Of Wind-Ups and Wedding Favors

The vertigo induced by our impossibly nerdy hobby, crossing into uncharted territory.

I got married yesterday.  In an effort to incorporate some small fraction of my broken toy factory lifestyle into the proceedings, I decided to contribute to the banquet table centerpieces, with a variety of wind-up nightmares. 

After purchasing ~50 working(ish) wind-up toys from ebay for around $30, I went to work with clippers, putty, Testors, and a bottomless bits-box.  After turning each cheery pastel plaything into something more suited for combat, I spraypainted the toys with a gloss black to not only unify them, but color coordinate with a few other decorative elements.  While this did "gum up" some of the gears and working parts, the end result was a shambling army of nightmarish intent.

If you look in the lower left quadrant of the above pic, you will see a red bus.  The photo at the top of this post, is the very same bus, with some extra missiles and Robogears chassis bits added.  And the cheap gloss black spraypaint, of course.  The instagram filter?  Not my doing. 

These toys served as both conversation pieces, as well as distractions for the children in attendance to play with.   I encouraged people to take them at the end of the reception, and satisfyingly enough, not one was left behind.  I will have more pics eventually, as even our wedding photographers were posing the clockwork critters among our other decorations, and snapping pics.

So what does this have to do with gaming?  Not much.  Other than...

Maybe I have seen too many wedding pics, where our hobby is represented by a space-marine cake topper.  Sort of a "Here you go, honey" element of inclusion.  I wanted to feature our little world of toybashing, while making it just a touch more mainstream... and I am happy with the results.

By all means, steal this idea.