KALIBAK

CONCEPTUAL CASTING

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For all of you rabid Kalibak fans, I offer this interesting conceptual casting for your viewing pleasure! The figure is cast in a white material called alginate. Alginate is commonly used as a mold-making material in the dental field. This begs the question of why a conceptual rendering of Kalibak exists cast in alginate. According to the original source, alginate was being explored to ascertain the shrinkage ratio, a measure of how much size a piece sheds when cast in comparison to the original, of the material. I've never come across another Super Powers prototye cast in alginate, so it doesn't appear Kenner went very far with its use. Although the size of this piece is close to half of the production toy, I don't believe that diminutive size is attributed solely to shrinkage by any means.

Despite the size difference, this rendition of Kalibak mimics the style of the production figure much more closely than the unused alternate conceptual design shown here. The arms are actually seperate components from the single-piece head/torso/legs portion. I've attached the arms to the torso using a product called "sticky wax" for display purposes. Ironically, sticky wax is also related to the dental field as its designed for appication onto dental braces to avoid lip irritation. It's a nice reversible way to attach pieces...I've used sticky wax with great success to attach hardcopy limbs to hardcopy torsos when the metal dowels are missing.

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