Plastic Cthulhu

OK, now to get back to what you all came here for, some Cthulhu stuff. This past summer, Propnomicon posted about a new little trinket from Fantasy Flight Games, the Bag of Cthulhu. It is a package if small plastic Cthulhu miniatures, some about 3 inches tall (55mm), and some about 3/4" tall (20mm). They were designed to be used with a Cthulhu based card game, but even though I had no interest in the card game, I immediately I knew I had to have some of these miniatures.

They look cool as hell, and the detail on them is quite nice. My only criticism being that on some of the larger ones, the mold seam is a little too visible. Though this could probably be trimmed off with some diligence and a sharp x-acto knife. The color scheme is not that terrible, a dark oily looking grayish green, but they definitely look like plastic. I had read on someone's blog post somewhere that due to the type of plastic they are made from, they were very hard to paint, however, recently I decided to take a stab at it, and they didn't seem that bad.


Expecting to run into problems, I tried several brands of spray paint and primer, Rustolium Plastic Primer (white), Krylon Primer (white), Testers Primer (grey), Krylon Fusion (satin black), and cheap Wal-mart brand flat black, with varying results. All of them faired well enough to be usable, but the one that dried the fastest and seem to have the best adhesion was the cheap flat black from Wal-Mart. I did nothing to try to sand or de-gloss the figures before painting.


After a base cloat of flat black (over the primer where necessary), I gave them a light coat of Sophisticated Finishes metallic paint, which is my favorite for creating a metallic finish (especially my ubiquitous antique bronze). Then I gave it some highlights with gold Rub-n-Buff. This was my first attempt at refinishing these little plastic miniatures, and I am rather pleased with the results so far. I did notice that the seam line becomes even more pronounced with the new finish. Next time I will take the time to try and smooth it out before painting. I plan to incorporate some of these figures into some prop ideas I have. I also saved one of the refinished smaller miniatures to use as my token when my family plays Monopoly. :)


I was looking around my house for a good place to display one of these. I finally decided that I would replace the bronze finial on top of my desk clock in my Victorian styled computer room with the larger of the two small statues statue. I think he looks quite nice sitting up there. The muslin bag full of Miskatonic goodness from Propnomicon is not a product placement, or a stage setting, that's just where mine happened to be sitting when I took the photo.