Getting Playmobilized, Part 4- Custom Figures!

I've already altered designs in my previous posts, but here's where I make them up from whole cloth!

[Please read part 1 , part 2, and part 3 of this series if you haven't already.]

Friendly Witch

This was made out of the pieces of my first copy of the Series 6 evil sorceress after I wanted to put some use to the Series 10 Witch's hat (I dismantled the original figure). I decided I could make a classic vintage-esque friendly green witch with the Sorceress' classic face option, hair from Princess Leonora, the hat, a belt, and a scarf and accessories. She looks very sweet and very classic-Playmobil and perfect for Halloween or fairy tales.

Circe

This was done to repurpose the Series 7 purple fairy figure. I always loved her leaf-printed dress and thought it looked very classical, so I decided to turn her into the Greek witch Circe with a leaf-adorned long braid, and a golden bottle, bowl, and amphora.

I don't think I would have depicted Circe as a blonde before, but it works really well here.

Playmobil has done a set with Odysseus and Circe that's for sale right now, but I'm not enthralled with the figure, who looks a little messy to me. The fairy face is entirely correct, but she looks more disheveled than graceful, and for a powerful lady who adopted a routine of punishing men who tried to take advantage of her, she doesn't feel as composed as she ought.

The official Playmobil Circe.

The Argo set includes Jason's crew and a woman I jumped to assuming was Medea, his volatile sorceress girlfriend, but she's actually meant to be the heroine Atalanta. I feel like I could buy her as Medea, though, with a little decking-out. I wish someone was selling her alone to try that out.

Not Medea--but couldn't she be?

Completely Unique Fairy Design

This was an attempt to repurpose some fantasy dwarf legs after dismantling the dwarf they came with. 

The wing collar doesn't fit so well on her--it's a little tight and pushes her head up, which is because it was made for skinny figures and there's enough difference to make it work better on them. She still looks okay, though.

Awakened Mummy

Playmobil Fi?ures Series 1 included a messy mummy figure who had a ghostly glow head, but Mediterranean alive-toned hands and feet, leaving, along with his bandages being represented by hospital pieces, ambiguity about whether he was a severely injured patient or an undead corpse. It just wasn't a tidy design, and his stick accessory kind of sucked.

I decided after many years to resolve this character by popping a living pharaoh figure and giving his head and collar and legs to the mummy so his skin would all match and he'd look more like a reanimated historical Egyptian citizen who's still undead enough to read as a mummy. I don't have the rubber lid to the canopic jar anymore, but I think that's okay.

Ghostly Stilt Clown

Series 10 included a tall ghost pirate who was kind of a mess, so I decided to use his body and head and frame his long legs as they most commonly are by Playmobil and make him into a stilt-clown.

Sorceress Queen

Fi?ures Series 6 not only included the Maleficent-copy evil sorceress, but a good sorceress fairy-queen lady, who I liked for her unique flowy cape sculpt...and found really frumpy besides. 

Her long sleeves, brows and blue eyeshadow, and short brown hair, plus her drab salmon-green-and-yellow outfit colors (she looks like an appetizer platter with foods I don't want), really did her no favors in the elegance or mystique department. 

I decided to fix this by transplanting her head and cape onto the body of the Series 2 Vampire Lady, whose dress has pink that works with the cape, and I exchanged the hair for the same shape in black and gave her the disused Duo Pack vampire lady's crown, which matched well too. She got a new wand from Super 4 fairy Lorella. She's now a bit darker, but not in an evil way, and her loss of the big skirt is not a problem.

Greek Actor

Series 22 included a jewel thief which featured a repurposed paintball visor mask with a human face on it as his disguise. I thought the mask was extremely weird...but extremely desirable because it looked perfect for making a figure of an Ancient Greek actor. The design on the mask and the eyeholes and shaping made it feel a lot like a classic theater mask from Greek plays. I put the mask together on a figure with white robes and a toga drape, giving him curly black hair to pair with the mask, a cheery rosy face underneath to emphasize he's playing a character opposite to his nature, and a dagger and leaf frond as props you might see in an old Greek play.

Centaur Lady

This is actually someone else's custom first--someone had pieced together a female centaur using pieces from a male centaur fairy in the Ayuma Playmobil theme...welcome, since the anime-style Ayuma faces are hideous for Playmobil and getting this so-far-exclusive centaur body with a classic face is great. 

Wise fairy Abjatus from Ayuma.

The part choices for this custom are pretty astute. Abjatus was a dark tan figure, whereas the lighter tan color of the custom character really nicely matches the light tan color of the animal body, blurring the pieces together in an intriguing way. The Snake Lady's torso works pretty well also, seeing as it was designed for another figure with a nonhuman lower half. 

Her hair is one of the newer long ones that's made of rubber to prevent its long portions from restricting head rotation, but I'm super leery about it because Playmobil rubber really doesn't age well on the whole and I would have delighted in the hair if it was plastic, articulation be damned. 

The animal half of the body is actually more deerlike, going by the bobbed tail and dapples, but  the blue color is unnatural and the dapples would match an immature deer more than an adult one.

I decided to redress the figure more to my satisfaction. While I was able to pop her without heating, I ultimately didn't need to because I couldn't find anything suitable to put around her waist. I clicked her back together and gave her the Snake Lady's original dark brown braid, and added the Series 7 purple fairy's collar around her neck so I could attach a quiver on one of its pegs. She uses one of the three-arrow folded pieces inside (the Faun's the only figure I have with indidivual arrows), and I gave her an elven longbow as well as tan arm bracers.

I really like the torso joint on this body. She can lean back to aim a high shot--

And she can lean ridiculously far forward to...sternly scold a particularly sassy worm?

I dunno.

No figure is going to be stably riding her---Playmobil horses have pinched backs so figures' legs can straddle them and this figure certainly doesn't. I wonder if a camel saddle, which a figure's feet slide onto the top of while seated, would fit this body anywhere near properly. I'd expect not.

Her colors coordinate fairly well now with Avea Trotter.

The centaur body gives the figure quite a bit of height, which I decided to depict in a photo of a gathering of my mythical figures.

It strikes me that all of these are skinny figures. I think the only classic-figure sculpt to depict nonhuman legs was the original mermaid tail I showed in the first post. I think it makes sense that the sleeker skinny bodies would open up more possibilities for mythical nonhuman sculpts, since their shape makes the effect more clean and bending legs had already been established as optional for skinny figures so that category would easily allow for fantasy body shapes that didn't bend.

Baba Yaga

While I'm Russian by birth, I rejected attempts to be raised as Russian early once baby-me realized my adoptive parents were American and English was the language around me. Still, there are aspects of Russian traditional artwork and culture that are dear to me because they were included in my childhood, and I'm always going to be fiercely proud of Baba Yaga, the most defined fairy-tale witch in the world. She's my heritage and my character. I'll share her, but I'm very reluctant about it!

Baba Yaga is a stock antagonist (name translates to "ugly old hag") in Russian folklore and fairy tales, and is unique among fairy-tale witches for having a consistently-defined form and name. The witches of Snow White and Hansel and Gretel are iconic but unnamed. Many witches are neither named nor iconic. Baba Yaga is her own entity and happens to take part in many folk tales as a recognizable figure. She's often depicted as skinny, sometimes with a pointy iron nose or skeleton legs, and is most famous for flying on an oversized mortar and pestle rather than a broom, and for living in a hut that stands on animate chicken legs. Sometimes, Baba Yaga is a child-eating villain (which plays into antisemitic tales of blood libel so uh-oh to say the least) but other times she's a helpful sage who does her thing without being a problem and that's fantastic. As a lifelong witch fanatic and a Russian, I hold tightly to my dear Baba Yaga.

This figure wasn't meant to be her. I was trying to put together a ghost duchess with Lady Nightmare's hair and the Scooby-Doo Witch McCoy's head, but the double-face notch wasn't covered by the hair so I had to find something else to do with it. Then I remembered Lady Nightmare's body looked Russian with its fur trim, so I took my spare copy's parts and put together a spooky Baba Yaga.

The Witch McCoy hair is the no-hat version of the rubber hair the Centaur came to me with, so I'm still leery about it and I don't have high hopes for its upkeep, but for now it works since there isn't a sufficient long white or grey piece besides this. The walking stick with the skull topper is adapted from descriptions of her house being surrounded with skulls on fence stakes.

For a mortar, I had to improvise and order a large flower pot piece I didn't think would clash with her colors or the concepts. It's not ideal, but it's the only Playmobil part that works. For her pestle, I gave her a tree staff without a gemstone to make her look more gnarled and woodsy.

I like the way she sits off-balance here with her staff
keeping her in place.

Baba Yaga doesn't fit into the pot to stand in it, but most depictions of the witch have her sitting on top, anyway.

I completely understand that no toy company west of China would be comfortable making an iconic Russian character at the moment (and I certainly have no regrets about choosing to identify primarily as American myself), but I would hope that someday, Playmobil could make an official Baba Yaga of their own as a Fi?ure, Special Plus set, or Playmo-Friend, because she's a great character.

Zombie

I decided to repurpose the messy mummy/zombie Series 11 figure I fruitlessly ordered to fix up the Series 23 Zombie Butler. I didn't think the Series 11 figure was coherent at all, but had good parts.

I kept the head, arms, and tattered coat, and built a new generic zombie man in a suit, giving him a no-hat hairpiece, and a shovel and skeleton arm as accessories. The shovel, as if he dug himself up, is an idea taken from the way the LEGO Minifigures Series 1 Zombie had one. 

The cream-colored cuff makes him feel pretty seventies to me, and I think it adds to his dishevelment to have only one of them.

Gothic Jester

Big discussion incoming. 

This figure is an attempt to patch over an old wound of disappointment--several years ago, there was what was either a hoax leak or a custom project that got out of hand which depicted a mockup Fi?ures Series 10 and 11 consisting of 48 extremely convincing custom figures Photoshopped onto a Fi?ures catalog display, with all the trappings.

I was a little wounded by being swept up by this and getting let down by doubt and the ultimate confirmation through the real Series 10 and 11 that this was fake, so let's take it apart for some semblance of vindication. I did know better then, but I shut myself up out of hope they were real. Today, I just know better. 

Fake series 10 boys- a wizard, an agent, an archaeologist, a pharaoh, a plumber, an outlaw, a racer, a farmer,  a gamer, a matador (yikes), the Tin Woodman, and a mime.

The biggest tells of falsehood in this group are that the gamer is a direct stylistic translation of LEGO's Series 10 Video Game Guy, with the echoed Series 10 number lining up extra suspiciously....

...and the mime closely resembles the one from LEGO's Series 2, though I kind of believe the fake one given that it's within the realm of difference that several obvious Minifigures-mimicking real Fi?ures have fallen in.

Even if the mime is distinct enough, the gamer is too blatantly copied for these to be real.

Of this group, the Tin Woodman is my favorite. I'd still like him. Though the fact that he clearly uses the Special theme Robot's head with the silver color and red face is another point in hindsight that this was fake. Playmobil wouldn't use red for his face when producing a head for the figure (black, gunmetal, white, or even green would be expected), but a customizer would grab a passable older part that was produced to save some effort.

Now the girls.

Fake girls series 10: a "Frog Prince" princess, a convict (matching Series 2's male one), a pizza chef, an Aztec lady, a generic professional lady, a surfer, Artemis (?), a bakery woman, a water carrier, a princess again, a bedtime lady, and Medusa.

The tells of falsehood here are that the first princess mimics the LEGO Series 12 one very closely...

...there is a second princess in this series, who stands out not only for being a second princess (multiple fancy ladies can appear in real girls' series, but never multiple explicit royals) but also for using a hair sculpt Playmobil themselves reserve exclusively for men, and for not having a giant skirt when every female series of Fi?ures includes one....

...the Aztec woman's leaf headdress features a crown sculpt that actually exists and, owning a copy of the piece, I can confirm that sculpt has no conceivable attachment points for those leaves...

....and the Medusa, while very convincing and seeming to have been made with two really competent custom sculpts or 3D prints, too closely imitates the specifics of LEGO's figure from their own Series 10. Medusa is a character concept that could be visualized in Playmobil in thousands of unique colorations and prints (and even leg styles) that didn't so closely mimic someone else's work. But both have green colors, brown torso armor, orange eyes, and tails poking out of their snake hair on their left. If that was a real Playmobil figure, it'd be plagiarism. The series number being the same as the imitated figure's (that is, both Medusas being Series 10 figures) is also suspicious, just like with the gamer.

Official render of LEGO's Medusa (too lazy to photograoh the one I own). This is one of my most prized minifigures.

Fake Series 11's boys are next:

A jazz saxophonist, a medieval barman, a coffeeshop hipster, a detective, a gold-panner, a cop, a champion jockey, an Arab warrior, a safari hunter (gross), a crash test dummy, a skier, and a...punk kid?

While it's not a tell that the crash test dummy resembles LEGO's own by itself (we've already seen Playmobil's real, similar dummy figure made after this fake!), the fact that the torso graphics directly copy the graphics of LEGO's is a tell! The black wrench accessory also shows this is a direct copy of the LEGO figure.

LEGO's Demolition Dummy.

Otherwise, I think a tell in this boys' set is that the figures feel pretty darn boring to me. I think there'd be a few more wild, colorful and/or visually-cohesive characters in the mixed bag that is a real series, and the lack of print on the Arab warrior's torso feels wrong.

Fake Series 11's girls include...

A queen with a rabbit, a chemical scientist, an exercise girl, a fancy lady in black, a businesswoman, a boxer (male ones have been done by Playmobil), an artist, a black-and-white jester, a beachgoer, a...gun lady?, a Swedish Viking, and a fairy.

Nobody here is ripping off LEGO (besides, perhaps, the scientist who looks similar to the Series 11 Minifigure), but there are a few figures who feel too generic again. I'd get the fancy lady in black (though you can see the finish on her dress is way too glossy for a real figure), and the jester was the most bitter disappointment not to be getting out of all 48 fakes.

Realistically, Playmobil wouldn't be able to paint the collar and legs in split tones and the bells on the hat probably couldn't be painted either (same goes for the printing on the exercise girl's legs, which seems beyond Playmobil's capability), but I had so wanted to believe. So here's my redemption effort. 

I was able to piece together something from old old Playmo-clown figures and some pieces from jester figures that were newer--all ordered for this purpose, of course. 

For the body, I got the Special Pierrot set, which was quite a bit redder and cheerier than I associate the Pierrot archetype with. 

Why so happy?

I gave it asymmetrical arm cuffs and took the head, hat, collar, and shoe pom-poms away after popping it with hot water--very difficult to do! The legs are an older sculpt with prongs I had to slice off to make it work better with a Fi?ures frame.

The fake jester's face was not a real Playmobil print, but there was an old head that worked just as well, if not better--a white face with blue eyes, red lipstick, and crosses in the eyes with a black streak down the side of the face. It's a really great klicky face which feels classic, artsy, and also pretty eerie.

At the time of the fake leak, this jester hat sculpt did not exist in black (note the oddly matte finish of the fake figure's hat, which could result from a home paint job). In recent years, the piece has existed in black, due to an evil fire jester character in the fantasy Novelmore theme. I'll pretend not to notice that he imitates Jestro, a lava-commanding scary jester from the Nexo Knights theme they made a few years before. I didn't get the original figure, but rather, a custom jester with his head and hat and body parts I thought would be more useful to me. For the jester collar in black seen on the hoax figure, I ordered another custom klicky with another black hat and the collar, plus white robes I thought I could use.

Here's the final result.

I wasn't happy with this character with the Pierrot body intact, so I looked back at the fake Series 11 figure and realized she had more black, so I gave this character black legs and arms, plus the black belt and dagger from one of the figures I ordered for this one. Now, I think it comes together well in a very ominous, stylish retro-Playmobil way. I think it ends up as a very different figure from the one I was crushed to not get, but I might actually like this one better than the fake. It's more authentic because it's all unaltered Playmobil parts, and there's something very classic and very creepy here that the fake didn't offer. I never would have gotten to this without her, but I think I've definitely closed the book on that disappointment.

Headless Horseman

This wasn't intended to be a custom figure, but when I ordered the Scooby-Doo Horseman figure, it either arrived sans torso or that piece got immediately and irrevocably lost, so I had to give the character a new body. Suits me--a darker one is fine. I had to give the Duo Pack vampire back his tattered cape, but that's okay. The other parts are from various figures to give him an imposing look. The sword also helps. 

The pumpkin from the Scooby-Doo figure is a hat, not a unique head, so I changed what was underneath out for the scraped ghost head (I'd put the Ghost Butler back together and dismantled the nun) and red hair.

Candle Woman

This was an idea I got from the Queen of the Night's hair, which has a peg hole for a crown, but I thought of putting a flame in instead to make a candle. I decided to put together the white pieces I'd tried to use for the ghost duchess idea and instead use them for this idea.

I had to order a geisha head because it was the only option in solid white that suited the idea, and it worked nicely. I also got together silver parts to complement the print from the Series 3 Bride pieces I scraped the flesh-colored paint off years ago. The silver parts would ring her neck and arms to make her feel more like a candlestick as well as a candle, complemented and made clearer with a silver candlestick accessory. One figure I ordered for the collar piece had a torso and legs I thought would suit the Executioner, so this is his final final final form.

This candle-princess idea is something I feel very strongly that Playmobil would do themselves, so I'd love to see it in their hands with their access to recoloring and printing for theme.

But then I decided the silver collar wasn't what she needed for the best balance-- I wanted her to have silver shoulder puffs, so I switched her to a narrow pearly high collar, and that resolved her look better to me. Ideally, it would be silver, but the shape outweighs the color and white still looks nice.

Friendly Scarecrow

This was an attempt to find vindication for an older goal--to pop a scarecrow figure and use the head on a traditional klicky. 

Playmobil's scarecrow scenery figures (I say scenery figures, because the only full-klicky scarecrow they made is the Halloween one you've already seen) look like this, with klicky heads plugged into a hay-tube column with wood arms--one with a clip for holding things, the other being a bar for birds to clip onto, all mounted on a stump/stake piece that plugs into the bottom. 

While not the same figure as in this picture, I'd gotten a scarecrow with this head before because I wanted to try popping it, but found no success because I hadn't thought to heat it in water then. So now I got a newer release of the pictured scarecrow, whose hair, hat, and vest looked good to me, and tried popping it. The head came out pretty easily, but I had to saw one of the arms off to remove the vest. I did not realize the arms can slide out of the body horizontally once the head is out. Oh, well. I didn't need it, anyway. I then put together a body using clown pieces and brown arms to invoke sticks, and a pitchfork and traveling bindle to klicky-ize him.

He's pretty different from the Halloween scarecrow!

Mad Scientist

I decided to make my alternate vision of a mad scientist mentioned in the first review post in the series after deciding to pop Dr. X, a figure I didn't really care for anymore who had a tight lab-coat torso design I liked. I also popped the evil scientist from the Top Agents theme to get his robotic arm, and used parts from the Fi?ures Series 8 Mega Masters Agent to put together the long-coated modern-retro scientist I was thinking of.

I think this is the kind of scientist that can be paired with the Monster, even though this is far from what Shelley would have imagined.

There is another edition of Dr. X who has neon green torso printing, but that one doesn't include the small buttons on the coat, and the look is good enough with the blue to keep me from ordering the other Dr. X.

Techno-Merman

My Mer-King figure was in pieces and his base body wasn't doing anything, so I decided to pop him and make something new of it. I ended up with a combination of elven and sci-fi parts to make a high-tech merman agent of some sort, which is wacky enough to be worth it and surprisingly visually pleasing.

Wicked Stepmother

Remember how I thought the Sorceress Queen's parts looked frumpy and unappealing? Well, the way to fix that is to play into that by creating a horrible lady who tries and fails at finery. And what kind of lady would that be but a cruel fairy-tale stepmother who shows up to the ball wrongly thinking she's the loveliest of them all? She got a mean face, the literal clown hat that matched the outfit, a high collar, and a drink to party with and a broom to force onto her slaving stepdaughter. 

And whaddaya know? Suddenly, this costume found its purpose. A terrible one, but a purpose!

Hacker Queen

This is made of three different neon figures, plus a few extra parts to create a techno-villainess from some kind of computer world. Her head is the same essentially as the Neon Robot's, but the large rectangular eyes are white. I gave her a neon crown and a cape, plus a cannon arm and some lightning.

Gloomy Clown

This was done to use the Pierrot head in a way that satisfied me, and I was inspired by the shaggy wig piece (as in, representing an actual Bach-esque wig) that I had in white. I decided to turn him into an ominous clown in a long coat with miserable flowers. 

The two freaky fools go very well together.

Antique Robot

I was very intrigued by one Special PLUS set I saw, of a Special Operations Agent--or, a bomb-squad guy suited up in a huge protective costume with a drone to send out. I liked the reuse of the full-body astronaut/diver suit pieces and the colors felt very old-fashioned and the suit felt very BioShock, such that I thought I could turn the character into an old steampunky robot. Here's the set itself.

The agent is holidng a remote control pad for the drone.

The agent is pretty detailed, with his arm sleeves and his suit shells being well printed to show pouches and patches, though I think these can easily be reframed as robot details. 

The slots in the sides are for headlights and jet propellers, and the loop on top is for a hook on a string, all as designed for diving.

The shells of the suit don't click together, they just softly close up. The bubble visor at the front holds the top together, and elastic bands are provided to close the legs. Earlier variants of this suit for divers had the feet fully enclosed and metal weights that clipped onto the soles, both so the suit stayed together and so the diver would sink in water. 

The agent underneath has a black balaclava and a blue mouth bandanna, through which some smile can be seen. The head is black and the rest is all printed on, and not too nicely. A swim cap "hair" element rounds his head and completes the bodysuit.

To give this character a charming robot head, I decided to take a dark brown human head with white face molding and scrape the black pupil dots out of the eyes so it became a brown head with a fully white unnatural face. I thought it passed well for a copper or bronze robot head now, and it had the completely classic klicky smile. It pairs nicely with the Robot and Rolling Robot Special figures. I also gave him a donut which matched his colors. He can't eat it, but that won't stop him from loving it!

The look of this figure is pretty modern and not robotic, but dang if he doesn't look completely believable as a steampunk robot when he's next to the Steampunk Gent!

Phantom of the Opera

I discovered there were some very old Playmobil figures depicting nonspecific and likely stereotypical African tribal warriors who had half of their faces with a white paint design, and that just lit a fire in my mind about creating a Playmobil Phantom. Getting a pair of brown arms for the Friendly Scarecrow above just sealed the deal. I was tempted to use a hooded cape piece for the figure, but the flat hat didn't work with it, so I used the entire body of the Duo Pack vampire (my king makeover for him wasn't thrilling me) and put the tribal head on with curly black hair and the flat hat, plus a pearly white violin to convey his musical theme. I think the result is very nice! It's like that old head was made for this purpose!

And of course, the first Phantom I've worked with pairs nicely with him. 

Besides him being Black, which is not traditional for the character, I feel like this figure design could be exactly how Playmobil would execute the character in a real Fi?ures series. I really love how he turned out. 

And here's a shot of all of my current horror Playmobil figures now.

Thus concludes this Playmobil project series. I still love these toys to bits, especially now when they can come to bits! Playmobil is so innocent and enchanting in its art style that it's made dollhouse play and toys based on real life more appealing to me than any other toy brand, and it's been very rewarding to come back in and find old figures and new that I've wanted for a long time. Playmobil has its flaws, for sure. Its figures have some limitations in part-swapping that can feel arbitrary and needlessly specialized, and its toys are pretty chunky and not always the easiest to store once assembled. It also comes across as insecure to me how inconsistent its stylistic departures have been, with most of its visual experimentation directly defying the appeal of the classic Playmobil look which I want from them. If you're going as far as entirely-painted anime faces on figures whose bodies are a whole new design, as in the Ayuma theme, then why even call it Playmobil anymore? 

However, when Playmobil gets it right, it gets it perfect, delivering something with incredible appeal and charm. Playmobil has something no one else has. I wish it would recognize that more often. I don't know if I expect to further spotlight Playmobil with its own dedicated posts, but I may do collection roundups or briefer posts to share newer acquisitions, because I'm sticking around for it. I hope you enjoyed seeing the wonderful designs and potential of these little figures.

The smile of my childhood...and of a man who destroyed two.
(I didn't expect to reframe poor Derek in such a way!)