Started	:	September, 2012
Finished	:	November 11th, 2012
Base	:	JAKKS WWE Paul Heyman
Parts	:	TOYBIZ TNA Raven lower body
Materials	:	Apoxy Sculpt, Citadel Paint, Glues, twist ties, bottlecap safety seal plastic, magnets, packing string, unidentified figure hair, wooden beads
Points of Articulation	:	~ 22

Character & Intent

If you have seen my write-up on Diamanda Hagan on the corresponing
page, I won't have to go to great lengths in telling you my motivation for
this one. So, if you haven't read that yet, go and do that now, for my laziness
knows no bounds.

And when your favorite famous person encourages
you to make more figures, you damn well better
 make some more fucking figures!

However, Teddy himself is definitely very well worth a few words of his own.
Expertly portrayed by a sibling of she-who-is-Hagan, Teddy was the first
named and recurring minion on the show. Initially only armed with an...
interesting speech pattern and responsible for the music clips, he captivated
the audience with an awkward, strangely adorable personality.
And as his popularity grew, so did his role on the show. Not only did he
become the de-facto default minion, he also gained a twisted mirror image
in the nefarious Lord Ted. Hailing from a "Mirror, Mirror"-style counter-
reality, Lord Ted was the undisputed ruler of his own domain and took great
delight in tormenting his favorite subordinate - the oddly familiar,
face-painted Nina Galas.
Then, the unthinkable happened. Barriers of time, space and loyalty
were obliterated, blood was shed and two worlds would never be the
same again. But to find out more about that, you really should watch
season 3 of Hagan Reviews!

Beyond that, it has to be said that the man behind the character does
contribute quite a bit to Diamanda Hagan's work. Ideas for gags,
contributions to the planning process and, quite importantly,
the entire filming location. Thus, I hereby bow before him,
his generous nature and his equally generous heapings
of talent!

 Creation

It took me a while to find a suitable base figure for this project,
as super-articulated figures in the 1:12 scale are becoming a costly
rarity these days, and figures with non-superheroic proportions have
never been too commonplace.
Fortunately, stalking the ebay hunting grounds for long enough brought
me suitable prey in the form of pro-wrestling personlity Paul Heyman.
And had JAKKS not been too cheap to make more than one shirt-wearing
torso, I wouldn't even have had to bulk up his mid-section. Alas, it was not
to be.

Before said bulking could happen, though, I cracked the torso open to replace
the lower half of the body with that of a Raven from Toybiz' ill-fated TNA line.
 I had already had to accept a reduce level of articulation on this project, but I
absolutely refused to use legs without lateral hip movement, and double-jointed
knees. Below the knees, I cut off Raven's own calves and replaced them with
Heyman's to bring back the cohesion of plainclothes.

This would have been a very quick and simple project, had it not been for my
desire to give it a little bit extra. And that extra bit definitely had to be an inter-
changeable head gimmick. After all, why make only one character when you
can have two in one so easily? So I sculpted some of the basic modifications
of the  Heyman head and made a polyresin cast of the results. From there, I
was free to add the details required for each character individually. But
this was not quite enough, either. After all, there was a hilarious line
in the "The Worst Witch" review that absolutely called for me to
address it in figure form. So I inserted a strong magnet into the
Lord Ted head and went on to craft the magnetic
 "Sultan of Darkness" extension set.
Which is a Fez.
Yep.

The heads can be removed and attached via a simple "pull and plug"-type
balljoint connector. One of these was native to the original head, another
was crafted, as far as I recall, from a wooden bead. The headphones were
partially sculpted and partially cut from a bottlecap safety seal, while the
attached wiring was made from twist ties. Unfortunately, these ended
up having to hang loosely and cut off over the shirt (rather than
running under it, as the source material dictates) in order to
maintain the articulation and the head switch gimmick.

All this and a paintjob later, I held in my hand a fairly faithful plastic
 representation of Teddy the Minion and his evil-er counterpart.

May he collect dust in dignity in his faraway home!

(To main)