“A Bit of a Dick”

Well as stated last week I have now hung up my tools and paint brushes till the New Year, but does this mean you can get away from me, does it “heck as like”. Over the last few months I have had a couple of people asking to see some pictures of the miniatures I used to sell through “Wargames Supply Dump” the company I started and ran between 2004 and 2017, I can do this now as there is of course no commercial interest (you can’t buy these figures anymore, so if you missed the boat, where were you!). So anyway there isn’t room here to post pictures of all the figures so what I plan on doing is giving you a flavor of some of our ranges over the next few weeks, starting with our most popular range….Dick Garrison, Galactic Hero.

The main reason I started WSD was because I wanted a 30’s Sci/fi pulp range of figures and at the time there wasn’t any available so I thought I’d create my own, and I was lucky enough to gain the services of one of the great sculptors to do most of them for me in the shape of the inimitable “Bob Olley”, our original release consisted of seven figures, Dick Garrison, Felicity Goodbody, Khang (the compassionless), Prince Borain, Kassiopia (Khangs daughter), a Khang trooper and a Space Navy trooper. Here is Dick and Khang, both beautifully sculpted from my awful drawings and descriptions, I wanted Dick to have a look of the actor “Dirk Bogart” and I think Bob captured that admirably. Next we have Kassiopia the architype beautiful but ice cold imperial princes, again my pictures were dreadful so all the credit here really has to go to Bob, he was a joy to work with and a really funny chap too, the couple of phone conversations I had with him were a joy, though most of our work was done over the net.

Prince Volstratos next, bet you can’t guess who he was based on? I actually sent Bob pictures of my brother in-law as a base to work from, though in truth he does have a passing resemblance to a rather famous “shouty” actor. I’ll also include one of the two variations of “Khang” Robots in this section, they came with either legs of tracked lower sections (like the robot from lost in space), but the legged version was always the more popular though.

Bob wasn’t the only sculptor to work on the “Dick Garrison” line though, I was also put in touch with an American sculptor, Brad Shier, and he produced the “Retrovians” and “Aquillians”, the Retrovians were based on an old favorite comic strip of mine from “The Eagle” though their leader preferred a robotic tripod over a floating disc, He was described to Brad by me as a cross between the “Mekkon” and “Davros” I think he hit the nail pretty much square on (this image was painted by Brad as well). I painted up two different versions of this race, the “official” (I hate that term, paint them however you bloody want!), colour scheme  with turquoise and gold uniforms and what I like to call my “Earth Invasion” scheme, with the blue faces. The Aquillian’s were our under water race, I imagined them having water filled spacecraft, but that never came to fruition. Brad had the odd figure he’d sculpted without being commissioned and one of these was a Demon he’d done for a competition that he then modified into the “Garkkon Monster” after I offered to buy it. This figure was sold with a separate “Anchor” and we were often asked why? Truth is that’s just how brad had sculpted him originally and he sent it along with the finished green, so waste not want not, and that was cast up too.

The Garkkon wasn’t the only figure to be added from someone else’s existing range. The Valkyrie space pirates were originally Bob’s “Girls with guns”, but when he decided to sell the range off I thought they were a perfect fit with the rest of the “Dick” line, he later cheekily E-mailed me to say that he’d done some conversions of the original figures and would I be interested in them too? Of course I was so they were expanded upon.

There was one other sculptor (and I use the term loosely), to work on the “Dick” line, that being me, as I thought I’d have a go and so created the “Dragon Grub”, a rather nasty tunneling creature, that was a pretty simple design (basically a worm!) that I sculpted emerging from the earth. So there you have it the range that really got the ball rolling as far as WSD was concerned.

Next week I will be turning our attention to another of the WSD ranges the rather apt for this time of year…”Santa Claus Wars” range.

But till then, stay safe.

Cheers Roger.