Hi Everyone,
So I got suckered into buying the Marshmallow Mess Ray Stantz since I was late to the **Matty Collector **GB party and never got my hands on a clean Ray who is now hard to find and of course ridiculously expensive. Also, since I like to build and paint models from time to time, I figured I could maybe try and improve him if he didn’t look better in person. Of course when I got him he actually looked worse! So I decided to get to work on him.
My first thought was to get modeling sand paper and simply tone down the white paint in hopes of blending it into his suit. This kinda worked but since I didn’t want to use course sandpaper it took over an hour just to sand down the paint on one leg. Then I decided to try to thin the paint down chemically with some ideas I got off the internet. First was Windex. It did absolutely nothing. Then I tried actual paint thinner in hopes it would liquefy the paint so I could take a brush and detail it better. Unfortunately it didn’t have any effect on the white paint either. Then when I was putting the paint thinner away in my garage, I spotted my little bottle of “Goof Off”. At this point I decided to throw caution to the wind and just go for it. If it ruined the plastic then oh well, I couldn’t live with him as he was anyway. So I applied the Goof off to a Q-Tip, started to massage it into the white paint and **WHALLA! **Not only did it take the paint off after just a few moments, it also liquefied it causing it to smear around for a more realistic, film accurate look (IMO). I really like the look that rubbing the Q-Tip over the wrinkles in the suit provided. By rubbing over the wrinkles it removed the white paint from the highest point of the wrinkle while smearing and distributing paint in the crevices of the wrinkles. It was so fun and so easy to do this that I just had to share this with everyone who found this figure disappointing and who may want to take a crack at improving him. So if you like what you see below then applying “Goof Off” may be the solution you’re looking for! It really was easy and only took about an hour or so!
To help the Goggles look bigger I simply cut out some dark green construction paper and placed it behind the Goggles. Not a perfect fix but better than nothing I think. I may still want to get some flat black acrylic paint and try to fix certain parts of his boots. Also I might repaint his elbow pads. What sucks is they globbed on so much white paint over the elbow pads that in order to get it off you end up taking off some of the elbow pads dark grey paint. I also wish I could have removed the paint over his name patch but there is no way I’m going to tackle repainting “STANTZ” on his chest if I “goof” it up ;]
I do apologize for the low quality photos. I lost my good digital camera and am now stuck using a crappy one. I did my best.
If you have any suggestions on how you think he might be improved please let me know!
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