Hydra Miniatures Retro Raygun Galacteers
by Brian Rempel
Hydra Miniatures were kind enough to send the first two Galacteers miniatures from their Retro-Raygun series of 30 mm Pulp Sci-Fi miniatures, Rocky Rizzo and Ace McGuire, for review. Both miniatures came in individually packed and clearly labeled plastic baggies.
Rocky Rizzo
Rocky Rizzo is one of the two initially released figures for this line and retails from the Hydra Miniatures Online Store for $4 US. He comes as a two-piece metal casting with a thin integral base, and is sculpted by Matt Beauchamp. The body includes both arms and a raygun rifle cradled in his hands, with a separate jetpack that can be attached through a knob and socket onto his back. The figure I received was almost completely free of flash, the tiny bits that were present could be removed with my fingernails alone. The mould lines were incredibly faint, and disappeared with a slight brushing of a file. Mould lines were generally in very easy to access areas, such as the side of the thighs, which was also a large open space making the smoothing process easy.
Click to enlarge
The assembly of the figure was trivial, since the only part to be assembled was the addition of the jetpack onto his back. This was accomplished with a small dab of superglue onto the peg on the jetpack, which fit perfectly into the moulded hole on the back of the figure. The jetpack was well formed and fit the contours of the back almost perfectly, with only the very tiniest of gaps between the jetpack and the uniform. Since this is a place where a gap would occur in real life, this miniscule gap is in no way a flaw and does not require filling with greenstuff.
My initial impression of the miniature, other than being impressed with the very clean casting, was that the proportions seemed much more realistic than some other miniatures. Stylistically, Rocky Rizzo doesn’t appear to have oversized hands or head. This realistic sculpting style may appeal to some, and it may not be of interest to others, particularly those who have existing miniatures that are more stylized. The arms cradling the raygun, a rifle, are cast onto the figure already. What this means is that assembly is a snap, as there is no difficulty in getting the hands and rifle and arm sockets all lined up simultaneously. I have personally found in the past that assembling this cradling pose from two separate arms and a torso can occasionally be a frustrating task. As a result, the fact that these are already cast on is a benefit in my eyes.
The pose of the figure is relatively static, it appears that the figure is surveying something ahead and/or waiting for its approach (hopefully before blasting it). The face also seems to contribute to this impression, as the expression seems almost disdainful of whatever Rocky Rizzo may be looking at. The rest of his head is covered with a helmet so that only the face is visible. The helmet has a slight crest on the top, and two bumps roughly where the figure’s ears would be. His body is covered in a spandex-style costume, with corrugated tubing joints around the elbows and knees. The jetpack is reasonably small, and has two prominent cylinders as the rockets of the engine, with sculpted on ridges across the whole pack. A tribute to the casting quality is that both jets on the jetpack have not been filled in during the casting process, and have deep indents (by design) that will only be visible when the figure is picked up and viewed from underneath.
Overall the figure is full of character, and does an excellent job of capturing the feel of the desired genre. As soon as it was assembled, I was mentally constructing a personality for Rocky Rizzo as a grizzled veteran ready to gun down aliens at the slightest provocation, jaded by years of traveling the star-ways. It is a tribute to the quality of both the casting and the sculpting that I could almost immediately begin assigning attributes to the model. The costume itself just seems to be screaming out to be painted in garishly bright colours.
Ace McGuire
Ace McGuire is the other of the two initially offered Galacteers in the Retro Raygun Pulp Sci-Fi series and was sculpted by Scott Francek. He retails from the Hydra Miniatures Online store for $4.75 US. The slightly increased price likely reflects the fact that this is a five piece model, with the right arm and body being cast as the largest piece, a jetpack to be attached to the back and the choice of three different left arms holding a helmet, a pistol and a sword. The body itself has the right hand holding a pistol-style raygun, and also has a socket on his back for the knob from the jetpack to be inserted into.
Click to enlarge
The copy of Ace McGuire sent for review had slightly more flash on it than the Rocky Rizzo figure, although the amount of flash was still very minimal. The largest parts could be simply twirled off with fingers, and one or two smaller parts that were more firmly attached to the alternate left arms had to be snipped off with hobby snips. The mould lines were also slightly more prominent on this figure, although they were again very easy to reach with a file and generally in more open spaces, which made the smoothing process with a file quite easy. Overall, the casting of the figure is still among the better casts this reviewer has seen. The choice of left arms for Ace McGuire meant that there were three pieces that had to be glued together to complete the figure. A small dab of superglue fixed the jetpack firmly onto the figure’s back, and I chose to use the left hand cradling the helmet next to the figure’s hip. This was also firmly fixed into place with a small dab of superglue, meaning the assembly of the figure was both very quick and incredibly easy.
My initial impression of this figure was very positive. The choice of left hands allows for some customization of the figure to fit the modeler’s desired vision. The proportions are again sculpted in a more realistic style, with head and hands that scale to the rest of body in a more human ratio.
Ace McGuire’s pose is more dynamic than Rocky Rizzo, he appears to be slightly leaning or lunging to one side with his right hand pistol pointed upwards and ready to swing towards any threat. With my choice of the helmeted hand for his left arm, he seemed to me to be about to swing his helmet into place and blast off with his jetpack away from danger. I can alternatively see the pistol wielding left hand being used to make a gun-slinging hero ready for action, or the sword carrying hand giving a hero ready to wade into the thick of battle. The simple choice of left hand accessory can go a long way towards setting out the background story of the character. The face has the chiseled good looks one would expect from a Pulp hero, although the nose seemed to me to be a tiny bit larger than I would have expected. The head is uncovered with short curly hair. The rest of the body is covered in the spandex style costume with corrugated tubing joints around the elbows and knees. The musculature on Ace McGuire is slightly more defined than on Rocky Rizzo.
Overall, I was very impressed with this figure. I could easily mentally picture Ace McGuire getting into many tight situations, and either battling his way out or flying away over the heads of his enemies with his jetpack. The choice of left hand lets the modeler choose exactly how they wish their hero to look. Because of the more defined musculature and the facial expression, I pictured Ace McGuire as being a younger, more reckless kind of hero liable to rush into situations and use his gun or good looks to make a narrow escape. The figure is again very full of character and very emotive of Pulp Sci-Fi.
Overall Impressions
These were both superb figures that did an excellent job of capturing the rayguns and green aliens feeling. Both of these would be excellent character figures for any sort of role-playing or smaller scale Pulp Sci-Fi game, although there is also no reason that they couldn’t be used in a larger, more mass-battle style game either. Because of the scultpors’ stylistic choices to make them suit the Pulp Sci-Fi genre, these figures may not be applicable to a more Hard Sci-Fi setting. Since this is obviously not the target audience for these figures, I don’t see this as a negative feature whatsoever.
I really struggle to find anything about these figures that I don’t like. The price seems quite reasonable for a single figure science fiction hero, and a buyer is unlikely to ever need more than one of them. They sculpting is clean and smooth, as is the casting. The figures felt like a back story was leaping out of them already, which suggests that, at least for this reviewer, they have perfectly captured the period feel of pulpy science fiction.
Pros
- Realistic proportions to figures
- Exceptionally clean castings
- Extremely characterful figures very evocative of desired genre
- Will be easy figures to quickly paint to a high standard
Cons
- Only suitable for a very specific genre
- Realistic proportions to figures may not fit as well with other, more stylized sculpts