1980’s US Military in MOPP Gear

These are my all-but-finished US Military in Mopp Gear from Eureka Miniatures. They just need some grass on the bases and they are ready to go. I tried to match the uniforms to the below photo as much as possible. I was going to paint the Desert BDU camo on the helmets, but I opted for the more woodland BDU as these boys will most likely be fighting Soviets and not Saddam. 🙂

The strangest thing about these minis was the eyes/goggles. The sculpt is great, but the eyes are a little wonky, I think. The eyes look like tiny mouths in a pit. There should definitely be glass on those goggles. I did some research online, but I did not find a whole lot on how to “fill” the goggles in. One suggestion I did find was to fill it with some water effect from a scenics kit.

I do not have any of that on hand and I wasn’t going to buy it for such a small project. What I did have was Mod Podge. I painted the eyes and face with Citadel Dwarf Flesh and then washed it with Reiksguard Fleshshade wash. This gave them a nice orange color. Then I pooled one layer of Matte Mod Podge, let that dry, and then pooled a second layer to build it up. Once that dried it gave a nice layer between the orange flesh color and the clear surface of the goggles. I added a small amount of a blue wash to the surface and finally a couple of small white dots to give the illusion of shine. Lastly I added a gloss varnish to the goggles.

It was definitely a new problem to solve in painted miniatures that I’ve never run into. Most of the time minis with goggles don’t have the eyes themselves molded. However, I think in spite of the extra work, it looks really nice. Now you can actually see through the “glass” and see the obscured eyes underneath. Pretty cool.