I just re-discovered one of my customs, that i'd nearly forgotten, sitting way at the back of one of my shelves. It's an xd german that actually throws a stick grenade.
I made if from an episode 1 Qui jon or obi wan, i can't remember which now but it had a light saber slashing action feature that when you squeezed its legs it slashed it's right arm. Some of you will remember this figure, no doubt. Anyway, i cocked the arm back further, so it was behind his back in a throwing position and discovered it was capable of acting like a little catapult and hurling small objects. Hm.
So next, i took the hand off of a bespin luke, which had a magnet in it. I think it was for some force attraction effect with a metal light saber. I grafted on this hand to the throwing figure and then cut a piece of appropriately thick metal wire about 3/4 of an inch long, painted it brown and glued the head of an xd stick grenade to it. So now i had a stick grenade that would rest in the magnetic hand, without falling out but was only loosely held. I squeezed the legs and the figure tossed the grenade!
Next....how do i make obi wan look like a german soldier? I grafted on an xd head, painted the legs field grey and the boots black. For the torso, i cut off as much of the vest thingy that obi wan wears and painted it field grey, then put a dragon zeltbahn over top, to cover up the torso of the figure, so you couldn't tell he wasn't wearing a german uniform. The zeltbahn being made of cloth moved with the action of the figure and didn't interfere with the throwing movement.
Arms were painted field grey, i put some foilage on his helmet, hung a couple of extra stick grenades around his neck, an mp44 over his shoulder and he looked like a proper german.
As i said i just rediscovered him and took him out to play with......i didn't know if it would even work after all these years. But he does! He throws his little stick grenade 3-4 feet, including a few inches of skidding along the floor. There's the odd misfire but he's pretty reliable and i can hit a 10 inch circumference target about 3 feet away. Pretty fun.
I set up a couple of xd american troops behind a sand bag implacement, snuck my german up behind them and chucked the grenade. Got it in the implacement first try. Then 'popped' a small balloon i had set up right behind the implacement. The blast from the balloon was satisfyingly loud and actually was strong enought to knock over the kneeling american figures. Haha.
Anyway, it was fun to rediscover something i had made so long ago...
