Episode 34: Bun Master

Cambridge. I MSHAN is a weird way media podcast. Well, I think it's fine, building jumble plans, taking. A ride on a cosmic drain. Switch on summer from a SLA machine.

Hello, and welcome to Cambridge and Whan, a podcast by two weird guys where we talk about the weird things we like. My name's Ronnie otherwise known as Skelevator on the YouTube's and I am Mark Bigley. Every time we get together for these I always feel like it's been forever. Maybe that's a good feeling to have because I get excited. All I was thinking about it, I'm like, wait, when did we record last I'm like, oh, a month ago.

A month ago, almost exactly. Why does it feel like three months. Because it's been a long month. I don't know about you. Yeah January, She yes, yeah, in multiple ways?

Oh yeah, all kinds of ways. Can we start off by saying that I think we both share a bit of sadness with the loss of bud Court. Yeah that was a bummer, super bummer boy telling you man, the beginnings of the last couple of years have really sucked. Yeah. I can't think of a better word than that.

Catherine O'Hara, Yeah, come on, she's an icon. And Bud Court. I don't know about you, but I was so excited when he showed up in the Life Aquatic, like a subtle reappearance of this legend. I don't even think I realized that was him. Yeah, I mean, he hadn't been anything that I know of.

Seeing all the people posting about him upon his day, I'm like, oh shit, he was in that. Because I've only watched it a couple of times, it's one of my least favorite Wes Anderson films. I love them, I know we differ in that way. I saw it in the theater. Carl Down went and saw it, and I wouldn't have known that that was him at that point.

When I saw it in the theater, I was like, why does that guy look familiar? It didn't click with me at all. I had no idea until recently that he was in it. But yeah, Harold and Maud is an absolute classic. I showed it to Cleo a couple of years ago and she loved it too.

And it's just a beautiful, wonderful, sad but heartwarming movie with lots of quirks. One of my favorite portrayals of white privilege ever made. It's such an important document of that, and it's also just so touching and I get teary eyed every time I watch it. Oh yeah, it's it's rough, man, That ending is rough. It's tough.

Yeah, Mark always forgets that. Bud Court and he shared birthday. You want to seeing out, seeing out and if you want to be free, the free, not the sadness. That's be kind of happier things. Now that everybody's bummed out.

How about you? Do you want to start off this time? We got a few things to talk about. Yeah. I picked up a few things recently, and I realized as I picked them up, or the things I got on eBay, I haven't gotten anything on eBay since the middle of October, so it's been about almost four months, which is a good thing.

I think, nice to take a break. But I did get a couple of things from eBay. Also some McDonald's stuff because at the end of January they reintroduced changeables to the world. What a cool surprise. When you buy McDonald's Happy Meal, you can become the master changer because you'll get a food toy that changes into an amazing robot.

We've been talking about changeables for a couple of years now because we've both picked up vintage ones. They're fun. I figured, oh, Kleion and I will probably stop by pick up a couple happy meals or something. But she actually had a quote unquote played eight with a friend of hers back around the time it started, and they apparently went and got happy meals. So she came home with two nice and one of them was the French Fry robot I guess.

And what passes for their playland these days the box of toys I guess that they have in their stores. I don't even know what it represents, but it's a blue box with some balls and stuff in it. It's a strange thing. I've never seen anything like that before. Yeah, it's weird, but it's kind of cool because it's really big and it's the dinosaurs.

So they took both versions that they did in the past, robots and dinosaurs, and combined them all into I think there were sixteen of them. Yeah, So she brought those two home and I thought, well, the French Fry one is one I would have been running for. Of course, there is a Hamburger, not a cheeseburger, this time just the hamburger, and I thought, well, I kind of want that one. The nice thing about this set was that they come in they're not blind box, you know what you're getting. The boxes have the image of the item you're getting on them because they're all varying sizes and stuff.

Yeah, I appreciate that. I figured, well you could probably. I mean, I hate doing stuff like that, but if I were to go, I would have said, can you try and give me the hamburger please? I thought, Man, I don't know, I'm just going to look on eBay. Of course, there's a million of them out there.

People somehow get full cases of them, and so how do they do that. I don't know, they know people that work there or something. I have no idea hijack a shipping truck. And I found one that with shipping would be about as much as her and I going and trying to get at McDonald's. So I was like, I'll just do that.

So I did get the little burger off of eBay. It's pretty cool. I mean, it doesn't quite have the charm of the originals. They're bigger, that's for sure. This hamburger is like way bigger than the little cheeseburger guy I have from the original run.

And so I have those three and that's fine. It's probably wrapping up well. Actually, they tend to go for a month, so it'll be over with by the time this is out right. Speaking of happy meal stuff, did you get any of the Disneyland seventieth anniversary ones? So I didn't even know about this.

I don't know how I missed out on this. When we went to Disneyland, we were right next to McDonald's and I went there to get us breakfast and I noticed the big poster and I was like, wait a minute, that must just be like a Anaheim thing then, because I haven't seen any advertisements or any posters on McDonald's locally in Fresno. So I asked them. I said, hey, that's cool, you know. They said, yeah, you know, we've got those.

And I didn't go back and get a happy meal or anything later on, and just when you're there Disneyland's the prior so and so when I got back to town the first week back to work after that trip, I slipped through the drive through and asked the people there and they're like, nope, we don't have them anymore, So I missed the boat. There were a couple of cool ones because there's seventieth anniversary a lot of there's some vintage inspiration in those little Happy Meal toys. But yeah, I missed out. I missed the boat. Yeah, we went through.

It must have been towards the end of last semester, because I wouldn't have had any reason to go during winter break to her school. And there's that one right by the school, obviously. And yeah, the nice thing was that you got two per Happy Meal. Yeah that's cool. We got four that first time, and none of them really did anything for me.

I think I got the little alien from Toy Story and right, I don't even remember what else, honestly. And then she went with my nephew. They went one time, and the one cool one that she brought back was the castle. I thought that was kind of it. That's the one I wanted.

Yeah, I don't like toys on stands generally, so don't really they're just kind of sitting out on our coffee table on Like I said, I don't even really remember what all we got. Yeah, I'll look to see if there's a Jimminy cricket, though one of us might have gotten one. If you see a Jimmy cricket hanging around your house, let me know, because, as our listeners will find out today, I'm currently reliving in that Jimminy cricket obsession right now. And then the only other thing I got and I stumbled on these. I've seen them before in my peruising on eBay and stuff looking for ad icon figures.

They didn't really hit with me at the time, but I was scrolling through Instagram and I saw this little Oreo girl doll, little vinyl figure about four inches tall, I think, with an Oreo cap sitting on top of her head, holding an Oreo and then in a little red dress. I showed Cleo and she's like, oh, that's really cute, So that sounds amazing. Went on eBay and just typed in Oreo girl doll and a bunch of them popped up. And then I saw that there was also a fig Newton girl. What I never I thought.

I said, No, we think cookies in Ben it's not a cookie mother, it's Auton k On. Then kerry On a cookie, it was just a cookie, But Newton's a food and cake and a chipsy hooy girl. Dan, I was like, oh, I have to get these, Yes, yeah, I have a thing about Fig Newton's. I love Fig Newton's. I always did.

As a kid. We used to get the health food store version because there was a health store by that Cno Market area where I would drool over the Planet of the Apes and migos. Oh yeah, right across the street there was a health food store and we'd always go there and get the healthy version of Fig Newton's. And I loved them. And I've always loved dried figs Calmerna in particular.

I kept a couple in my watch list and they were selling, you know, the whole set sets of three for not very much. And then I found a couple boxed versions. And then I found a set of all three in boxes going for thirty five or make an offer. So I made an offer. He immediately rejected it.

Oh I got an offer then for a loose set of three for a pretty good price. So I got them. And so here's the Fig Newton girl. Oh my gosh, that's amazing, adorable. How did this not register on our radar until now?

Like, that's incredible. The cookie just sitting on their head, yeah, on their head. And eating one. And I asked Carla, which one do you want? So she took the Oreo girl, and so Cleio got chips, ahoy, and I've got pig neutin.

That's amazing. This, it's amazing. Those are cool and so they look like they're made from are they It's like squeaky toy plastic. It's very much. This one's actually the most solid of the three, but they are very soft final they have little holes in them, you know where the molding hole, the injection hole.

So I cleaned them up all real well, and they of course ended up with water inside of their bodies. But whatever, it'll come out. Yeah, that evaporates eventually. So that's all I've gotten since last we spoke. Come on, big bird.

It's just a little nice little girl. I want you to meet her to thank him. She's not really eight feet tall. No, I'm very nervous, bird boy. I nearly laid an egg right here.

I've got a you know, New Year's resolution going on where I'm trying not to buy any plastic things. And so funny because I went to food for Less the other day. I don't know about you, But I'm a huge fan of the plaster piggy banks that are made in Mexico that are sold at Food for Less. I'm sure they're sold elsewhere, but sometimes I see them on the side of the road being sold in our agricultural neighborhood. I had a giant hamburger one when I was a kid.

Something about it I really loved. I think it's the quality of the paint applications, which is basically like spray paint masked off spray paint on plaster, the wonkiness of the sculpture, and how they're often depicting ips. The makers probably don't have permission for I love these. I always look with admiration. Rarely does one jump out at me.

They'll be like a character like Elmo or Bluey or something that just doesn't really appeal to me. But it was that Food for Less the other day saw a big bird in his nest holding a bag of bird seed piggy bank. It was nine dollars and ninety six cents. I got it, brought it home, told my wife and she was like, there's always a loophole and as yeap this year is. I am so so happy to have that.

This news resolution is happening right around the time where NECA is going to be releasing more of their Sesame Street figures. The next one that's coming out is their beautiful Big Bird, which will have the alternate head, which is the original Big Bird head, the kind of creepy looking one. You know, I'm drooling over this on images online, and I'm being steadfast and resisting buying it. I mean, I'm sure it's going to be around sixty bucks or something like that because it's a bigger one, so I'm certain it'll be expensive, maybe sixties extreme, maybe it's like fifty or something. So getting this Big Bird piggybank was a nice salve for me pining over Sesame Street compromise objects nice compromise.

And I also, you know, I went to the antique stores and did a little video mostly planning to explore Disney stuff with jewel jewels came along, and then I saw our friend who has the corner booth there, and Fifth Street Antiques always has something cool. It just like grabs me. He had a little cake topper or Jimminy cricket super cheap, and I just couldn't resist. I don't have any Jiminy's in my collection. I used to have a ceramic Jiminy when I was a kid that I just absolutely loved.

He traveled with me many years. I don't know at what point I lost him, but he survived even the great Ronnie Toy giveaway that my mom conducted in her classroom. Somehow Jimmy survived. But yeah, I don't know where he is now. I picked that little guy up, broke my rule for that.

What are New Year's solutions if not to be broken? Right? Yeah, that's why I don't make them. That's what I got. I did also get a happy Meal changeable.

I got the French fry guy. I'm glad that they exist. It's nice to know that McDonald's listens to our podcast and they were like, we better do this. Otherwise the Camber with Shawn guys are going to get pissed wonder why we're not doing it. But I want to say too that it's cool that they did it.

They're definitely missing some of the vintage charm that the old ones have, and I think it's the quality of plastic maybe or something they did good with them. The designs are simple, they're not super modern looking. It's just the vintage ones are just they've got such charm it's almost difficult to describe what that charm is. They're a little too cutesy too, the faces like that French frame. Yeah, that might be what it is.

I'm like, what are you supposed to be? Yeah? What is that? They're well made, which is cool. I think you can say that about most of the stuff that they produce that they give away for quote unquote free in a food bag.

Yeah, they're not going to fall apart in two years or anything like that. I know you and I messaged each other about this briefly, but I don't think you mentioned it yet. What's really cool is that they went with just the affordable happy meals. Yeah, these are just part of the regular happy meal like those seventieth anniversary Disney ones too. Like I'm a big fan of that McDonald's.

If you can just adult happy meals, sure, I guess that's interesting. I'm happy we got the succulent, populent plant flea market, flea Market, cactus plant flea market ones because they're super weird and super cool. Keep it to the regular happy meals. I think that's a good plan. Yeah.

I think though that they're probably due for another adult one here pretty soon. What do you think it's going to be. I don't know. Who knows. I couldn't have guessed the last couple McDonald's.

If you want me to break my New Year's resolution again, then you know, give us some more McDonald land stuff that'll get me to do it. We shall see. Just today, after recording, Ronnie and Mark discovered numerous McDonaldland theme toys that will be coming down the pipeline from Necca and Kid Robot, among others. I'm going to show you how McDonald's builds a Big Mac sandwich. All right, Now we're going to get into the the what's the right word for this?

I don't know. I'm gonna let you fish for it though. Now we're going to get into the I guess the main show. Yeah, let's talk about these things that are going on. What you got behind you there?

Mark, Well, I'm going to talk about the Officer Big Mac build first because I wasn't finished with it last time, and I had a couple of fails. And I know that I mentioned my consternation with the hat on the last episode and that it ended up being the big fail, and I'm pretty sure that after we recorded. Actually, I tried to glue on your original hat I had made with the plastic cup and some air dry clay for the details. Blah blah blah. I put lock tight around the edge where the air dry clay was, tried to attach it, and I'm like, this thing is not going to stick.

There is not a surface area on the edge of the hat to stick to the top of the head, which I had left pretty flat, knowing I was going to put a hat up there, and it didn't even be rounded off like a bun. I thought, well, shit, what the heck am I going to do? I have leave it loose. That's not going to work because it'll potentially fall off and break. So I thought about it for a long time, and I thought, well, I'm going to have to put something inside of it so that I can glue it on.

It needs more surface areas. So I had a piece of foam that I had cut off of probably Cleo's chicken nugget Buddy that she's working on, and it was about the right size. So I spent all this time. I sanded it into a perfect circle. I don't know how I managed to do that.

That's cool. I didn't have to stand a lot. It was almost the right size. But I sanded it into a perfect circle that fit perfectly into the bottom of the hat. I was like, well, that'll be the bottom.

I'll lock type that into the cup. I cut out a couple of little rounds of foam as well for the inside, so I could insert a skewer as extra grip. So I did all that, inserted the foam into it, let it dry, put a skewer in the top of his head, lock tighted that in, which ended up being a mistake, and then tried to attach the hat through the foam. I had to it sounds like it would work. It did not.

I smeared dap on the phone under the hat, and I'm like, you know, when that drives, that'll stick it. That's what I did with the eyes on our original burgers. So I get it positioned correctly over the skewer first of all, to get it to go down where I needed it to go down. It still was not touching the hat in enough spaces to adhere. And while I was doing that, apparently I knocked the foam.

The extra phoam not the part that I locked tight it into the cup, but the extra phone for the skewer came loose, I realized. And also as I was trying to put sit on the top that I had redone cracked all the way around the edge, and I thought, well, i'll fix that with DAP later, blah blah blah. So I pulled it off. I'm like, this is not going to work. I'm gonna have to come up with something else.

And so I bought a foam cone at Michael's. And of course it was that porous. Foam yeah, my least favorite poham. Yeah, And so I mod podged it and I thought, well, i'll DAP this after I mod podge it and it dries, I can't put air dry clay on it, it'll make it too big. It was just the right diameter as it was.

It was the same as the cup, and I knew it would fit on the bald spot that I left for him because I had already attached the rest of the seeds around his head. And yeah, that's true, left the middle empty. And so I was working on it and I tried to apply the DAP and it was just not going to go on like highballs, and I thought, well, what else can I put on this? And i thought about that fucking plaster cloth, and I'm like, I don't want to mess with that. Still going to have to DApp it, and just got frustrated and said, fuck it, it's just not going to have a hat.

He's not going to have a hat. I thought about like attaching it maybe even before I changed to the phone, but I'm like, maybe I could do magnets. I thought about magnets too. I was just thinking about magnets and Velcrow. Yeah, I thought about both of those.

And we have these old magnets, these Martha Stewart magnets. I don't know why, but they're really really strong, and I'm like, there's no way. I mean, it would rip one of the sides out if I didn't, not that i'd have to remove it, but they were too strong. I'm like, well, I could buy some magnets, or I could buy some bell Crow, but you kind of have to make a space for it and then get it centered right, and how do you get infered right? When the thing and I'm forget it.

So I think I messaged to you like, oh, he's going to be you know, retired Officer big Mac. Yeah, taking his hat off. He's been promoted to lieutenant big Man. You see it now, or it's just him at home when he takes his hat off, Commissioner big Mac. I couldn't pull the skewer out because that lock tight.

I would have ripped a hole in the head if I had actually tried to take it out. So I had to cut it off, and I couldn't get it perfectly out, so there was a little little stump of it hanging out and I'm like, oh, that's just a sesame seed. Yeah. I ended up putting the rest of the sunflower seeds around the top of the hole that I had left, and it looks great. He just doesn't have a hat.

He looks awesome on your shelf. The only other problems I had, well, I don't even know if there are problems, but when I had originally put all the condiments on, those pieces were all still separate. There were four layers bun and paddy, two of each of those, plus the top part which doesn't have any condiments on it. So the one paddy has the pickles on it, which were sculpted in originally when I did the patties or before I did the patties actually, and so the sauces and the lettuce I did without them being all stacked up, and I realized when I put them together, like, oh, I've got too much stuff, Like on one side it's like lettuce and then cheese and then something below. And I didn't really think about all that when I designed it, so that kind of bugs me a little bit, but it's not too bad.

And then I was still sort of worried about using acrylic paints. I just used Cleo's cheap, super old acrylics that she's had forever. That's the way to do it. It scared me thinking about the clear coat. I know you've done it before, and I know other people have done it.

I just was like, if I start spraying this with clearcoat and all that shit starts running off, I'm just going to flip out. That didn't happen, thank goodness. Kind of did a few little wash techniques where I put some highlights in the lettuce to give it a different a lightery green, more of a yellowy green. I put dark green underneath where I was going to do the sauce that would imply the relish parts and that was actually worked out really well. And then I had to figure out what I was going to paint the sunflower seeds with to make them look like sesame seeds.

None of her paints would work. She had like an antique white or something, but it was a little too white, and so I bought a cheap folk art craft paint from Amazon that was called Perchment, and the little square on the website, I'm like, oh, that's a good It's just like a very tan light tan color. Yeah. Of course, when I got it, though, it was basically antique white, two lights. So I found another one called Camel.

I could only buy it from Amazon. At least, I could only buy it with another color called Pistachio. And I'm like, okay, well whatever, it's three ducks for two little bottles of paint. The other one that I had bought was like sixty cents so, and it shipped for free the next day or so them. But wow, so I spent about four bucks on the three bottles of paint.

That camel one was just a tad too dark. I mixed it with the parchment and it was perfect. Yeah, And I got to say the second I started dabbing that paint on the sunflower seeds, it all fell into place. I'm like, oh, that's perfect. This looks like and I actually had just seen a Burger King commercial and their buns have sesame seeds on them.

I'm like, it looks exactly like that. Yeah, that's good. Isn't that a good feeling? Yeah? I was like, oh, that worked out really well, and that's the perfect color.

It's just a little super light round, but it offsets. I got the kind of overdid it on the light camel color for the buns. On him mark ment light caramel, not camel. He's considerably darker than the original Burger patch build we did. Yeah, it's that awful lighting in my garage.

That didn't help because it seemed like I was seeing a lot of the yellow still showing through, and so I kind of just got a little too heavy handed. But anyway, that makes him look more like the set maker statue, which I'm fine with. The other thing other than nailing the seeds and getting that right, the other thing I have to say is that I am a whiz at shaping top buns. I'm gonna give myself a pat on the back for that, you should the officer big mac one. I don't know how I managed to do that, but I got it perfect.

That original burger patch one I'm so happy with. And then my newest one, which I'll talk about later. I did it again, and I'm like, man, you're good. Mark. Yeah.

Is there a way to turn this into money somehow? Yes, there is a top burger. You just got to put yourself out there. I think people would order your burgers left and right if you started making them available and started advertising yourself. I'd have to charge way too much.

That's how I know understand why Dallas Pogue stuff is so expensive, because I'm not doing anything really as technical as him. Yeah, forget the materials man, the work that goes into this, Like you got to pay me for all that work you do. I mean, but that's also you know, that's what people are paying for when they pay for his sculptures and when I take in the commission. The people that purchase these types of items know that the hand is there, if it's hand painted, hand sculpted, whatever it might be. They know that they're purchasing artwork essentially because it's you're going to be able to see how this was made by holding it in your hand.

I'm one of the things I treasure about my Dallas Pogue Mayor mccheese Fisher Price style little guy, is that even though it looks like it could have been factory made, I can still tell that it was carefully crafted by hand. It's an artwork that I will treasure, and it was worth every penny. In fact, I think he probably could have charged more for those. Goodness knows that. Every single time I get a commission, I know I could have charged more.

And that's just the way it is. And I'm sure that's situations he's had to face. Two it's part of it. Mark. And if you ever decide to make burgers for people, I know you and I both know that there's an audience for this.

I'm sure people would want a Mark Begley style hand sculpted hamburger. I know I would. Well put in your order. I have enough foam for another one. There you go, I just might.

It's really cool that you and Cleo are working on a McNugget too, which is yeah, see. It's almost done. She's got to put on her second layer of paints on the facial features and then I got a clearcoat it and that's it. Yeah, that's awesome. May do another smaller one in the future because that was pretty fun.

Yeah, you gotta do one that has like a costume you can put on it. I bought a piece of felt. He's a black felt at Michael's. When I bought that foam cone because I considered doing his band in felt. Oh yeah, instead of air dry clay.

I cut a strip of it off and go, well, I'm not going to do the hat now, so you could give your nugget buddy a cape or something. I don't know. I've got an. Eight x ten inch piece of black felt here. Well, there you go.

Go to waste. I guess it cost all of sixty cents. That nugget is going to be in your family for a long time. You could like make little costumes for each season. How much fun would that be?

Oh? The other thing I bought at Michael's which has been really helpful is a six dollars set of twenty five paint brushes. I love that. In fact, I just bought a five dollars set of cheap brushes from what's that other hobby lobby. I don't go to hobby lobbies.

Yeah, I'd try to refrain from going there myself, but sometimes it's the only option for last minute items. I treasure cheap paint brushes. I have ever since I started making our on a regular basis. I am an advocate for the cheap cheap brushes. I've used about Between her and I, we've probably used She and I we've probably used ten different ones.

Yeah. Yeah, it just depends on what you need. That's so true, sweetheart. I guess I'll give a little update on the matter. Horn.

Yeah, it made it to Texas. It's currently residing on a giant miniature Disneyland platform in Eric's house. The guy had commissioned it. He called me. He was super excited.

The only thing that happened when it shipped and I packed this thing up so carefully. Some of the little guys fell off, but he was able to glue them back on. It survived for about five days. I was nervous as hell, you know, but it made it there and he installed it on the platform and it looks so cool. It was such a tough experience, but I'm glad I did it.

I learned a lot like you with your recent builds. You visualize it a certain way, and then certain things pop up and certain challenges arrive and you reconfigure your plan. Often it becomes the more unique item because of the revisions that you make along the way, and I couldn't be happier with the way it turned out, and I'm glad that he's happy with it. For those of you that want to see what it looks like as part of his build, I assigned him the duty of filming a little bit of his build, and he's going to send me that footage. I'm going to post it over on a new channel that I started.

I started a new channel based on my more recent interest in going to places documenting walkthroughs of immersive experiences. Really, it's inspired by us talking about local locales, our recent trips to Disneyland, which I don't know if I mentioned it before. I'm pretty sure I have, But my wife and I, as partial empty nesters, decided to do annual passes to Disneyland. So we've got a couple of trips coming up for this year. Over the next few months, this new channel is going to be visiting places, but it'll also include some disney centric stuff and this fits that category that video.

As soon as Eric gets me that footage, I'll be able to post that over there. For those of you that are interested in subscribing to that channel, go to your YouTube and type in at yt F with SV and that stands for Yesterday, Tomorrow and Fantasy with your host Sclevator. For now we enter the land of yesterday and tomorrow and of course the land of things. So it's a branch of the e sclevator thing, but it'll be walkthroughs and they're already over there. Got a couple Disneyland trip videos that I transferred from my other channel, and then also Jules and I went to story Land on a really foggy day.

That was a really cool trip. So that's over there as well. For geeks like me. If you're familiar with Hule Houser California's goal, that's really inspired by that because I just love the enthusiasm that he had when he would go to these weird, oddball places and. What's the line, But what's the line?

What is the line? That's amazing? Right, that's amazing. That is amazing. And as a kid, I used to love when mister Rogers would go to a place and talk to people, and it's kind of based on that too.

I just feel like my other channel. Oh, I guess this is a good time to mention this. I was starting to kind of see a big problem with my main YouTube channel that anytime I talked about Masters of the Universe, this is not a problem. It's kind of a to be expected. I guess.

Anytime I talked about Masters of the Universe or Sesame Street, I get a ton of views on my channel. Anytime I talked about Disney or my interests in things oddball things, hardly any views. Antique store walkthroughs, hardly any views. And then I tried to test this out, and the new channel is still seedling, you know, a little tiny thing. But when I posted this new build, which I'll talk about in a moment for Masters of the Universe, in preparation for Motuniverse, which is coming up in May, I got this commission.

I posted the first video, it blew up. I posted the second video. It blew up even more. Obviously, that channel the main Skelevator channel. I think people are interested in Masters of the Universe primarily occasionally Sesame Street stuff, occasionally Star Wars stuff.

Masters is where it's at for that, and I think people really enjoy watching the build videos when it comes to snake mountains and castle gray skulls. So I finally figured it out. Mark. YouTube is a hard thing to figure out. I think I'm getting there already.

Yeah. So the Matterhorn made it. The Matterhorn survived the trip to Texas, and I'm excited to share that with you all. Yeah, and you got the rails figured out and you did oh my god, epoxy waterfalls. Yeah, it looks good.

Yeah. My mom actually messaged me not too long after she saw it and when I posted images of it, and she was like, can we live there? And I thought that was one of the nicest compliments a person can give another person for making something. Can we live there? Yeah?

If we could build giant Hamburger houses, if we could build giant matterhorns that live in I think that we would. So, folks, those of you who are millionaires billionaires reach out to us, will gladly get contractors involved in build jew Hamburger and matter hornhouses. Yeah. I can do the top bun for you, that's for sure. Yeah.

Mark is a bun expert. I'm a bun master, bun master. Mark my Anna. Conda, don't want none unless you got buns hun Yeah. Yeah, I don't know why.

Mark B's that Bee stands for bun master. Yeah yeah, I see you have another little project going. Yeah. I mentioned the mister Grape idea. Yeah, after the Officer Big Mac, I'm like, I think that's a little too much.

And I had also mentioned in the last episode possibly doing a mini burger, So that's what I decided to do. I wanted to do it kind of like the Officer Big Mac, where I ordered the rounds and that's just a little easier for me to manage. I had a feeling it probably wasn't a great idea, just because doing it at a smaller size with the same thickness, all you can really get are one inch foam rounds. You can't or at least I haven't found half inch. Maybe they're out there, and cutting one and a half perfectly is like not going to happen unless you have some kind of jig or something to put it on.

Yeah. I thought, well, it'll just be small but kind of tall. So that was what I figured, and I went through the whole thing of trying to find a decently priced pack of them on Amazon and getting all different crap that I didn't want to see. So I was looking for four inch rounds, and I don't know if you can get any smaller than that or not. So I got a pack of six four inch by one inch rounds for six bucks on Amazon.

Nice. I mean, I'm not going to find it cheaper anywhere else. So I bought that, and I figured that I use four of them. Two would be the top bun and then the paddy and then the bottom bun. So that's sort of what I started out with in my head and worked on that, and so I glued the top two together.

Then I mod podged everything. This is the smooth foam, so I knew I wasn't going to have any issues with attaching DAP or anything like that, but I mod podcheduff. Just to be extra safe, I sanded. I don't trust myself with knives. I used blades on the officer big mac heead and got that pretty good, but it was hard to get the shape right.

So I thought, well, I'm just gonna sand this. You got to trowel it. So I glued the top two together and then I started sanding the very top to where I could get that rounded bun. It took forever because this was the more compact foam, but I kept with it and I got the roundness right, and then I would just keep stacking the pieces together and I'm like, this is just too tall. It's too tall by how wide it is.

I went ahead and daped the top bun and the bottom bun, and I knew that I didn't need to adapt the patty because I was going to use the rest of the very last of my air dry clay to make that. And so at one point I put what I had already dapt together, just laid them on top of each other, and I was like, oh, that's the perfect size. It looks like a burger like you're holding. It's almost like you're a smaller person holding what would be a regular size burger for that smaller person. I thought, oh, that's the perfect height.

And I was standing the top of this. Maybe I can get this down to one and a half inches instead of two, which I got pretty close to actually, and then I was like, okay, stop and adapt it and everything. I'm like, oh, no, that's perfect. I had already made the contour for the bottom bun but I was like, you know what, I'm just going to put the the patty on the foam. Yeah, kind of in between the two, and now it's perfect.

So that's what I ended up doing. And so, like I said, now I have three more pieces of foam. I could make another one of these basically the same way, but probably even a little better because I would carve it out correctly this time for a better placement of the patty. But anyway, you could do a mini mayor mccheese. Yeah, it was actually one of the things that I had thought about.

The inspiration for this was less McDonald's and more wimpy burgers. Yes, I wanted the patty to stick out good ways from the buns. I'd gladly pay you Tuesday for the hamburger. Today. I made little rounds of air dry clay, got it wrapped around there pretty well, and then I stippled it with the foam that I had purchased for the Officer big Mac hat.

Oh there you go. So I got texture that way. I think I probably should have stuck with the aluminum foil trick, yeah, because as I have painted it, I have lost almost all of the texture on the patty. Oh yeah, especially with that yellow paint, that yellow gloss paint that I have. It almost erased all of it.

I've done this before, when I've realized my texture is not prominent enough. I've gone in and used dental tools or nails and chipped away at it to get it, you know, and then filled in larger chunks that have chipped away on accident a little bit, and then chipped away a little bit more. It just takes time. But it's a matter of just like mending an issue you've noticed along the way. But that's something to do, yeah, or consider doing.

I might do that. I might try something, or might even just sand it a little bit with a not the fine grit but a heavier grit sandpaper kind of yeah, mess it up, a little, mess it up, but we'll see. And then I decided I wanted pickles, of course as always, and cheese, and so I got the cheese. A little more difficult than the officer big Mac, because I had to put it around. Yeah, the patty that's sticking out, so it's not laying flat it.

I don't know if you can tell, but it's sticking out. You were right about it looking like a wimpy burger, because it's sort of like what's great about those wimpy burgers is the shapes are exaggerated, and so it looks like that. I mean, gosh, you basically built a hamburger that'll be perfect for you dressing up as wimpy in October for Halloween. Although his didn't ever have cheese on them, but that's no. And then of course I had to do some sauce dribbles, so I did one of ketchup and one of mustard for the front, and a big drip of ketchup on.

The back that looks great, by the way, And. The red's a little bloody looking, so more like blood drips right now. I probably could have lightened it with a little bit of white paint, but that's all right. I'm done with those. And the pickles, I had tried to put some indentations on the tops of them for ye of course they basically got covered up by the pad, but I did end up getting those lighter, and then with the darker edge and darker seeds, which I had wanted to do previously and never did on my previous pickles.

Oh, and I was able to do the saran wrap trick, and I kept all of the light brown off of the cheese so I don't have to paint the cheese. Yeah. I considered doing a custom mix because Cleo does have an orange in her old paint. Supply thought about making it more like actual American cheese. It has an oranger tint to it.

But I was like, you know what, I actually got this so that the yellow is still there. I masked it off and didn't let the brown get on it. And I thought, nah, I'll just save myself the trouble of having to paint those. It looks great. Just have to paint the patty.

Going to be a little bit harder with that curve, but I'm trying to be real less anal about this one. If I get brown on spots, and I did manage to get this lighter than the Officer Big Mac, more like the original burger, so that the brown isn't as dark and you see a lot more of the yellow underneath. So that ended up working out. Well, Yeah, that looks really good. And what you said about the ketchup, I think if you went lighter with the ketchup, though, at least based on what I'm seeing, here.

If you went lighter with the ketchup, I don't think it would look as much like ketchup. I think that looks good. Ketchup is supposed to look a little bit bloody. It's not supposed to be a light red. I'm not that worried about it.

I figured. I mean, I just I walk in and I see it, and I'm like, oh, that looks like a blood drop, you know, like horror movies. With the clear code. It might. I don't know if it'll tone it down or brighten it up at all, but we'll see.

I'm going simple, trying to get it done quick. And then I told Cleo, I said, I've got three any more. If you want to do a burger, we'll do a burger or Mayor mccheese. We'll see. It would be perfect for Mayor mccheese.

There you go. He's a simpler sculpt that's for sure. I mean, you took an Officer Big Mac. That's the most complicated sculptural burger character ever. He does have a top hat.

Those Hey, you know. Now that you've had experience with Officer Big Mac's hat and all of those ups and downs mostly downs. Yeah, now you know, maybe an approach that will work for you better for a different hat, for a different. Sculpt Yeah, I think it would have to be all cardboard basically, Yeah, fortified with something. There's this stuff.

It's called air dry clay, but it's for kids, and it's more like foam. It's not messy. It almost has a plasticky feel to it. H Yeah. I saw packs of that when I was ordering stuff and I was like, hmmm mm hmmm.

I made a grimace. You know, you saw that I made a grimace using that stuff. And when I was at work during one of our employee team building exercises and stuff like that, I'm a grimace that day with that air dry clay. But that's stuff. One of our student assistants in our office made a little top hat and gave me the top hat to put on grimace and it was done with that clay.

And if they can do it, you can do it. And that stuff is light and it dries hard, it feels plasticy, and it's easily let's led on to anything. So that's something to look into and it's cheap. Yeah. I saw buckets of that on Amazon when I was trying to get the other air dry clay.

It's kind of amazing material, and I've been thinking about finding ways to mess around with that a little bit. It's a good idea actually. Also, epoxy sculpt could be fun for you to try too. It's just pricier. Cheap is always good for me.

Cheap is the best. I love cheap me too. Fabulous secret powers were revealed to me the day I held aloft my magic sword and said the goal. All right, we'll talk about your gigantic build. This gentleman out in Illinois from Illinois as a wildlife adventure park called Aikman Wildlife Adventure Park.

It's in Arcana, Illinois. Is it Arcana or Arcana or yeah, I don't know, but it's out there in Illinois. He contacted me because he saw my previous Castle, Gray Skull and Snake Mountain builds on my YouTube channel. What they've decided to do over there is well, they have a prehistoric museum that coincides with their wildlife Adventure park, and of course the animals in Illinois don't want to be outside in the wintertime, so they have this prehistoric museum that coincides with their wildlife Adventure park during the colder months and indoor sort of walk through with giant dinosaurs that have been built to resemble how we perceive dinosaurs and stuff like that. Kind of a cool place.

He's a toy collector, and so he created a toy museum to coincide with the prehistoric museum. With the Masters of the Universe movie coming out in June, I think a lot of people are realizing that there's more interest in this than maybe previously anticipated. So he was like, hey, I want to do I want one of your snake mountains and one of your gray skulls for our toy museum. Then he sent me the measurements, and I know I hadn't agreed to do it. I was telling him I got to keep my regular job.

This is not something I'm doing professionally as of yet, and I don't have enough vacation time to drive these out to Illinois. Agreed to have movers come and pick them up, and I'll get to that in a little bit. We talked about the measurements. We agreed upon a commission price. Since he's paying for the shipping, it would be a reasonable, more reasonable price than paying for me to drive them out there.

Here are the measurements just so people have an understanding of how big these are. There are two of them, so there's one Castle Gray Skull and one Snake Mountain. They both have the same basic measurements, which is seven feet by eleven inches, so almost eight feet long the platforms for each of them, and then nearly five feet wide four feet by eleven inches. I've taken an inch off of their original required measurements just so that they'll fit into the cases and there's a little room. They've built these plexiglass cases for them, and then about five and a half feet tall.

These are huge. I had to chat with my wife, Hey, at a certain point, I'm going to need to be working on these in the garage because they're not going to fit over our fence or through our gates. Like I can't work on them in the backyard. At a certain point, she was like, fine, just show me the money essentially, and I did, and she was like, Okay, it's a bit of a crunch time on this because they need to be done by near the end of May because they will be showing up at a convention in Redondo Beach at the Marriott Torrents for the MOTU Niverse Convention, which is happening May twenty third and twenty fourth, So what is that Memorial Day weekend. There's going to be a lot of hype about the Masters of the Universe movie coming out.

There's going to be This convention has already gotten a lot of positive responses. I think there's going to be a lot of people there, and some really cool Masters of the Universe artists will be there too, Rebecca Taylor, who worked on the design team, whose husband is Mark Taylor, who's like the primary designer for Masters of the Universe stuff back in the day. And Rudyobrero, who's like a hero of mine, who did all the box art for the original Masters of the Universe line, or most of the box art. He's responsible for those amazing paintings of Snake Mountain, Castle Gray Skull. I'll be renting a U haul to get them down to Redondo Beach and then the movers will take them on Sunday afternoon and start driving over to Illinois.

I was a little terrified. I've lost a lot of sleep brainstorming ways to do this that will make these builds more impressive than previous builds, not just in size, but also in detail, and thinking about alternate ways to sculpt the stone facades for Gray Skull, because that's a very time consuming process. I made almost every brick or stone on the facade out of air dry clay, So I'm going to be experimenting with some alternate materials. I found this amazing stuff. It's like a paper mache but a plaster.

It's a light weight but hard sculpting material. So I'm going to experiment a little bit with that and see how that works out. It's going to be an adventure. It won't be as challenging as the matter horn because that I had to reinvent the wheel. As far as sculpting in the Z scale, for me, I'm just not used to sculpting that small.

These are going to be bigger than what I'm used to doing, and so I feel like that's more in my comfort zone. But yeah, they're enormous pieces. Are there templates, because I know that when you see concrete that's been poured to make it look like stone or brick, they basically lay down templates on top of it to make the lines and stuff. Are those available to buy? Yeah, you can buy large silicone or plastic molds for stone they're just a little pricey.

One of the main issues that I have with that you saw I got that little silicone mold for stone wall. I was doing a little revising of my original gray skull and I wanted to put some stonework on the inside. One of my big disappointments with that is that the molds are always a certain size, and so I guess the closest analogy is in those old cartoons when you see the same background repeat. I'm a little bit uncomfortable with having that be a visual element that people looking at it can spot. I guess the solution to that would be like changing the direction of the template.

Yeah, that's very true, and so I've experimented with that a little bit. I like that idea, but I've also been looking into the first castle Grayskull build. I didn't do enough research on the sculpting of the phone as opposed to using the phone just for a skeletal foundation. Done a little bit more research recently on sculpting the phone to make the brick facade. I'm kind of excited about that.

That goes back to the original idea that I've really spent a lot of time researching for the Snake Mountain builds because this is my first Gray Skull commission. People have really wanted snake mountains, so this would be my fifth Snake Mountain commission. So I've had a lot of experience doing that using set making techniques. But now I'm gonna be using some of these set making techniques as far as how these stone walls are carved from foam and then painted and given the hardshell. After my wife and I just recently started rewatching Game of Thrones, I'm watching these interior shots and doing research on the side too of how these stone walls are constructed, and I just love that.

I love when something looks solid when it's not. I'm going to be messing around with a little bit of that and experimenting with stuff. And so this series of videos i'm gonna do, it's gonna be about one In a this case scenario, it will be two videos a week, but in more realistically, it'll be about one video week on the main Sclevator channel where I do updates of these builds. I'm editing the third one today and should launch tonight, which is Friday, the thirteenth of February. So now you have the hot wire cutter.

Don't they make other hot utensils more like a knife or us that might help too. Maybe I have different attachments for my hot wire cutter. The one I use the most is what we've seen on the videos, which is that long, thin wire which warms up and cuts through the phone real easily. There are peg attachments. It can be like a pen where you draw in and then also one where you can insert deep into the phone right and then cut from there.

The pen option is going to be good for starting some of those initial shapes of the stone and then using an exact o knife to make the shapes irregular. And of course the wonderful gift of the age old and tried and true technique of the crumpled aluminum foil ball that you can use to make the texture works really well on that insulation foam as well as air dry clay. And then I'll be experimenting with this paper mache material that is like dries hard, but it's lightweight. There are these skeletal structures on the filmation version of Castle grayscale that I'm going to be experimenting with on this build. So that'll help too with that.

I want to say that there's I would suggest DAP, but not for something that size, right, Yeah, I think the spray texture oh yeah, the walls, Yeah, it might work for something. For sure, the interior of certain spaces that are going to be harder for me to get to because this will have several different rooms and compartments within each of these builds. That texture spray, that plaster texture spray is awesome. Yeah, and you can get it in different can be more clumpy, less clumpy, which is cool, and I'm certainly going to be using some of that for There's this area underneath Castle gray Skull called the Crystal Caverns. I'll do a little bit of that there.

Yeah, it's exciting. I just built the skeletal frames for underneath these platforms. They're going to be transportable and durable, using wood, using hard elements like hard cardboard. The tubes that people usually use to pour concrete fence posts and other things, I'm using those for Gray Skull too, and it's been a lot of fun, very cool. Yeah.

When I saw the size of the tubes, I was like, oh, it's going to be big, yea cool Yeah. Yeah, you're going to see the video that's going to launch tonight. I've placed the tubes on the platform with pieces of the walls. Seeing that on top of the foundational structure really puts everything in as far as how big these are. Knowing where they're going to and the size of them, that's pretty impressive.

Yeah, it makes me nervous that they'll be driven by people who are probably more used to moving furniture and stuff. I think that's part of the risk. But also for every commission I've done, I've always provided a few additional supplies, a can of spray paints and mending glue and things like that, and so they can fix any small errors or not errors, but things that might chip off along the way and stuff like that. Well, if you need anything top bun shaped, give me a call and I'll help you out. Yeah, the gray skull Skull has that giant bun on the top of his head, so maybe I'll get you to do that for me.

I'll stand it down to perfection. I'll get the bun Master on that. Yeah, that's the name of this episode, right, bun Master. Yeah, and you know I'm going to clip that'll shoot what's his name. I use a fuel Houser episode.

No, yeah, well that'll be in here too, Yeah, I think of his name. Never mind, Sir mix. A lot buns on Sir Mix a lot, Yes, definitely. So that's exciting. People are tuning into this.

I think they're excited about it, which is cool to see. It's nice to see when the stuff I put on the channel is providing some joy for other geeks like us. I like seeing that. That's the whole reason why I did it in the first place. So it's nice that people are responding positively to this endeavor.

Every time I take on something like this, whether it be small like the Matterhorn or one off commissions, I always feel like Richard Dreyfuss in Close Encounters of the Third Kind sitting at the table with the mashed potatoes, because my daughters and my wife they're always like, oh, here he goes again. Should we be worried about this guy? It's exciting. This is an exciting one and it's gonna be cool when it's done. I'll have to have you over to look at them, yeah, close.

Or seriously, if you do need help let me know. Yeah, I will, because. They're rather large. So if you need an extra set of hands. I might I might have to get you and jewels over here to help me put them in the U haul.

Oh yeah, true. Maybe we'll have a sculpting day where I can put you in jewels to work putting some things together. Sounds cool, you, Rial bub Oh. I'm not going to talk about this today as far as a local locale, but I am wearing my Sunnyside drive in. Sure Ooh nice, I love that.

Are they still doing the flea market out there? I think it's been raised. I don't think there's anything out there anymore. They could be. I shouldn't speak out of turn, but I want to say that it's like been completely closed up.

I'm going to look into that. I'm really going to piggyback off of local locales that we brought up in here and try and get out to some of these places we've talked about, right, I know not all of them exist anymore. I'm planning to go out to Minkler. We talked about Minkler in the last episode, planning to go out there and do a little that's amazing hule Houser experience out there in Minkler. Yeah, that is amazing Sunnyside flea market.

This is really sad to say, but I never made it. I never went there for the flea market. I thought about it multiple times when I saw some things that people were getting at flea markets, and I'm like, man, I really need to go out there. Yep. I just realized that every every single item of clothing I'm wearing today has been a Christmas gift.

Not this year, but over the last three years. Every single piece of clothing I'm wearing right now. Hey, my wife has gotten me for Christmas. That's nice. I'm wearing a Christmas gift too, this jacket.

Because I don't buy clothes for myself hardly at all. I have shirts that are twenty years old. I have tea shirts twenty years old. So yeah, I'm more likely to pick up a unique item than to buy myself clothes too. So yeah, I'm right there with you, me too.

Well, I know you and I already have ideas of what we might talk about next. Well, you'll definitely talk about Jimmy cricket since you tease that earlier and yeah and sacked it, which is fine. Yeah, we ran out of time today. So folks, are you gonna hear me talk about Jimmy. I got a lot to say about that little guy.

Did you know you are an animal? You're a human animal? And all will be revealed in the next episode. In fact, who knows, because my wife and I are going to Disney on the twentieth of this month, so to sort of celebrate our anniversary and sort of a delayed Valentine's trip for us. And there's something that I'm tempted to try and pick up when I'm there.

But look for one of those vinyl figures of him too. Yeah, I mean so Jimmy cricket merch has always been difficult. He's too small. I guess he's a little niche. That kind of blows my mind because he was one of Walt Disney's favorites.

It's strange that there's not a lot of Jiminy cricket merch out there. But who knows what I might come back with. We'll see. I think he was big for us people, our age. I know for me, I want to say he introduced all the episodes of the Wonderful World of Disney.

He showed up in quite a few of those along with Walt. He showed up in a few of those collected shorts that were turned into feature films. He was a beloved character for quite a while, and then I think people just sort of lost interest. Maybe it's the top hat. I don't know.

He seemed to be the spokesman for Yeah, a lot of that stuff in the seventies and early eighties. I mean interesting, when you wish upon a star is like the Disney theme song, which, yeah, I'm glad, and we'll talk about this more next time. But I'm glad that he's being recognized a little bit more right now. It could just be because of the seventy ten of three and stuff like that. True, So I guess that's it.

Yeah, take us out, man, all right. Remember until we meet again, folks, have fun, stay weird, and keep collecting in whatever way you see. Fit, and call me if you need a burger maid. That's right, we got the bun maaster here. Absolutely, he's ready for me.

Don't answer my phone, ye, don't call him. Maybe send a message, sure, don't even do that. Don't even do that. He won't answer that either. I'll just have to read your mind or something.

That's right, send a telepathic message. Actually, you know, what the zeitgeist works for us, So somehow Mark will get the message. Yes, let's leave it at that. Yeah, buns on Josh, I'm gonna have to tell him about my weirdness. I'm sorry, Josh Cambridge or Sean is a weirding Way media podcast.

Ye