A quick reminder that Radio Free Charleston will debut on Thursday this week. Your humble blogger/radio host took advantage of the holiday weekend to not do any work, and now I’ve got to play catch up.

Speaking of catch up, here are the photos I took of the entries in the custom figure contest at JoeLanta back in August. Sadly, we had to cut out very early Saturday morning because we had to make our way to Columbus for PowerCon, so I was only able to get photos of three figure entries and one diorama.

Also, apologies for the grainy nature of the photos. My trusty digital camera, at fifteen years old, is not as trusty as it used to be, and your PopCulteer was also dealing with an MG flare-up that affected my ability to get clear pictures.

More contest entries showed up after we left, and the contest was in the capable hands of my old buddy, Dave Matteson, seen above.

The plan is to get more video ready for this weekend (the raw footage vids of JoeLanta and PowerCon) and squeeze out another photo essay for Friday.

But for now, here’s a tiny sample of the creativity on display in this cool 1/6 scale hobby…

This diorama depicted a scene from The Battle of Hue City…

…a key battle in the Tet Offensive in early 1968. Though vastly outnumbered…

…US Marines fought house-to-house to retake the city from the North Vietnamese.

There is a tremendous amount of detail in this diorama.

One of the three figures we got to see was this cool “Spec Ops Santa.” You’d better be good…or else!

There was also this nifty 1885 US Army Infantry Dress Uniform figure, again with amazing detail.

A closer look…

“The Fly Lebowski” is a hilarious mash-up of “The Fly” and “The Big Lebowski,” and was my personal favorite, although I think the artist should have called it “The Bug Lebowski.”

The detail was incredible, with the white Russian, shorts, and bathrobe…but it was the rug that tied the whole thing together.