In my earlier post, I mentioned Dr. Toys, and the droids he was building out of garbage you might normally just pitch into your recycle bin.
One of the things he mentioned in his videos was using pieces from a line of action figures they were selling at Dollar Tree called Final Faction. If you are unfamiliar, Dollar Tree is where everything costs a dollar...wait, since inflation has hit record levels, they had to raise their prices, so everything is $1.25. Anyway, it's all cheap.
An action figure for $1.25? That's a pretty great deal. These days, it's almost impossible to find anything under $20, so I figured I needed to get over to Dollar Tree and see if I could get my own fodder for homemade droids.
I was pretty excited by what I found. First thing to catch my eye were these robot dogs:
The legs looked like they could be really good for a droid's legs.
Not only that, but they might even be fun characters in their own right. If I repainted and spruced them up a little bit, they might be possible denizens of Anklevich Station...or did I decide it was called Ankletown? I can't remember. Maybe they're robot dogs that help the police keep the peace on the rowdy port station.
I bought several. One way or another, they would be perfect. And they were so cheap, I couldn't help myself.
Next thing I found was the robot guy that Dr. Toys had removed the legs from to make his snow droid.
I decided I ought to get a few of those as well, since the whole thing could be useful in various droid builds. I bought all four of the ones they had at the Dollar Tree I was at.
Not only would they be useful for fodder, but they might also be good in and of themselves. With a little love and affection, they could be repainted to look pretty nice. Dr. Toys did a video where he repainted one to look better.
I don't think I'd repaint mine like his, but something else could be really cool. These guys, like the dogs, could be police bots for the station. maybe painting them black and white like a police car could be pretty cool. I don't know.
I went to a second Dollar Tree, and found several more of them, and now I have quite an army of the guys...I might have overdone it.
Then there were the aliens. The colors and paint job on them totally sucks, but what can you expect for $1.25? These are the drones:
And these are the brutes:
The aliens had their own robot warrior called a Synthoid.
One thing that is really neat about Final Faction is that they have accessory packs that you can buy for the figures. They had one for the aliens that came with backpacks that made them look even creepier.
Imagine how sweet these would look after a repaint that made them look like one single creature instead of a guy with a differently colored backpack.
There were other accessory packs that could make the other characters look cooler, or just be used as greebles to add details to a kitbashed droid I might make.
The Synthoid got some accesories, and looks like this once he's armed up.
So, he gets those guns that come up over his shoulders, and he also can have two regular hands or a gun arm and a knife arm.
There were some regular human characters, and they weren't terrible, but they also weren't great. This guy is my favorite, because he's mostly robot.
And I also quite liked this guy, whose robot arm and helmet make him look pretty robotic too.
The rest of them are pretty unremarkable. I bought one of each that I found, because they were so cheap, but I don't know if I'll do anything with them.
There's a ninja girl.
If I was good at painting faces, I could see her being worthwhile, but I'm not. Then again, she might be the perfect one to try to learn some skills on, because she only cost a buck.
There's this Falcon ripoff:
No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get his backpack to go in the peg hole in his back. You can see that the peg is kind of munched now, so It'll only be worse.
Lastly, there was this Tony Stark Iron Man ripoff:
Because these figures were so cheap, and I was grabbing so many, I didn't even look at their paint jobs to see if they had issues. Look at how bad the paint is slopped onto his forehead and cheek. Yikes! Another one that could be cool with a face paint job...maybe. I guess I can give that one some practice as well, and who knows what I might get.
It looks like the rest of the world has been aware of these figures a lot longer than me, because I've found dozens of videos on YouTube about them. I think there may be a few figures I haven't found yet, as well as a friggin' vehicle...yeah, a vehicle for a dollar! I guess you can buy the accessory packs for the vehicle and with a few bucks turn it into something not too shabby.
It also looks like a second wave of figures may be coming out soon, so I guess there may be much more droid fodder to come. I have to admit, I like these guys. Not for what they are on their own, but for what they could become. When I finally get around to building droids and doing figure repaints, I'll be sure to post some pictures.
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