I was lucky enough to get one of the new Reaper Miniatures boxed sets when they were on sale (briefly) several weeks back. The figurines are as lovely as ever, but - and there's no way to put this nicely - the set itself is shoddily put together. Some people will have seen the sad tale of my badly made Arachnotron (I fortunately managed to get him replaced). I also found the label on the front was stuck on poorly so that there's an ugly crease.

The biggest issue though, which really shows what little care was put into these sets, was the inside packing that holds the figures. Click here for a photo that shows what I mean. Large figures have been crammed into foam slots that are too small to hold them, and bits of the dividers cut out where more space was essential. It's hard to imagine how it could have looked any uglier.

The saying goes that it's better to light one candle than curse the darkness. To that end, I've been working on a design for a custom shaped replacement for the foam insert. My friend owns a Laser cutting shop and has kindly helped me turn my design into reality. I did the first cut in foam tonight. Here's the result:

(Click through for picture)

This is really only a first prototype but it's already pretty good. I need to adjust some of the shapes slightly and I'm not sure about the material (I want to use a denser foam, and black instead of white).

Once I'm done I will of course release the design so that others can cut their own replacements if they want. But I'm curious to know if anyone else with one of these sets is interested getting one of these inserts. Once I've perfected the design I can potentially cut a whole bunch of them.