Saturday, August 31, 2013

Plastic Parakeets Never Die!!

 Plastic parakeets never squawk, shed feathers, need fed, bite, poop, or die. They just get dusty. Here is an old Bachmann "Birds Of the World" series Parakeet model kit from the 1960's that I bought on eBay about 5 years ago, built it up and painted it to look like our late parakeet that we had that we named "Beak" because he had one. Here are pictures that I took of the life sized model recently.







Here, below is another plastic parakeet model that started out as a robotic toy. But because of how that the batteries had to be placed inside a cavity through an access door in the front breast feathers, and a head that looked like it was partially popped off or severed, I decided to modify it into a static, more realistic model, if you will. I filled in the battery compartment cover cracks, as well as the screw holes where the screws go that hold the toy together, using a plastic filler putty. After it dried, I sanded the breast back to its original contours, but I purposely left it a little rough to simulate the layered look of the bird's breast feathers. I also did before I did all this removed the button cell batteries, and disabled the heads animated movements, by cutting off the metal motor shaft that the head was mounted to, and crazy glued it directly to the birds body. While the thing was still animated, my wife said it's head moved when it chirped like it had Turret's Syndrome, the animation was that bad. After I did all this stuff, I went to my True Value store, and bought a small bottle of "Folk Art" brand acrylic paint in bright green, to repaint the breast back to the green color it originally was before I partially sanded it off when I resculpted the breast feather features. Here are the results.


Jim.

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