Interesting e-bay items

[flayrah]

http://cgi.ebay.com/Ultimate-Soldier-XD ... 3cb81f7d3b

http://cgi.ebay.com/Ultimate-Soldier-XD ... 3cb81f7d3b

[aferguson]

http://cgi.ebay.com/Ultimate-Soldier-XD ... 3cb81f7e76

this is the other, you have the same one twice.

Very interesting indeed. They look exactly like the 4 inchers. I wonder if these were really intended for sale or were larger size mock ups. I believe that used to be done for action figures, to make oversize prototypes from which to make the tooling.

Neat find.

[Jesse James]

Yes, it's a pretty common thing... It helps get the detailing down better, but then when scaled down they tend to lose some of the detailing. I'm not sure how prolific it is in modern toy lines but Kenners Star Wars line had a ton... I used to own a couple, and I've seen tons more. They were easily faked too and so a lot of people got had on the fake ones, especially lately.

Now here's the weird thing though.

A) Why does it have a tray? I've never seen one of the upsized protos that was done, completely painted, and put into even an oversized mock-up of packaging.

B) As noted above, it's painted... Again, not something you saw often. Paint masters were usually done on the actual scale the toy was going to be in.

It's kind of weird... It is also not impossible to upscale something when casting (not that this is what he did, I'm just saying it's not impossible). I haven't seen an upsized prototype all done to its final "look", just oversized. Every company seems to prototype a little differently though.

What the seller's referring to about mis-labeling prototypes, is that a lot of things called "prototypes" are actually test-shots taken from factories since they're often discarded to be destroyed... The molds are tooled and everything, they just inject the mold with whatever plastic's handy to test it. Thus you'll sometimes see a figure or vehicle or something in a really funky color, but ultimately it's the final test of the molds before production begins.

There's different levels of prototypes too... for instance, Hasbro SW figures are often sculpted in their current scale, cast in resin, hand-painted... these are often what you see at events like Toy Fair. Then there's ground-up wax-sculpts of the figures prior to this resin casting process... Then there's packaging mock-ups, etc., etc. And like I said, it varies by company too.

[[CAT]CplSlade]

The molds are tooled and everything, they just inject the mold with whatever plastic's handy to test it. Thus you'll sometimes see a figure or vehicle or something in a really funky color, but ultimately it's the final test of the molds before production begins.

You find a bit of that if you collect Pez dispensers; occasionally someone sneaks some test runs into the secondary market that otherwise should have been destroyed. I myself prefer getting a miscolored piece resulting from an assembly line mishap that makes it into the final packaging than a piece that was purposely miscolored for test purposes.