i assume rotocasting is cheaper, but i'm not sure

anyway, my brother read somewhere that the original TMNT figures had rotocast heads, but eventually they were all solid. was this a cost saving measure at first?

or if not, any idea why they may have decided to change?

It seems that early runs might have been rotocasted to save money since tooling for injection molding in bulk is so expensive (or so I have been told). Then when TMNT blew up and started going multiple movies etc... Then injection molded solid heads became more cost effective. If this is true I would love to have some original Turtles with the rotocast heads. Kind of weird though, seems like rotocasting something as small as a TMNT head would be a bigger pain than just solid casting it but maybe one of the more knowledgeable guys knows better.

So, has anyone rotocasted on their own for small batch runs? Is that even possible? I like rotocast stuff.

I've seen people do it with their hands. They pour some in, plug it up and just keep the mold rotating till the resin dries. I think I remember them saying that resins made for rotocasting work better. I assume the trick is to keep the thing spinning in all directions to evenly distribute the medium but you know what they say about assuming. I found a ton of videos about home casting on youtube, many of them made by companies selling supplies so getting stared seems easy. Now mastering it...

Sounds good. But what about more "squishy" material? Rubber or some kind of pliable silicone?

yeah, the early turtle heads were rubber like and hollow, you could squish them
like he-man heads

figures that came later had hard, solid plastic heads like the bodies

I don't know. I know there are some nice high end resins that have some give to them to reduce brittleness and make them more forgiving and less likely to chip. Silicone is usually the mold material for casting resin. I'm sure there is some way to cast silicone but I don't know if it is a suitable material to rotocast with. Seems like something rotocast in silicone would be floppy though, so even if it's possible it might not produce desirable results. I'm sure a more knowledgeable source will chime in.

Edit: will stop hijacking this thread....sorry

Rotocasting can been done with resin. I believe smooth-on even makes a resin designed for rotocasting. Pretty sure you would need to make a plaster casing for the silicone molds though to give it a little more stability. From what I've read rotocasted resin is much more durable then a solid resin piece. Motorbot, who is doing most (if not all) his resin work rotocasted, mentioned a piece being picked up and carried by the wind a pretty good decent distance and not showing any signs of damage.

You can' t rotocast most silicones because they take so long to cure. You can rotocast resin and they do make a specific kind for it but they tend to be more brittle than solid pieces.