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NOTE: You may also be interested in my Mechanoids comics page and my Mechanoids RPG page.
I currently own the following set of five miniatures. Here's what background data I can provide about them.
On 10 December, 2002, a listing appeared on eBay for an item listed as:
"Mechanoid RPG minis - One of a Kind Item"
The auction description had the following text:
For use with the Mechanoid RPG by Palladium Books. These are a set of 5 'proof' miniatures for a line which was never produced. They were made in the mid 1980's. The 25mm figures are of the E.B.A. (Environmental Battle Armour Division) character class. This is the rarest of the rare!
The following pictures accompanied the auction:
On 17 December, 2002, I won this auction for US$10.00 plus US$4.00 shipping.
Ultimately, I've learned that these particular items were previously owned by Matthew Balent (a former Palladium Books® staffer). I was fortunate enough to have an email conversation with Mr. Balent shortly after my purchase of these items. To distill it down to its simplest form, he told me that these five miniatures were given to him at the 1983, 1984, or 1985 Gen Con by Kevin Siembieda (the Palladium Books® owner and president) as a gift. He also was able to tell me that the items were made by Dark Horse Miniatures and that at the very least, a Mechanoids Wasp was made, too.
After posting about them on the Palladium Books® Forums of the Megaverse® about them, Maryann Siembieda (at that time the wife of Kevin Siembieda) informed me that she and Kevin had no memory of the miniatures, and she speculated that they were perhaps fan-made. I do know that Mr. Siembieda spoke to Mr. Balent about them by telephone sometime around Christmas, 2002, but whatever the outcome of that conversation was is unknown to me.
So what is the truth? I have no idea. They are obviously miniatures of a character in Environmental Battle Armor from the "Mechanoids" games, but as to whether or not they were fan-made, I certainly cannot say.
I recently decided to make some higher quality images of the miniatures so that others could see them here on the internet. The images are black-and-white, but since they are unpainted, I don't think that makes much difference. There's a United States penny in the images for scale purposes. Also, I've provided a pair of scans from The Mechanoids for comparison. You might also want to look at the cover of that same book for a color image (the character in the foreground is wearing an E.B.A.).
The image scans:
Miniature #1 Front:
Miniature #1 Back:
Miniature #2 Front:
Miniature #2 Back:
Miniature #3 Front:
Miniature #3 Back:
Miniature #4 Front:
Miniature #4 Back:
Miniature #5 Front:
Miniature #5 Back:
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