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razorwyre1
Gone but not Forgotten
Gone but not Forgotten
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what goes around comes around

#1 Post by razorwyre1 »

heres a little something ive found interesting.
in the late 70s/ early 80s mask collecting was popular among us fanboys. not huge, but popular, and very good masks commanded top dollar.

then in the mid 80s these really fantastic model kits of movie characters started coming in from japan. soon american companies got in on the act, and famboys who wanted a totem of their favorite characters started favoring the kits over the masks. by the early 90s kit collecting had eaten a huge hole in the collectors mask market (if you dont believe me on this, ask jeff death).

there was a problem with the kits though: not everybody had the patience or skills needed to build finish them properly. soon the prepainted cold cast figures and high quality action figures, aimed at the adult collectors market, would appear, and do the the kits what the kits had done to the masks.

so by the turn on the century (its still weird to use that phrase about a fairly recent event) both mask collecting and figure model building/ collecting would remain strong among those people who were really serious about it, and the casual collectors would fall away.

now heres the part that i find fascinating and a bit like deja vu: busts are now getting popular among we figure kit hobbyists. i have just purchased a few myself and looking at them i was just struck by such a sense of irony, because the difference between these busts and the old collectors masks is a small one, in fact its really just the material. even the half scale busts have more in common with the collectors masks than with the full figure kits. many mask collectors would ask the manufacturers for unfinished castings that they could paint and finish themselves, or ask for a copy that was filled with foam urethane because it was never going to be worn anyway. some manufacturers obliged, others were hesitant for fear of... you guessed it... recasting.

i dont know what all this means except perhaps that everything old is new again, but again i was just struck by the irony of it all in as much as the thing that almost killed the mask collecting market is now doing about the same thing that they were...... and now companies like sideshow are releasing high dollar prefinished busts.

i cant help but wonder if the old mask companies (most of which are gone or struggling now, and those that survive are having their stuff made offshore) had made their pieces in resin instead of latex, if we couldnt have just cut to the chase and eliminated 20 years of evolution between the two. the other thing i wonder: will the companies that make the resin busts start casting some in latex, because the busts are so close to masks anyway, why not make them wearable?

ok folks im done rambling now. thanks for letting me get it out of my system.

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