Captain Caveman’s Curious Critters

 Season 10, Episode 6

Whilst rummaging through the bits box in search of components for Captain Caveman, I previously neglected to mention that I had made an unexpected discovery. Nestled within the yellowed remains of another long forgotten Kinder Egg shell lurked a tiny, plastic elephant.  Now most sensible hobbyists would have smiled fondly, returned it to the box and carried on with the task at hand; I am evidently not most sensible hobbyists.  At the time, the discovery was noted and reluctantly set aside. Captain Caveman still required vast quantities of hair and there seemed little point introducing further complications into a project already involving peanuts, cake decorating equipment and minor acts of sculptural vandalism.  The elephant, however, remained.  Waiting. Patiently. Like some diminutive, plastic, embryonic inception.

One of the favourite, recurring motifs of the original Captain Caveman cartoons was the inclusion of curious critters that Cavey would produce from the end of his club or indeed from the mass of hair covering his body.  These often unwilling contributors would lend their unique skills to furthering the plot, and I would chortle at the cameos not truly appreciating at the time that everything could be made better with dinosaurs.  Now as Flaming June is all but extinguished, I wondered if I could include such frivolity in my Forgotten Heroes project?  Before I knew quite what was happening, one hundred and twenty ‘dainty’ dinosaurs were en route to Awdry Towers.  I would love to report that this decision was the result of careful planning and considered reflection. It was not. It was, however, available with free postage and as I write this dispatch, the true scale of this acquisition remains unknown to the Saintly Mrs. Awdry. 

My current strategy is based entirely upon concealment and the hope that brightly coloured dinosaurs might somehow, some day be mistaken for a sensible purchase.  I selected five likely candidates to become Cavey’s familiars and stashed the other one hundred and fifteen! 

Based and undercoated these were immense fun to paint.  I took some initial inspiration from the cartoon itself but in the end plumbed the depths of my paint store to retrieve the most lurid and underused collars I possessed.

Meanwhile the memory of the small, plastic elephant cracked, "Life... finds a way." One of the stalwart gags of Hannah-Barbera prehistoric world is the use of small wooly mammoths pressed into surface of their world. For example a mammoth sink makes an appearance in the Flintstones episode, ‘Bedrock Rodeo Round Up’ and a full blown mammoth shower turns up in ‘The Jetsons Meet the Flintstones’. Could my little plastic elephant be used for such a purpose? In the butchered words of Professor Malcolm,

 I became so preoccupied with whether or not I could, that I didn't stop to think if I should. 

Success criteria would include a more cartoon like pose, longer tusks, more hair and the small matter of creating the illusion that the trunk was emitting water.  I am starting to worry that this was no longer modelling, but more like experimental palaeontology!

There followed a period of genetic experimentation that would have had even John Hammond quietly reviewing his insurance arrangements as I set about disassembling and reconstructing the unfortunate pachyderm. I had an idea that I would try and make the elephant sit, using a piece of slate to achieve this, and in doing so elevate his trunk to allow the water to fountain out. Lashings of superglue and green stuff followed before the creature was trimmed, sliced and reassembled. The resultant abomination looked so very sad that there remained only one option, the Saintly Mrs. Awdry's cake decorating tool was summoned from retirement and once again pressed into service.*

*I am beginning to suspect it has now spent considerably more time producing prehistoric pelts than decorating cakes.

The fur covered a multitude of sins and anatomic anomalies although there was a call to do some running repairs to sliced off toes, the elephant’s not mine you understand.  The tusks were my next consideration and having removed its original appendages in the manner befitting a deranged, plastic poacher I attached superfine Milliput ones that had previous cured.  A little bit of sanding and some green stuff applied to conceal the cracks and the build was almost complete - just the small matter of the cascading water feature.  

Using a pin vice with a drill bit barely visible to my ageing eyes I had created a couple holes atop the trunk.  And so dear reader on to the true folly of this plan, a return to the UV resin!  What followed looked less like miniature modelling and more like an experiment conducted by a particularly eccentric Fellow of the Royal Society.  With the UV torch suspended above the desk, strands of twisted wire were slowly coated with resin and cured layer by layer until something resembling a fountain began to emerge. 

Leaving the ‘water’ aside to completely harden, the mammoth was given a lick of paint and then positioned for the final assembly.  I delicately threaded the ends of the wire, kept free from resin into the pre-drilled holes in the trunk and et voilà!  

Does it serve any meaningful purpose on the tabletop?  Absolutely not.  Does Captain Caveman require a woolly mammoth shower feature?  Equally no.  Did I enjoy every ridiculous moment of creating it?  Cavey would, I suspect, answer that question with a resounding… 

Captain CAAAAAAAVE MAAAAAANNNNN!