'Toy Story' from DallasE: Indigenous Warrior, 1876

The main project I intended to tackle in this Challenge was the Little Bighorn. This year marks the sesquicentennial of the battle, the most famous victory of the coalition of Indigenous peoples over the US Army. It's also my 55th birthday this year and if all goes to plan I will celebrate by hosting a wargame of the battle. But first I have to paint the models!

I have a large collection of (so far) unpainted models from Foundry that will form the forces in the battle. I just love these figures as they are so well-done and characterful. This is "Goes Through the Camp" from the Dog Soldiers pack.

He was really fun to paint and went up in an evening. The secret sauce to the skin tone is GW Ratskin Flesh over a Doombull Brown base. I'd intended to paint 10 or so Seventh Cavalry on foot to accompany him but decided to just get him done and submitted before the Toy Story deadline.

And speaking of the Toy Story theme... I can never think of the Plains Wars without thinking about Marx, the company that pretty much invented the "toy soldier playset." Marx was in business from 1919 to 1980 but the toys I always think of were these playsets, marketed in the 1950s and 1960s and based on historical themes and TV shows (!). They were crammed with stuff and usually sold for less than $7USD. While Marx is long out of business the molds survived and newly made figures are still sold.

Anyway that's one 28mm infantry model for 5 points, plus 50 for the theme. More Plains Wars stuff coming soon, I promise!

Dallas

'Toy Story' from Barks: Run and bare it

I was able to examine the archives for pics of your humble servant as a child with toys, and I found a few of me with bears. Also bare. Which was the perfect excuse to paint this bear from Great Escape Games, and this child from Gripping Beast.

A child, running, pursued by a zombie bear.

It's all downhill from here, Baby Barks.

Decades later, I traumatised myself by watching Game of Thrones S7E6 'Beyond the Wall' (2017), and also that scene from Annihilation (2018). I tried some UHU on the mouth and then Army Painter Glistening Blood. 

Two figures, shall we say 10 points?

+50 for Childhood trauma/ Toy Story theme

'Toy Story' from BillA: Harness the Power of Dinosaurs!

  When the theme rounds were announced, "Toy Story" made me think of one thing - Dinosaurs! I was absolutely a dinosaur kid (still am, to a large degree), and why not? Jurassic Park hit theaters when I was 6 years old, and while it was a few years before my parents would let me watch it, I had all the toys that were released with the film. My dad, who was resuming scale modeling himself after a gap of about 15 years, also picked me up the Lindberg model kits that were released for the film, and building model kits was what eventually led me to painting miniatures. 

But before Jurassic Park, there was another dinosaur toy line that captured my imagination. Released in 1988, Tyco's Dino-Riders had a short-lived tie-in cartoon series and a comic book series released by Marvel Comics. In the toys' lore, the heroic humanoid Valorans and the evil, half-humanoid, half-animal Rulons were battling in the distant future; a ship of Valorans tried to escape the Rulon invasion of their homeworld using the Space-Time Energy Projector to travel through time. Unfortunately, they dragged a Rulon battleship with them, and the S.T.E.P. device malfunctioned, hurling both spaceships back to the Age of the Dinosaurs. 

Here, the Valorans used their psychic powers to befriend the dinosaurs they met, while the Rulons used mind-control to enslave them. Thus, both forces continued their battle, aided by the power of dinosaurs!

I took a look through galleries of the classic toys, dredging up 35-year old memories of which toys I had - and which ones would be interesting to paint up! Frankly, a lot of them were extremely dark olive drab - the T. rex was such a dark green it was almost black! Fortunately, one that I remembered owning did have an attractive splash of color to it. Say hello to "Monoclonius."

This is a Centrosaurus from Acheson Creations; it comes in two pieces, with a resin body and metal-cast head. It has an integral "rock" base that all four feet are touching, despite the galloping pose; I've glued it to a 50x75mm 3D printed base, which has been further gussied up with flock and some plastic "school diorama" plants I got a couple big bags of off Amazon a few months back. 

But wait, I hear you say. Centrosaurus? Didn't I just say Monoclonius? Bear with me, I'll come back to that.

Monoclonius was part of the first series of Dino-Rider toys released in 1988; part of the Rulon faction, it came packaged with the Rulon Sharkman "Mako" and had a simple action feature; the head and tail were linked and moving one back and forth moved the other with it. 

Unlike the dark olives and muddy browns of much of the line, Monoclonius had a dark green body, fading to a lighter shade on the legs, and a splash of bright turquoise on the face. While I wasn't up to the challenge of scratch-building Mako and his weapons platform, I could absolutely copy this color scheme.

So, to address the relationship between Centrosaurus and Monoclonius - they're most likely the same animal. The name "Monoclonius" was assigned to extremely fragmentary remains in the 1870s, possibly remains from multiple different species jumbled together. Some "Monoclonius" remains are probably Styracosaurus, others might be Einiosaurus, but the most likely candidate is Centrosaurus; all three are medium-sized relatives of the more famous Triceratops, lacking the long brow horns but having other ornamentation and long straight- or forward-curved nose horns. So while Centrosaurus was technically named *after* "Monoclonius," and normally the first name would be the one given precedence, because the fragments of "Monoclonius" are so small, and so "we can't really differentiate this from other animals," that Centrosaurus is the name given priority.

Up until the late 1990s, there were still scientists arguing for Monoclonius to exist alongside Centrosaurus as separate animals, but as of 2025 the consensus seems to be that it just isn't it's own species. And this happens sometimes with paleontology. So while Monoclonius might no longer exist as a valid animal, it remains a valid part of my childhood toy box.

Overall, I think I did a pretty good job capturing the spirit of the toy's color scheme, while also bringing out the detail on the nose horn and the bony knobs framing the frill, which the toy didn't have colored. While I did not make the rider or his platform, I hope I can still ask that this be scored as a 28mm vehicle. I also claim a squirrel point for Dinosaurs. 

'Toy Story' from DavidB - Star Wars

 StarWars-Bohemian Rhapsody

I still remember when Star Wars was first released. I was just starting American Football practice and the internet and viral was school gossip and actual sickness. Summers were spent outdoors with swimming and movies being an escape from the heat and as a 9 year old boy in the summer of 1977, Star Wars left an impression.

I still love that galaxy from far away and a long time ago. I have no idea how many times I have seen the movie now. Luke, Han, and Leia with all the plot armor then future Christmas and birthdays where Star Wars toys topped my list. I never did get all the toys I wanted from that movie. I have a nice collection of action figures, but never did keep them locked away and my children were able to have adventures with them as they grew old enough to understand to be careful with them. Now they are back on the shelf or in boxes waiting for grandchildren to have new adventures with them.

I used to collect anything Star Wars related until I seen an article on a collector that has spent over 300,000 USD for Chewbacca only collectables....Since Vader inspired more fear and awe in a young boy, Darth Vader and Stormtroopers are where I decided I would focus. Honestly the best part of Rogue One was seeing just how terrifying Vader could be, and his Storm troopers were relentless.

I was very excited for Star Wars Legion as I could amass a force of Stormtroopers that would be very envious of my 9 year old self. I have purposefully avoided the clone wars as that would be too much and with 3rd party and official releases I can have that massive force of action figures I never did get as a child and now use dice to game with them

Annnnnnnnd boy is painting storm troopers very rough!

besides the shore troopers, the scouts are my favorite...and very ironic as I became a scout as an adult.

They were primed white then hit with apothecary white with Army painter white triad to tidy them up. I used black, blueblack and grey on the black undersuits.

I still want a real jetbike and as an adult I am horribly disappointed that we do not have them yet

However, since like the fellow aiming behind and as Return of the Jedi shown, traffic accidents and tree fires would rise!

Hopefully they will do better than the movie counterparts on the table.

The true pain of this post...16 stormtroopers is a lot of same same.

One Squad was primed black and the other primed white

They are hard to pick out except the black wash on the apothecary white made wider grins and the layers of white and grey paint was exhausting on the black primed models. they also seem to be a tad yellow, but not as yellow as the limbs on those old action figures. They just seem off white when compared to the squad that had apothecary white and the white triad paint.

Unless you look very close, they are hard to determine which is which, but the apothecary white over white primer was way faster as that squad only took a day. 

the errant scout joins an officer and heavy weapon specialist from the stormtrooper expansion.

I had to add color to the backpacks to keep my sanity.

 So I have twenty-three new troops and 2 biker scouts to add to Vader's 501 They will join the other two squads of stormtroopers and the two squads of shoretroopers. I have completed them just in time to determine if I will get the new addition and new sculpts of stormtroopers...but this time I will start with white primer...It is cheaper than buying more star wars collectables and more action figures, but I am still looking for the Ralph McQuarrie Samurai inspired stormtroopers and Vader.... If you can find it, besides the x-wing books there is one called the Band of the Hand in which some Stormtroopers quit the Empire to purge it of corrupt Empire officials, they encountered Mara Jade who was a little miffed about their name as she was the Emperor's Hand.Hopefully the new Star Wars boss will look at the good books for new scripts!

23 troopers for 115 points

2 bikers for 20

then 50 for the theme round -May the Force be with You

'Toy Story' from GeoffT: Teddy & Friends

Hello Challengers,

These miniatures are Folk Horrors by Gardens of Hecate.  They are amazing miniatures, but I found them super hard to paint, I tried to copy the sculptors paint methods of lots of highlights and washes and highly contrasting browns.  I probably learned a bit, but did not produce a shadow of the original inspiration.

One of the minis looks like an angry teddy bear, probably one of those expensive ones by Steiff.  Angry because his bow tie is missing.  Thus the Toy Story theme claim.

There are 26 miniatures varying in size from about 12mm to 54mm.  They are nominally 28mm scale and based onto on 24 bases, and the weeny ones are triple based.  So I think I’ll call them 24 x 28mm foot if nobody objects.  Plus an additional 50 points for the dear teddy bear brings the total up to 170 points.

Kind Regards

Geoff.

'Toy Story' from Iain W - 28mm Napoleonic French 2nd battalion Grenadiers a pied

For the Toy theme I have to go back to one of my earliest memories, I was about three years old and my mum was pulling my fingernails off one by one while telling me each time" this isn't going to hurt" followed by her yanking off each fingernail! This wasn't an example of sadism but a rather an aspect of a skin disease which meant if you stuck a plaster on my skin, when you took it off it ripped off a layer of skin, this resulted in me losing most of the skin off my hands and my nails catching on virtualy everthing , causing me pain as the nerves still worked! So it was for the best but I guess  I've probably got trust issues? What it did mean was I couldnt play with anything hard, like say Lego or blocks or the like, but I pinched a melamine covered board and on that I was able to make things out of plastecine, a modeling clay that I found quite soothing. I built volcanoes and black and white aliens , it was at this point I aquired a book that I realise now must have been my dads but from that day was mine and which I still have, a 1960s coffee table book on uniforms from the French revolution up until the start of WW1 in  mostly original prints. 

The book gave me a myriad of subjects to make , I copied uhlans, Sardinians and all sorts of weird and wonderful soldiers, it's the book that got me hooked on making soldiers from a very early age, before I could read I was trying to make a czapka! In addition to the original prints there were photos, all in colour , of French  soldiers of the first empire, which I found fascinating, I wanted to know who and what everyone in all the pictures were, I now do but it's taken a fair amount of time! The first page was a painting by baron Lejune, a Napoleonic French officer and painter , the painting of Borodino has a wealth of detail!

 There was one print that made a particular impact, a grumpy looking chap with a blue coat and fur hat, a grenadier of the Imperial Guard as I now know, so I present in 28mm the second battalion of the grenadiers of the Imperial Guard of the first empire of France.

Lovely Perry metal figures, this unit completes my Imperial Guard for now, all units in metal and in this one case full price as I'm such a cheapskate! Excellent flag by GMB.

24 x 5 is 120 plus 50 theme points make 170 

All the best 

Iain