So, I wasn’t expecting this to arrive until Tuesday, but it turned up today (although apparently Royal Mail tried to deliver it yesterday).
Having examined the figure, I am assuming from this feature on his back;
That this is the money box/bank that was released several years ago, just without the money slot cut out.
As you can see, it pretty much looks exactly like the picture I showed in my last post. It’s a four piece casting, with the head and both arms being separate pieces, but whilst there is minimal movement, there is no posability to this model. I am assuming that I could, if I wished, pull off his head, as I’m guessing this is how you would remove any money put in.
Paint job is pretty good, although his neckerchief is the wrong colour and whilst the figure does stand on it’s own, it is a little unstable, as the soles of both feel although flat, are slightly out of line with one another.
However, minor quibbles aside, that’s a 26cm/10″ prepainted Mr Stay Puft for less than £6.00.
And to give a sense of scale, here he is looming over the original Ectomobile and one of my Ghostbusters.
He may not be of Kaiju level proportions like in the movie, but I think you’ll all agree that this is a decent sized and usable model for the tabletop.
And with his appearance, you know who you need to call, right?
I missed out on attending both Salute 2024 (as I was out of the country) and Colours 2024 (as I was attending my daughter’s first public performance as part of her Master’s degree in Musical Theatre), so deliberately booked myself out on the calendar to attend Warfare 2024.
This is the annual wargaming convention organised by the Wargames Association of Reading, which happens to be my hometown.
Now, I last attended this in 2019, when it was held at the Rivermead Leisure Centre in Reading, but it had started to outgrow this venue.
It was intended to be held at the Ascot Racecourse in 2020, but we all know what happened that year, so 2021 it was held there, but moved to its current venue, the Farnborough International Exhibition & Conference Centre in 2022 and has been held there ever since.
This is about an hour’s drive from me, so I jumped in the car and made my way South.
Whilst I had checked the directions, input the destination in my SatNav and noted the advised route into the site, I still ended up going the wrong way – and from several other cars I noted doing exactly the same, I wasn’t the only one. Could have easily been rectified by putting up a handwritten sign a couple roundabouts back “Warfare 2024” and a big arrow pointing off the relevant exit.
Anyway, got there just before the doors opened to the general public and parked (free) on site. This is an advantage over the previous venues, which utilised public car parks that you were required to pay for.
The venue itself is pretty nice, with plenty of room, although being on the outskirts of Farnborough Airport does have an aircraft hangar-y feel to it.
However, one of the things I’d forgotten about this particular convention was that whilst the trade stands are the usual suspects you get at other cons, the demonstration, participation and tournament games fall into two categories – historical conflicts (mainly World War 2) or Games Workshop (Age of Sigmar or whatever it’s called these days).
I assume these are the games/eras favoured by WAR members. I did see a vast seascape covered in sailing ships, which I overhead was for Black Seas and saw quite a nice table set up as a seabed, which I gathered was an undersea battle for Kings of War, but it was Pegasus Bridge, Stalingrad, a couple of what I assumed were Vietnam era conflicts based on the scenery, but nothing that had the Wow Factor, where you immediately whip out your ‘phone to take some pics.
No superhero games, no Victorian vampire hunters stalking the cobbled streets of old London Town, no Pulp era skirmishes in either the jungle or the sands of Egypt.
It was a bit same-y and dull, to be honest.
As for the traders, I assume that as they cater to these particular gamers, there wasn’t really anything that took my fancy.
However, it wasn’t a totally wasted trip, as I did have a nice catch up with Karl Perroton of Crooked Dice, who when I showed him pics of my Ghostbusters, asked me to send him a link to my blog, as he liked how I’d converted some of his non-Ghostbusters figures into Ghostbusters.
Having done the circuit of the trade stalls a couple of times, I ended up returning to the Crooked Dice stand and giving them some money.
Naturally, it was this pack;
Been on my wishlist for a while, but never actually got around to buying them. As it’s the 40th anniversary this year, I felt I couldn’t really leave it any longer.
Karl pointed out that they also sell a MDF kit of the firehouse, but I’d set myself a spending budget, so that would have to wait… along with the Harbinger figure pack, which has Dana and Louis in.
However, the conversation I’d had with Karl about an appropriate and reasonably sized Mr Stay Puft for use with the above Ghostbusters led me to have a brief search online when I got home.
I found this on AliExpress:
However, when I looked earlier it was only £4.90 (possibly due to some first time buyer discount thing). A 26cm tall vinyl figure of Mr StayPuft for less than a fiver? Bargain. So into my basket it went. There was an additional 98p for tax or something, but that’s a pre-painted almost a foot tall Mr Stay Puft for less than half of what I paid for my actual Ghostbusters.
And whilst I’ve not ordered from any of these cheap overseas companies before (Temu, etc.) I know people who have and been pleased with their purchases, so thought it was worth a punt.
Should arrive in approximately 10 days time, so I will be posting a full review and pics, so anyone who wants one will know if it’s worth it.
On a final note, whilst I DID wear my Jurassic Park-inspired Carrion Crow tee, I was not mobbed by fans and no-one approached me or commented on it. I guess the kind of people who go to Warfare are not the kind who read this blog.
Unfortunately, it’s not progress on the Ghostbusters project, as work has been Hell this week and my weekend is also pretty stuffed with non-hobby stuff.
So what’s this post about then?
Well, long-standing followers of this blog will be aware that I have written a fantasy novel, which I serialised over on the Buffet’s sister blog Corvuscope, as none of the literary agents I contacted seemed interested and I wanted to give people the opportunity to enjoy it.
Various people had commented that this was not the most ideal way to view it, due to the way WordPress is set up. And whilst I flirted with doing a podcast of each chapter, this takes time to do and as I end up doing silly voices when I’m trying to differentiate between characters, this wasn’t the best option either.
A friend suggested self-publishing, so I looked into this, weighing the pros and cons of each platform, eventually deciding that Amazon’s KDP was probably the best option.
I struggled a little with their UI, as it wouldn’t do exactly what I wanted at first, but valiantly soldiered on.
So, what are you waiting for? Christmas creeps ever closer and what better gift than a book that has thrills, spells, giant weasels, a fourth-dimensional entity manifesting as a cat and a protagonist who has no idea what he’s doing and doesn’t really want to be there in the first place?
Tell all your friends! Better yet, buy them a copy! And all you family as well! I mean, Tiny Tim’s cough is getting worse and Mr Scrooge seems highly unlikely to give me a pay rise, so you’ll not only be getting a fantastic read, you’ll be potentially saving a young boy’s life…
(Disclaimer: The views in this post are heavily biased and should be taken with a pinch of salt. This is normal table salt, not that used by Salt Bae, so is reasonably priced and will not significantly impact your finances.)
Unlike being a “content creator” on either YouTube or TikTok, blogging about your interests doesn’t gain you immediate recognition outside of whatever niche you blog about.
People follow you, comment on your posts and you may build up friendships with these people, but should they walk past you in the street, they are unlikely to recognise you.
Obviously, if you attend wargames conventions, you may get to meet your fellow bloggers if they reside in the same country as you, but unless it’s an pre-arranged meeting (such as the annual Salute meet-up) you could be standing behind a fellow blogger in a queue without realising it.
Obviously, some of us prefer it that way, being a disembodied voice on the Internet, merely trading comments on each other’s blogs, rather than interacting face-to-face.
I am not one of those people.
I love chatting to others who share my passion about wee toy soldiers and other geeky stuff, but how to connect with what my wife has described as “Geeky Online Pretend Friends”?
I could post my mugshot on this blog, but that smacks of narcissism, so what other options do I have? Perhaps some kind of indicator that I AM the blogger known as Carrion Crow?
And so was born an idea…
To be honest, this is an idea I’ve had for a while, but it is only recently that I worked out the details, spurred on my my recent purchase of my personalised Ghostbusters t-shirt from a local company, as detailed in this post.
What if I designed a t-shirt that identified me as Carrion Crow?
However, it would have to be something both subtle AND cool…
As those who follow me know, I like a challenge, so I began to contemplate the best way to achieve this. I knew I wanted the t-shirt to have “Carrion Crow” on it, but it needed to be something more than just that printed across my chest.
This was my first idea:
Distinctive and recognisable design, yet subtle enough that if you’re not paying attention, your brain will dismiss as a branded t-shirt for a well-known soda.
Whilst this has its merits and will probaly end up in my wardrobe at some point, I craved something… more.
After some thought and some intensive web-fu, I managed to create this:
Pretty cool, but there was an issue.
That’s a dinosaur, not a crow…
Having found a suitable illustration of a crow skeleton, I used various image manipulation apps and tools and managed to get closer to my vision, but couldn’t quite get it over the line.
Frustration was setting in and I almost gave up, but then had a bright idea. One of the guys I work with is a designer of graphics for the products the company sells AND is a massive geek. So I asked him if he could help.
He was intrigued by the idea, so I sent him the base images and left him to it thinking I wouldn’t hear back from him for a couple of days. However, about 10 minutes later he called me over and showed me what he’d done, stating that he loved working on things like this.
It was exactly what I’d imagined.
He sent me the image, which I then sent to my friendly neighbourhood t-shirt printer and this Friday, my new t-shirt showed up.
Which is all kinds of awesome.
So, should you be at Warfare in Farnborough next weekend, and see someone sporting the above, that’ll be me, so feel free to come and have a chinwag, as I’ve always got time for my fellow bloggers.
But where will the crow be spotted after this? We shall have to see…
Carrion Crow's Buffet 