Even Hasbro acknowledged that they could have done better with their Marvel Legends Emma Frost, and when they first showed the prototypes for the Marvel Madames, I thought there was hope. I won’t claim credit for the idea – Robokillah was the one who saw the potential for a repaint of Madame Hydra for use as Emma Frost. But then hopes were dashed, when sadly the mold for the Viper head was distorted in production.
As disfigured as she is, she still proved to be a hard figure to come by (I resorted to eBay eventually) – and as I lamented over her once beautiful head sculpt, I thought that it wasn’t really that far off. Maybe, just maybe, it could be saved. So I sent the head to Ibentmyman-thing to see if it could be prettied up. Sure, I also did some stuff to the original Hasbro Emma Frost body, but the real credit goes to Benty.
Here’s how Benty described the tweaks to the head:
Sliced off some cheekbones, and a lot of eyebrow bone. Major part was removing the hair, slicing off the top of her head and whittling enough so her hair fit down on her face better, gave her less of a frankentranny look.
Ouch!
Benty’s work really reduced some of the harsh angular portions of the production head. The result is a much softer and symmetrical look. And his paint job is very nice and smooth too.
My own modest contributions were things that are mostly obscured. I thought the original figure suffered from major eating disorder. I had done some work wayyyyy back in 2007 to give her some meat on her bones. I added some mass to her thighs, broadened her shoulders and widened her upper torso. I originally tried to do some modifications on the Emma Frost head which were not successful at all, but when I got Benty’s replacement, I also had to widen her neck so it didn’t look like an olive on a toothpick. The final touch was cutting some material out of the cape so it would fit around her broader torso.
I tried several things to make a new ball joint for the head, since the peg for the original Emma head is an old style peg on a disk, versus the much larger ball joint on the modern Marvel female figures. I discovered my Apoxie Sculpt wouldn’t cure (the label said 2005, so no surprise), and my subsequent attempt with Milliput just ripped off when I attached the head and wiggled it. I ended up using a craft bead from my wife’s stash with a brad glued into the neck. Of my contributions to this piece, of that I’m most proud – which is funny because with the casted resin hair, there’s hardly any motion on the head. But if you could turn the head, that ball joint would be totally solid and allow all sorts of movement!
I have another old Emma Frost custom way back from CustomCon 16 (the Astonishing X-Men Gifted Box Set entry) that could use the same treatment. If I get around to it, I’ll make sure to snap a picture of the replacement neck joint, even though the head would be just as immobile as it is on this version of Emma.
I know I said not to expect any more customs from me for a while – but I may have a couple more quick ones based on more work from Benty. If you have interest in this head or others, you can send Ibentmyman-thing a PM on the Fwoosh or email him at penguinparanoia at yahoo dot com. Thanks for looking!
“I also did some stuff to the original Hasbro Emma Frost body”
TMI, man.