Retrokit 'Little Helpers'

What´s not to love about weird interpretations of Minions in resin at affordable prices? Yes, I expected that answer. So I´ve bought so far four of the cute little resin kits when I was at a show with a Retrokit display. At the Euro Model Expo in Lingen I bought the Beach Bananaaa, aka Norbert the Idiot from the Minions movie, and Extermi...Bapple!, a Dalek Minion.

Other than before, I was clever enough to also get two wooden display bases, but not clever enough to check the kits. Sadly, the we-will-not-officially-call-him-a-Dalek kit was seriously flawed by short pouring. Now I´m sure that Retrokit would easily have supplied a replacement if I only had asked, but I felt I wanted to try and somehow fix it, so this is what I did.

I tried to trace and complete the shape of the Dalek´s base and cut it from sheet styrene, glued it to the base, and filled the rather substantial gap with Apoxie Sculp. After curing, I sanded as far as I got without damaging the rest of the kit. To ease painting, I drilled a rather large hole for the pupil into the eye, and test fit the three other kit parts (eyestalk, weapon and manipulating arm), deepening and somewhat enlarging the mounting holes on the body. That done, I called my preparations quits.

The figure was primed with standard automotive primer, and then sprayed semigloss black, also from a rattle can. I should have used a flat paint, but only realized that when it was too late. My plan was to brush paint as much as I could, and I started with the main body, using AK Interactive Tru Metal shades. This stuff is metal powder in a waxy suspension, and can be brushed on a primed model. It won´t work on pure plastic. After curing, you can buff the material and achieve quite a nice metal effect. The distinctive Dalek shade was aimed at using copper and brass mixed with some gun metal. A flat surface would have accepted the paint better, now I know. The numerous spheres on the Dalek´s hull were painted True metal Gold. The eyestalk, weapon and manipulator / suction cup stalk were painted gun metal, with the suction cup in black and the eye in blue.

So far, so good. I ran into trouble trying to brush paint the Minion´s head in yellow, and ended up masking everything off and spraying the yellow. After removing the masks there was the inevitable tidying up, and the stalks were attached to the main body. Finally, the figure was mounted on a plain wooden base.

It´s none of my best efforts, but it´s a fun little kit and I like seeing it on the shelf.

The Beach Banana was painted and built without much ado. In this case, I sprayed the yellow areas from the start, and painted the coconut bikini and the eye area by hand, using AK Interactive True Metal for the goggle. The leaves were washed and highlighted with oil paints. The flat cap should have a tartan pattern, but honestly I didn´t feel up to that, so it ended up in a rather boring green.

I got myself a banana from our fruit bowl to faithfully replicate the fruit´s colour scheme, and ended up with eating my reference material.

The base received some real sand and clear acrylic gel to hint at a beach setting, followed by some drybrushing with white artist´s oil paint.  

These little kits are great for those phases when your modeling mojo is at a low point. They do not need much cleanup, have few parts, are easy to build and you end up with colourful and funny items which might even appeal to your partners ...

Editor's note: You know you want one. https://retrokitonline.net

Frank Spahr

28 September 2017