Customizing Phicen Figures

I found an awesome tiny ceramic bathtub at a yard sale, and I had a vision of putting a custom mermaid action figure inside. I had several action figures laying around, but the trouble of sanding down their clothes or completely sculpting a body was more effort than my burst of inspiration was willing to endure. I started looking around, and I came across these seamless Phicen action figures. Perfect! I’d seen them on social media pages of collectors and always thought they were cool, but the price tag always discouraged me. But the 1:12 scale figures average around $40 on eBay (whereas their 1:6 scale counterparts tend to be average around $60-$75), so I bit the bullet and bought one.

After customizing one of these figures (and working on a second at the time of writing this), I thought I’d share what I’ve learned.

First, a little about Phicen figures if you've never heard of them. They are super-articulated action figures which can achieve pretty much any pose or range of motion a real human can. They have metal skeletons covered in a rubber exterior, which looks realistic and is anatomically correct.

There isn't a huge variety of these guys (at this size at least). You get a choice of "pale" or "suntanned" and "medium bust" or "large bust." I did see one which was a bit curvier, but I also didn't scour the internet for different choices in seamless figures.

In the end, the tiny bathtub didn't work out, but I did make my mermaid! I made a few mistakes and found some limits to consider if you want to give customizing one of these a shot.

The first thing to know is their skin stains very easily, and there's nothing you can do about it. I stained my first custom with acrylics and used rubbing alcohol to get it off. It worked, but it also caused the rubber to make a melty-sticky mess out of her skin. I smoothed it out as best as I could, but from then on, the figure was very sticky where I'd used the alcohol.

The body is mildly sticky in general. With my second custom, I'm noticing a lot of fuzz latching onto the body, mostly in the spots where I tried to rub out a pastel stain with water.

So, if you want to blush the body or give it any definition, you have one shot. It can very easily look blotchy, so if you're going to try it, start off with colors that are very close to the existing skin tone so that, if something goes awry, it won't be noticeable.

Another thing to note: A lot of people reviewing this thing complain about the hands and feet popping off easily. I haven't had a lot of trouble with that. The feet take a little force to get off (with the figures I've handled), and the hands don't fall off unless you try the bend them too far. They're on a ball joint, so if you push too far, yeah, they'll come off.

The legs, however, do not come off. I planned on clipping them and sculpting the tail in, but no. These things are solid. I ended up hot-gluing them together. Sculpting onto the rubber doesn't work. I tried, and it won't adhere. I'm sure it'd work fine if you sliced off the skin altogether, but I was a little nervous to try it myself.

Something I don't like about these figures is that they have small heads that look disproportionate. Maybe it's just me, but the neck looks too thick compared to her head.

For both figures, I used heads from different Marvel figures. For the mermaid, I used the head from one of the cheap Ms. Marvel figures with no articulation. For my second project, I'm using a Marvel Legends Jessica Jones.

To get these heads to fit, I tucked some Apoxie Sculpt into the head hole and then inserted the ball joint from the seamless body. When it dries, the head fits snugly and will rotate as needed.

With my first project, the head sat higher so that the back of the head had a noticeable gap. It didn't seem to be as much of an issue the second time around, maybe because I used more clay fitting the head. Either way, I hid all neck-to-head gaps with hair. If you want to learn how to make your own wigs, I have an article detailing how to do so.

The last set of advice I have to offer at this point is about adding wings. It was easy to insert wings into the back. I didn't even have to poke holes.

You run into the metal armature pretty immediately, so be sure to bend your wire as shown to the left. This sinks it deeper into the rubber, holding the wing secure while avoiding the doll's skeleton.

I didn't even need to use glue for this. In fact, I doubt any glue would adhere to the rubber. Super glue might, but keep in mind, it'll probably have a frosty white stain when it dries. If you bend the wire down, wings (or whatever else you want to insert) shouldn't pull out easily.

If you're looking to make angel wings, I doubt the rubber would be able to hold the weight up. My fairy wings were already a bit droopy.

Phicen figures make for great bases to get a really realistic custom. Be sure to tag me in any of your custom Phicen projects on Instagram with @HaleysRepaints!

Love,

Haley

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