Cheap (toy) Dragon as a Warhammer/RPG miniature

[Aethelflaeda was framed]

Having been the victim of Chinese companies knocking off my own jewelry work (sterling mjollnirs made in Thailand by Chinese owned factories from digitized photos of my jewelry designs have appeared at festivals I attend) I have had to send out cease and desists to more than a few resellers, who usually acquiesce.  Chinese outright theft of IP is gotten to be pretty common, it’s not just overstocks.   3D printers and a photo of the work makes it too bloody easy. I now concentrate on one of a kinds just to avoid the rip offs.

When I discover a purchaser of one of the stolen designs, I offer to buy it  from the wearer by giving them half off on my rather more expensive original. They always do.

[Frugalmax]

@sir_shvanselot - Thanks!

@Daeothar - Dang. I always find it interesting to get a peek behind the curtain of business operations. Though I guess we can't know for certain if that's the case with this dragon, it seems a likely explanation for knock-off looking stuff showing up in dollar/pound/euro stores (and I have no experience with Temu and the like, but seems likely!). Thanks for sharing!

@Battle Brush Sigur - Thank you!

@Brian Smaller - Wow! That guy is a beast! Nice work!

@Aethelflaeda was framed- I'm sorry to hear that. I can imagine especially for an independent producer it's both infuriating and disheartening when you see your work ripped off. I checked out https://michaelhaymanjewelry.com/, though, very nice work!

[KGatch113]

My dollar stores barely stock toys anymore. And the locak Big Craft stores stopped carrying the dragons.

[Frugalmax]

@KGatch113 - That's too bad, though to be clear the toy dragons when gotten from the art supply stores or direct from Safari Ltd. aren't much cheaper than higher quality sculpts from Reaper or Wizkids or other miniatures manufacturers with lower-cost materials (I think Mantic has one too, maybe others as well), it's just if you can find them at a dollar store they are quite a deal.

[KGatch113]

@KGatch113 - That's too bad, though to be clear the toy dragons when gotten from the art supply stores or direct from Safari Ltd. aren't much cheaper than higher quality sculpts from Reaper or Wizkids or other miniatures manufacturers with lower-cost materials (I think Mantic has one too, maybe others as well), it's just if you can find them at a dollar store they are quite a deal.

Just an aside, and there is a thread somewhere in this board, you can find cheap larger scale plastic figures you can use as giants, which is worth doing. Shame the same is not true for dragons!

[Elbows]

Yeah, you may be talking about the 54mm(?) sized Tehnolog orcs from Russia, etc.

My first dragon for my dungeon crawl was from...hero scape?  Basically an older game, and I picked it up for around $8.  Rescuing or repurposing stuff is always great.

[Frugalmax]

@KGatch113 and @Elbows- Thanks!

Yeah, I have seen pics of the Tehnolog 54mm orcs that look like they'd make great 28mm ogres or giant orcs (or well-equipped trolls depending upon your particular fantasy world), and there's a company out of Ukraine called that does Alliance and Dark Alliance miniatures, which are mostly 1:72 scale, but the larger monsters like trolls and minotaurs might scale up to 28mm creatures. I haven't gotten any of those myself, and it appears that they are of the more bendy/pvc-esque plastic, but the prices are certainly affordable.

I also love repurposing stuff! The Heroscape dragon you mention looks like a great candidate. I never got any of those minis; at the time I was a bit more of a purist in what I bought. Funny that back in the early 00's or so when Rackham made the decision to go to pre-painted plastics, I was very much against it- I loved their metal minis, and to me the prepainted plastics looked like cheap toys. But now I'm of the opinion that those miniatures would probably have been pretty easy to repaint and replace the bendy bits and stuff. That said I'm not sure how well their quality transitioned across the different materials, so maybe the detail was pretty poor. Oh well, neither here nor there. There's already more to paint than I have time for!

[SgtSlag]

New to the forum, but I've been collecting/gaming with fantasy miniatures since 1992.  The topic of converting inexpensive toy dragon figures for use in my 2e AD&D RPG games, along with my 2e BattleSystem games, is a topic near and dear to my heart.

Here are some of my toy dragon conversions for my AD&D/BattleSystem games:

Safari Swamp Dragon (horrid factory paint!...) to a Copper Dragon.

Safari Freedom Dragon (lame factory color scheme, IMO) to a Bronze Dragon.

Safari Golden Dragon to a Brass Dragon.

I also converted two Halloween Skeletal Dragon decorations to two different Draco-Liches:

#1 Original, and the finished conversion;

#2 original, and here it is finished.

Just for fun, here is a Safari Green Dragon, which came perfect (IMO) from the factory.  He has some uninvited guests to his cavern lair...

My interest in converting such toy dragon figures for use in my FRPG and 2e BS games, is that these toys typically sell for <$25 each, whereas a legitimate miniature company dragon figure will typically sell for >$35!  I look at the toy dragon sculpts, to see if I can re-paint them to suit my needs.  Quite often, their sculpts are superb...

I freely warn you that I am an Army Painter:  block colors, The Dip Technique (brushed on, not dunked) using Minwax dark brown colors (not black), followed by matte clear coats.  I paint for my tabletop, not competitions.  You have been warned...  Cheers!

[Frugalmax]

@SgtSlag- Nice dragons!

I think I probably started around the same time- we had been making model planes, which lead to making dioramas, which led to picking up some fantasy miniatures, which led to Warhammer, and then it was all over.

The dragons in the video (first post of this thread) appear to be Safari dragons as well, but they were in a dollar store bag at about $2.50 each- the dollar store toy shelf occasionally yields treasure!

[SgtSlag]

To be honest, I was shocked by your video -- I've never seen full-sized Safari (or other quality toy dragon maker) models in the Dollar Stores.  That is too goof of a deal to pass up!  Cheers!

[mikedemana]

I'm loving me some Frugalmax the dragon videos...   

The episode where the head popped off the figure had me crying laughing... 

Keep it up, I'm enjoying them!!

Mike Demana

[Frugalmax]

@SgtSlag- thanks!

@mikedemana- Glad you like them, thanks! Been a bit busy lately but I hopefully will have another video done in the next week or so (so far regularity has not been our strong suit, but one can't be too demanding with dragons, I guess).

[Neldoreth]

I love the idea of using toy dragons, and I really enjoyed the video, haha. Love the dragon jokes for sure, super good! Kinda like a miniature-themed flash back to my childhood Mr. Dressup watching days... Good stuff!

[Frugalmax]

Thanks, Neldoreth! Glad you enjoy the videos! More to come (I hope... my worker trolls seem to be shirking their duties... I must regulate this situation)!