AFP Iron Mania continues, with a close look and write-up of this custom-built Iron Man armory by Thor-El.
One of the things I’ve always loved about Iron Man are the specialty armors he develops. And because of that, unlike the many strange and useless “Knight Dive Batman” or “Space Slider Spider-Man” figures that might get made, having lots of different Iron Men populating your shelves always looks awesome. And while Iron Man isn’t my favorite character (that honor belongs to Thor), I really enjoy buying and setting up little armories of him.
I’ve always liked the way Bob Layton always drew the Armory as a series of stacked chambers, so that’s basically what I wanted to echo here. Using circular figure stand and figure tubes from CollectingWarehouse.com, I tried my best to set up something similar. And while not as visually awesome as Waiting’s amazing Armory, I like the way it turned out.
Aside from the aforementioned stands and tubes, I used the main bridge section from a Star Trek Enterprise Archer figure, the display screen, and tactical boards from a movie Star Trek Bridge set, and two chairs and consuls from two movie Star Trek figures. I also used LED tap-lights I purchased from Lowe’s for other things, but worked nicely here. The floor is made from simple shelf liner that looks like it could be metal floor grating of some kind. Finally, I’ve been steadily trying to add roughly 1:18th scale stuff I find or get from other figures (G.I.Joe, Star Wars, etc). Several stands from Transformers Titanium figures as well as the “Stark” battle stands from the ML Face-Off two-packs and a blasted-out ML wall accessory round it out.
It’s an ongoing work-in-progress as I always try to make it look better and add things I think go with it. I had at one time planned on putting it into an enclosed cube kind of like Waiting’s, but it ended up being far too crowded, so that got nixed.
I hope everyone enjoys seeing it, and thanks a lot for having a look!
Eric aka Thor-El
That looks really nice Thor-El! I would like to be able to do something like that too. What were the tubes made for originally? Did you make a custom insert for the view-screen too?
Thanks! The tubes are actually for action figures. The website I listed had them available in different sizes. And the insert for the screen is indeed custom, as are the inserts in the tubes.
LOVE IT!!!! As I am amassing quite a collection myself (all of the new stuff out so far) I was planning something similar. I think you need to integrate a mechanical arm so the armor can be brought front and center. Nice job.
That’s really cool, Thor-El! What size tubes did you get? I only see short ones on that site.
I think they were 4″ tubes, and yeah. For some reason, they seem to be out of stock of the ones like I used here. Which is a shame because I know I’ve got a few more armor figures that need to be tubed. LOL
Thanks for giving the info on the tubes you used and that they are out of stock…I have spent ten minutes searching that site to make sure that I wasn’t overlooking them, haha.
Great display! I’m totally doing something like this. Those tubes are exactly what I’m looking for, and way cheaper than buying about 30 “Hall of Armor” figures!