Wednesday, September 2, 2020

Wargaming Pop Culture icons: Gilligan's Island


If you grew up in the 60's, 70's and even the 80's, how could you not need to have this group of castaways available for any Pulp gaming action? I felt the same way and then I realized that no figures that I know of exist for them. Thus began a mid Corona Virus quarantine search of 28mm mini producers to find my crew and passengers of the S.S. Minnow.

Gilligan's Island is an American sitcom that ran on TV between 1964-1967. 


The show followed the seven castaways and their adventures on an uncharted, deserted island in the Pacific Ocean. It has run in syndication ever since so new generations of fans can keep enjoying this bunch, or maybe at least so all of us in middle age can.  

Our cast of characters from rear L to R: Thurston Howell III, "Lovey" Wentworth-Howell, Ginger Grant, Captain Jonas "The Skipper" Grumby, Mary Ann Summers, Gilligan, and Professor Roy Hinkley, Ph.D.

I was able to do a pretty good job of finding appropriate figures. I did settle on a Mrs. Howell figure from a few episodes of her playing the part of a Victorian lady.



I also went with a figure that represented Mary Ann wearing a sun dress.










The series ran for a total of 98 episodes and also produced three made-for-television movies.








So, now that you may have been introduced to our characters or had a refresh here are the figures I used to create the cast.

The Skipper, Mr. Howell and Mary Ann are from Pulp Figures. The Skipper was modified to remove the club he was holding and had a bit of green stuff added to fill out his mid section. Mary Ann still needs to have a bit of painting done to add a bit more color, maybe flowers, to her dress. Mrs. Howell is from Reaper Miniatures. Ginger and the Professor are from Hasslefree Miniatures. Believe it or not, Gilligan was the hardest to source. There are sailor figures out there, but they are mostly fairly brawny depictions. I needed a much more slender character. By chance I happened to stumble across an old line of figures (still being produced by the original sculptor) called Reviresco. While a bit rough compared to modern sculpts, it worked for my needs and my main characters for Gilligan's Island were now complete. 

Now all I need to do is go back and rewatch some old episodes to collect some possible game scenarios and additional characters.


Hope this helps anyone who might be interested.

Feel free to check out the first post in the series Wargaming Pop Culture icons: Jonny Quest

No comments:

Post a Comment