Tag Archives: actionfigures

Customizer Corner


I launched a new site over the weekend – Customizer Corner. It’s a search engine for custom action figure and diorama parts. I needed something like this for myself and figured others could use it too. I launched it by posting it in ~6 of the action figure groups I’m a member of on Facebook. The response was overwhelmingly positive which is amazing.

My original plan was to write the “data gathering code” and put it in a WordPress site as a POC. Once I saw it worked, I was going to write a backend from scratch. But… the more I used WordPress the more I saw it can get me to about 90% of what I wanted. It has faceted searching and the ability to search in tags. So I changed my mind and figured I’d just use WordPress. Now I’m finding some shortcomings and I’m rethinking that… I’m still not 100% happy with the searching… searching for two words doesn’t work like I want and some of the ideas I have for the site just don’t fit well into WordPress, so I’m looking to see if there is a site framework I can easily use. If not, I guess I’ll write it from scratch.

I talked with Neil at Red Flare Models and he is an enthusiastic backer of the site and idea. I also talked to Brian at https://customsforthekid.blogspot.com/ and he is totally on board too. Cool stuff.

Custom 1:12 scale Black Series speeder bike

Following in the footsteps of those that came before me, I present to you, my speeder bike using the Hero Mashers bike.

-chopped the front yoke and replaced it with 2 wooden dowels and a disposable pink razor. This one cracks me up. I showed my wife and she didn’t even notice her razor was on in the bike

-dremeled off the back cushion and replaced it with a fake leather one (made with brown paper bag and mod podge over a random Ikea? part)

-back cushion is removable and I added a removable basket to hold the kid

-added a rear exhaust made from a marker barrel and the twisty bottom of an anti-perspirant. The angle was tricky to get right – I had to do three of them til I finally got it right. This looks great, IMO and is perfect – check out the inside view

-added a lego shield and a part from the dollar tree robot on the back where the pluses were

Primed grey, hit it with some silver spray paint (front and fork) then painted with acrylics, then weathered. I may add some rust to it. Maybe. Also may add some wired/tubes. Maybe.

This was super fun to do, highly recommended. The Hero Mashers set is on Amazon Prime for less than $11.