Micro Bastards: Big-Head & Frankenblem

If you follow the Ironhaus Productions blog, you might have noticed that a couple new figures in the Micro Bastards rubber mini figure line have reared their ghoulish heads over the past couple weeks. I covered the first wave of Micro Bastards a few months ago, and was happy to see Ironhaus Pro's Jimmy Rommel decided to continue the set with some new creations. This time, Jimmy decided to take a bit more monstrous direction with the Bastards, and I dig it. Let's take a closer look at the two new weirdos:

First up we have Big-Head, which is actually my favorite Micro Bastard to date. This guy's pretty much what his name says, which might not sound like the most exciting figure imaginable, but man, the sculpt is seriously cool. It's like an Easter Island head from hell. Or a steaming pile of trash possessed by a demon. Whatever it is, I'm down with it.

My Big-Head was done in "colorbomb" style, which means he was cast using multiple different colors of rubber. I really love the effect this gave the figure, accentuating this guy's big nose and one of his crazy eyes with clear red, his teeth and lip with off-white and some gunk on his backside with blue and orange-ish colors.

The second new Bastard is called Frankenblem, a character that first started life as a different sculpt in another Ironhaus line, Gorewad Monsters, and has since been resurrected in his entirely new Micro Bastards form. Franky is an ornery-looking Blemmyae-esque monster with outstretched arms and a spherical right hand. I like all of the attitude packed into this little dude. He's a lot of fun.

Frankenblem has also been offered in the same type of colorbomb style as Big-Head. My particular figure is a mix of mainly clear red, clear blue and off-white. I love how the circle of red on the sphere hand makes it look kind of like an eyeball.

At the time of writing this post, both Big-Head and Frankenblem are listed in the Ironhaus online store for $6 each. Big-Head is currently showing sold out, but I'd guess there will be more on the way.

Micro Bastards

A few days ago I did a post about how you should vote for Jimmy Rommel and Eric Nilla's Universe of Violence line as "Best Mini Series" in the Designer Toy Awards, and also how you should vote for Jimmy, a.k.a Ironhaus Productions, in the "Break-Through Artist" category. Well, here's more evidence why Mr. Rommel deserves your attention. Behold his latest release--Micro Bastards!

Micro Bastards aren't unlike Universe of Violence or another of Jimmy's projects, Gorewad Monsters, in that they're brutish little rubber monster dudes with cool sculpts and a lot of personality. But at around 1.5" each they're quite a bit smaller than UoV figures and a bit taller/bulkier than the average Gorewad, so I guess you could say they are sort of like a mashup of the two.

Earlier this month Jimmy unleashed the first sets of the Bastards via his newly-opened Storenvy store, offering four different sculpts--three common and one chase. He was cool enough to hook me up with all four of the little miscreants, and I of course immediately got the itch to photograph and write about them. So here we are. Let's take a look at each of the four Micro Bastards, as named by Jimmy himself:

Dirtbag is a rat Bastard, literally. This vermin dude is one of my favorites for sure, and probably the sculpt that grabbed me the most when I first saw pictures of the line on the Ironhaus blog. I love his pose, like he's beckoning you to come join him in world domination. I am also struck by all the detail on this small figure, from his fur to his belt to his double-tail (one tail is not enough for this crazy rat). My Dirtbag, like three other of my Micro Bastards, came in a glossy black which suits the character well.

Coral Golem is definitely the brute of the bunch, taller and a good deal wider than the other three Bastards. I was originally thinking of him as a sludge or lava monster until Jimmy mentioned he was calling him the "Coral Golem," which then made perfect sense. Whatever you want to imagine him being made of, he's awesome. I think it's cool that the nature of the sculpt sort of camouflages all the little details when seen from afar so he just looks like a big lumbering lump of badass, but when you have him in hand and look at him up close all the individual elements pop out, like his eyes and mouth and his hook hand (not sure if this was intentional, but there's a little circle on the hand that looks like an eye, which makes the hook look like beak, which makes his whole hand look like it's taking the form of an angry bird head). Love it!

Filth here is a hooded, pig-faced little bugger who looks like he woke up on the wrong side of the sty. I am a big fan of all this guy's personality, from his dynamic pose to his hoofed left foot to all the crotchety-ness in his face. I also really like the brown-green/olive color mine came in. It works nicely for the character and really shows off the detail.

Grady stands out from the other three Micro Bastards in that there's not much monster-like about him. Instead, he appears to be a human (or at least close to human) wrestler dude, which Jimmy mentioned he came up with for a comic he was working on and then incorporated into the Micro Bastards line. Grady reminds me a lot of one of the less-freaky characters you'd find in the M.U.S.C.L.E. or Kinnikuman lines. In fact, he looks like he could have been sculpted to be a nod to those series. Although I always favor the weirder, more monstrous characters, Grady is yet another cool sculpt that I am happy to add to my collection.

So there you have it, Micro Bastards series one. Like what you see? Keep an eye on the Ironhaus store and snag some of these guys for yourself, as Jimmy plans to regularly make sets available.