“action figures”: Somewhat like three-dimensional zines, garage kits are small edition, amateur sculptures and dioramas circulated by devotees of particular films, or hobbyists interested in replicating specific historical, military or maritime events. They range from scale models that attempt to replicate their subject matter precisely, to tableaus and figures reflecting flights of fantasy. Sold as kits for home assembly they frequently skirt copyright laws. Cultural critics such as Walter Benjamin and Roland Barthes have argued that today the most ephemeral, sentimental even amateur forms of cultural production often reflect contemporary society more precisely than the work of fine artists. Such “base” forms as comic books, pulp novels and ‘B’ movies might be said to apprehend a realm of everyday expression that “high” art typically obscures including the desires, nostalgia, and fantasy of those who labor at routine jobs, day in and day out. In a sense, these modern mementos could be said to make up a hidden sphere, one that parallels and sometimes thieves from the more familiar sphere of private commercial culture and in order to counter, or attempt to do so, the alienating effects of modern life. My aim is to borrow aspects of this DYI art-form and “re-tool” it for purposes of social critique and political reflection.