1:18 scale action figure photo archive

[the_Archivist]

So I have been working on an interactive 1:18 (and 1:16/1:20 if they "fit") action figure database.

The primary goal is to get a checklist up of all the lines of 1:18 figures since the early 90s. This will include a lot of lines that don't have as much backing as GI Joe, Star Wars, and Marvel.
Since I have no interest in any other scale those will all be omitted.
Records will only show up once the "Figure" record has been added.

Status of Archive as of 9/18/14 -
Figures: 2000 in 6500 to go (that I am currently tracking, more are always added)
Characters: 3308
Lines: 333
Categories: 265
Companies: 74
Species: 237

I have a local MS Access database that I have been using for the past couple years. I have recently purchased a domain and my wife is developing the back end of the search functionality. It is pretty rough looking at the moment but the search feature is working pretty good and I am transferring all the pictures I have over and building up the database.

The website is at 1:18 Archive

There are a couple ways to search for a figure. You can search by:
Character , in case you want to know how many Iron Man figures there are.
Category, This will display all figures assigned to a specific category such as Star Wars Jedi or Cobra. For now, I assigned each character to 1 category but hope to expand that to multiple categories in the future.
Line, This will show all figures in a specific Line.
Company This shows all figures by company that makes them.
Species This one displays a figures of a certain species. It is a little different though because a couple species I used was Playset and Vehicle so it you could also bring up all playsets, etc. (this search isn't working atm)

When you first go to the website 1:18 Archive
it doesn't look like much so type in the letter "a" and click search. This will show all figures with the letter "a" in their name. Then you can try "orc". That will give you an idea of how the search works.

If you want to see all the Characters, Lines, Categories, Companies, and Species there are buttons on the main search page that will let you see the contents of that table. There are also quick search links that you can click to preform a search.

Let me know what you think and if there is anything I could do to make it better to use. I am still working on adding "figure" records and have about 8000 more to add. Star Wars, GI Joe will not be done right away since there is already a bunch of resources for those lines. I will also be doing military lines as i go since there are a lot of them and information on some of them has been spotty at best. That and I don't really collect military figures so I am not as much of an expert on the subject matter.

Additional planned features:
I would like to do would be to have a Civilian option on each figure so with one click all civilian figures would display.
Clickable links on the search results that search for that specific item. For example if you search for Iron Man and see he is in the line Avengers Assemble line you can click on the line and that will display all the figures in that line.

Thanks and I would appreciate any input you may have.


1:18 Archive

 

[NSA]

Ambitious! Love the idea. Hope it really takes off. Let us know what we can do to help.

The more you know!

 

[Vindicare86]

Damn, that's a pretty sweet concept! Hope it works out!

 

[the_Archivist]

I have the local database already and I plan to keep making the website for myself even if no one else uses it. It is kind of like my "virtual" collection of figures.

I may need some help getting information on 21st Century and PTE items because I have not found good resources for those yet.

I should also mention that I don't have a way to upload more pictures to my site for about a month or so because I am in the process of moving to Atlanta and buying a house. Once the dust settles a little bit I should be able to get my pictures up. So for some lines a checklist will have to suffice.

 

[K-Tiger]

I have the local database already and I plan to keep making the website for myself even if no one else uses it. It is kind of like my "virtual" collection of figures.

I may need some help getting information on 21st Century and PTE items because I have not found good resources for those yet.

I should also mention that I don't have a way to upload more pictures to my site for about a month or so because I am in the process of moving to Atlanta and buying a house. Once the dust settles a little bit I should be able to get my pictures up. So for some lines a checklist will have to suffice.

Home - SSHQ Database - 1:18 Scale

 

[the_Archivist]

Home - SSHQ Database - 1:18 Scale

I have a new favorite website to go thorough. Its a little clunky but looks like it has a lot of good info.

Thanks for that.

 

[NSA]

Yeah I don't believe its been updated or cleaned up in a while, but it has a lot of detail.

 

[K-Tiger]

It's not likely missing much.

 

[the_Archivist]

I'm still chipping away at this thing. I added a lot of the Marvel lines, all the current 4H figures, most of the ReAction stuff, plus some other odd lines out there.

My wife is going to be finishing up her summer class next week and will start on the site again. Which will be good since we are moving into the new house Wednesday.

First thing I want to get done is direct links to lines, companies, categories, and species.

similar to this:
"http://www.118archive.com/archive.php?search=Iron%20Man"

Plus I think I want some counters so that when you search for something you know how many get returned.

 

[NSA]

You should be able to browse the listings, in case you don't know exactly what you're looking for.

I typed in Hasbro and that worked, but your thumbnail pictures are being squished, might make that box a uniform size so it scales down better. Also make it so the pictures are clickable links to the figure page, this isn't 1996

 

[Joerhyno]

I like this idea, but you gotta get the thumbnail images fixed, right now they're squashed and look off Other than that right now, I'm loving this idea.

 

[Joerhyno]

An App would also be cool to look into in the future, with an option to save your own checklist(like a box that says, X HAVE or X WANT).

 

[the_Archivist]

yeah we just used the full size image for now. After I get the initial 7k ish figures in the db I'll go back and create specific sized thumbnails.

 

[the_Archivist]

An App would also be cool to look into in the future, with an option to save your own checklist(like a box that says, X HAVE or X WANT).

My wife's summer class is a Android class so that may be an option in the future. Even if it's just a wrapper or something to the actual site.

 

[NSA]

It could use some artistic pizzazz as well

 

[the_Archivist]

It could use some artistic pizzazz as well

Some? You mean a lot. Once it is working like I want it to I'll be working on the visual design.

 

[the_Archivist]

You should be able to browse the listings, in case you don't know exactly what you're looking for.

I typed in Hasbro and that worked, but your thumbnail pictures are being squished, might make that box a uniform size so it scales down better. Also make it so the pictures are clickable links to the figure page, this isn't 1996

There are some links on the customs page. I'll be moving those to the archive page eventually.

 

[Monkeywrench]

What a great idea!

You should look into our Officer program. Tier 2 Officers get a logo/link on the sidebar and have a chance to get some advertising on our Front Page. Might be worthwhile once the site is up to your standards. Not to mention you get to join the cool kids in our Officer Lounge

 

[the_Archivist]

There are some links on the customs page. I'll be moving those to the archive page eventually.

oh and you can also just type in a vowel like the letter "a" and it will display anything that has that letter in the search criteria.
Seach for all figures that have the letter "a" (this may take a while to load since there will be a lot of results)
I do this a lot to check to make sure the pictures are working and I don't have too many typos.

I also added category keywords to the lines, such as Marvel, DC,GI Joe, Star Wars, Vitruvian, etc. So if you want to see all Marvel lines you just need to search for "Marvel" and all the Marvel lines will return.

Another thing I am working on is "supplement" lines. That is for figures in other scale lines that could be fudged to look good with 1:18 figures. For example Marvel Legends has a few big figures that would fit in with Marvel Universe. So Sentinels, Fing Fang Foom, and other such figures will show up (once I have entered them into the db)

 

[the_Archivist]

What a great idea!

You should look into our Officer program. Tier 2 Officers get a logo/link on the sidebar and have a chance to get some advertising on our Front Page. Might be worthwhile once the site is up to your standards. Not to mention you get to join the cool kids in our Officer Lounge

That sounds tempting. I like cool kids.
The archive still has a long way to go and I haven't even gotten to the big lines like GI Joe or Star Wars yet...

 

[the_Archivist]

My wife had some time to work on some of the development again. She added some "show all" buttons onto the main Archive page that allows you to see the records in the look up tables.
So now you can see all the Characters, Lines, Companies, Categories, and Species.

The Characters has a link so that you can quickly click the link of that character to see if there are any of that figure in the database.

The rest of the "show all" buttons will have similar links soon.

We added a Species search to the drop down to search for characters based on what species they are.

I also updated the contact page to include a form so if anyone feels the need to contact me via the Archive that works now.

I am up to 1500 figure records now and still have about 7000 more to go (that I know of).

Some of the recent entries include:
Acid Rain
Duck Dynasty
Marvel Universe Basic line 09-13
MCU lines
Army of Darkness
Some of the ReAction lines
Ben 10
GI Joe 50th

I'm trying to finish up adding the rest of the Marvel figures including Supplements. Then I will probably continue down my list alphabetically unless there are requests for figures to be added first. So if you want something added first let me know and I will get it added.

Thanks for looking. And yes the pictures still need some better formatting.

 

[the_Archivist]

There was a big update today. I can now hotlink the results from each line.
The full list of lines I currently have in the database can be found at the following link.
Complete listing of all 1:18 scaled lines in the database

All of the lines are hotlinks now and you can just click on any of them to bring up all the figures in that line.

For example GI Joe 50th Anniv
Search: GI Joe : 50th Anniversary

Now you can also be creative with your searching by changing the parameter in the lint to just GI Joe and get all the GI Joe results:
Search : GI Joe

That example doesn't work too well because I only have the 50th aniv in the database so far but it works with any line that mixes with each other such as Marvel, ReAction, DC, and Star Wars.
Search: Marvel
Search: ReAction

I am in the process of updating all the thumbnail pictures at the moment so some of the pictures might not show up. That should be resolved by the end of next week at the latest and then I can start adding new figures in again. So far I have a little over 2000 in the database now and another 6000 in my local database to be entered in.

I'll probably start posting links in each individual thread so anyone interested could find a checklist pretty easily. After I get caught up with data entry I'll start working on more features and appearance.

If there are any lines you would like entered first just let me know and I'll get to adding those.

 

[Monkeywrench]

Nice!

 

[Meddatron]

Awesome brother. Thank you!

 

[the_Archivist]

I have included a Wordpress subdomain to the Archive.

1:18 Archive | 1:18 Action Figure Archive

The first 350 or so posts will just be an announcement of a line being added to Archive.

I have been categorizing them so it is easy to find types of lines.

I have entered all the Marvel lines so far and have added a Supplements line that includes all figures that are not in a 1:18 line but could fit in depending on preference. I noticed this causes some issue with being able to tell how tall a figure is so I am going to add a height range to the figure results so it will be easy to tell if a figure is 1" or 12". The ranges will all be in metric though so a standard 3 3/4"-4" figure will be in the 9-12 cm range.
I'm still updating some of the thumbnails and getting pictures of some that I am missing. I also created some threads here with ultimate checklists to help locate types of figures more easily.
Marvel
DC
Military
GI Joe
Star Wars

I am also working on all the DC lines now.

There are now 2500 figure records in the Archive and another 2500 non-Star Wars figures to add.

Also, this thread is the 9th result on Google when searching for 1:18 scale action figure checklist

Of course any input you may have is always appreciated.

 

[the_Archivist]

For this post I was going to show how I enter records into the database.

My wife made me a data entry page

I select the table I would like to enter a record into:

The lookup tables have to have records entered first:

Category:

Once I have entered the category it will automatically show up on the Category page. Eventually these will be links that will search for figures in that category.

Species:

Once I have entered the species it will automatically show up on the Species page. Eventually these will be links that will search for figures of that species.

Company:

Once I have entered the company it will automatically show up on the Company page. Eventually these will be links that will search for figures made by that company.

After those 3 tables have the records I need I can enter records into the Character or Line tables.

Character:

Once I have entered the Character it will automatically show up on the Character page. This table is already set up as links that will search for figures of that character.

Line:

Once I have entered the Line it will automatically show up on the Line page. This table is already set up as links that will search for figures in that line.

Once I have all these look up tables populated I can enter the figure record. Figure records are the ones that display when you perform a search. No results show up in the Archive until after I enter the figure record.

 

[the_Archivist]

Once I have the records I want in the look up tables I can enter the figure record.

As you can see this is where most of the "work" takes place to update the Archive.

Once I have submitted this record the figure will show up when you run a search.

 

[the_Archivist]

Just crossed 3000 figures today. I still need to find some pictures and get the all uploaded but it can be used a kind of a checklist type thing until I get them up.

I have also changed my mind on how I am going to track articulation since there is no way I can know the articulation details of every singe figure. So I am going to do ranges.

Statue - 0 points
Under-articulated - more than 1 but does not have all the basic joints (elbows/knees)
Standard articulation - standard head, shoulder, knees, and ... elbows and hips.
Super articulation - anything above standard. (kind of think about braking this into 2 groups though to separate figures just above standard and the ones like Acid Rain that are way above that)

I'm also going to be adding a height range as well since some figures are tiny like Ewoks and some are huge like Sentinels. These are ranges so they may not be 100% accurate but is just to supposed to give a rough idea of the stature. The results aren't showing up yet but should when my wife gets some more time.

Ranges are:
5-9 cm (2"-3.5") smallish type figure ewoks, astromech, dwarfs, etc
9-12 cm (3.5" - 4.5") standard figure size for 1:18 and should cover 90% of all figures
12-15 cm (4.5" - 6") for bigger guys like Shoa Kan, Baron Dark, Dark Trooper Phase 3 that are still part of a standard 1:18 line and Ninja Turtles.
15-18 cm (6"-7") Really big guys like the upcoming Killer Croc and the Goblin King plus figures from lines like Marvel Legends or the Movie Hulk line.
18-23 cm (7"-9") Really, really big guys from Marvel Select and Big guys from Marvel Legends/DCUC etc.
23-28 cm (9"-11") There is only a few figures that fit in this range but I wanted to keep it separate from the 12"+ figures
28cm+ (12"+) this is for the 12" figures found in MU Galactic Battles and the Masterworks/ Really big BAFs and other giant monster figures like the JAKKS Godzilla, Cloverfield monster, and NECA Balrog.

Vehicles and playsets will not have a size range.

I don't have the ability to link species yet but that is a pretty helpful tool. a couple "spieces" i have created to maximize this search is:
Playset
Creature (has most large beast/creatures assigned to this)
Human -Male
Human - Female
Imperial Trooper (Storm,Snow,Scout, etc)

Robots
Astromech
Droid - non-human shaped robots
Protocol Droid - roughly shaped human robots
Battle Droid - aggressive robots
Android - robots that have a human form (I need to clean this up a bit because I have a lot of these classified as humans)
Cyborg - Human with robotic parts

Vehicles I think I want to re-categorize this a bit to separate the types a little better. Ideas are welcome. You can always just search for the word vehicle and that will display all vehicles.

Vehicle - Large
Vehicle - Medium
Vehicle - Small

I also have one called unknown. this is for all species I did not know of take the time to research. If you see someone there and know the species let me know and I will get it added.

I've also toyed around the idea of just adding all the figures I have without pictures (on a larger scale than I am already doing) would the users of the Archive like a checklist of the figures without pictures(temporarily) or would you rather me wait to get the checklist and wait until I add the pictures?

 

[shadowwarrior]

The Action Figure Archive Home Page

found this mate

 

[the_Archivist]

That's a pretty nice site. There are too many blasphemous scales in there though

A couple new updates to the archive.

I've added a "show all civilians" button that will display all civilian figures. For now they will be grouped by line and maybe down the road I will group them by character.

I also formatted the picture on the details page to display at 600 x 600.

This will distort a bunch of the pictures I have but I am in the process of fixing them now.

I'm now up to about 3600 figure records. I haven't had much time to add new records much.

 

[Preacher13]

I love that you are doing this the_Archivist..

 

[the_Archivist]

Thanks, that means a lot.

 

[Meddatron]

I love that you are doing this the_Archivist..

agree. I use the DC portion quite a good bit. Only one that has a complete Infinite Heroes* list with pics.






*Don't judge me because I love that line!

 

[the_Archivist]

I still need to update that line a lot.

I'm going back and fixing the main pictures to be in a 1 to 1 ratio so I'll try and add pictures of the ones I'm missing when I get to that line.

 

[the_Archivist]

A couple more big updates today

First up is now the "Show all companies" button now has links.

This means 2 thing.

1. You can click the button and it will display all figures made by that company.
2. You can now create links to display all the figures made by that company.

you can take a smaller company like Boss Fight Studios or Funko and see all the lines they have produces.

Take care with Hasbro and Mattel though. There will be a lot there. especially once I finally get to Star Wars and GI Joe in full force. Although for GI Joe I probably won't go before the 25th anv line.

 

[the_Archivist]

So along the same line as the other show all buttons the "show all species" now has links.

1800 of the figures in database are Human male...
I'm kinda thinking I'm going to split up Human male into a Human - Armored category to separate Iron man and the like to a different grouping

A couple other good things I used species for

all the different types of ROBOTS!!!

Astromech
Androids
Battle Droids
Regular o'l Droid (I'm going to have to change this because it brings in Androids and Battle Droids...)
Protocol Droid

 

[the_Archivist]

Play Sets

Animals
Talking Animals

Vehicles will be a big one for species. Right now I just have 3 categories
Small
Medium
Large

but I don't feel that is a good way to separate the types of vehicles and you'll notice I am inconsistent in assigning them to a group.

I have a couple ideas but would like some input on how to address this.

My idea is to create the following categories and re-assign each vehicle.
1: personal transports (bikes, swoops, 4x4, etx)
2. 1 or 2 manned Starfighters
3. 3-10 manned medium vehicles (non-Earth based military)
4. Large footprint vehicles (non-Earth based military)
5. Water based vessels - all sizes eras (Pirate ships, Modern Submarine, barrel raft, etc)
6. Earth based land military vehicles (tanks, trucks, etc
7. Earth based air military vehicles (helicopters, jets, planes)
8. Earth based civilian vehicles (trucks, cars, etc)
9. Mechs

Any input would be appreciated.

 

[Meddatron]

Just a thought.

2 Base categories initially. Space Bound and Earth Bound. I would definitely separate Space and Military in some manner.

Than under Space, could have various categories like one/two man Fighter's, Large crew Fighters, and Transports/Freighters. Than maybe add a Base or facility option for the rest.

Earth Bound could be broken down to just Land, Sea, Air. Or Assault Land, Sea, Air and Defense Land, Sea, Air, Transport Land, Sea, Air, and Base or Fortifications option for the rest.

 

[Meddatron]

Does anyone have this JLU Manbat? I'm curious to how big the lower arms are for a future custom. Hoping they might be able to work on a larger MU buck.

 

[the_Archivist]

Is that a JLU figure or a Batman The Animated Series figure?

I found this Image on ebay and I have that Two-face figure.

I'll try and find it and take a comparison pic with a MU Omega Red. It might take a couple days but that should give you an idea if the arms will work.