but will try to shrink it a bit first.
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