Feeling lucky, steam punk?

Toys from WETA, the New Zealand f/x shop, evoke nostalgia for a sci-fi history that never was

In 2008, WETA artist Greg Broadmore took some sketches of retrofuturist weaponry and worked with modelmaker David Tremont to make them real. They fashioned gorgeously crafted props that would’ve been worthy of a blockbuster remake of Flash Gordon. But they didn’t make them for a film—they made them for sale to the general public. At $700-$1200. “Who would buy that?!” I said as I desperately wished that I could afford to buy that.

I convinced my bosses at Wired that these exquisitely crafted ray pistols deserved a feature in the magazine. I pitched it as a chance to do a sort of steampunk Sharper Image catalogue. I still can’t believe they went for it.

Not only did they agree to run the feature, they hired the best people imaginable to craft the visuals. Dan Forbes took amazing photographs of three of the prop guns, and they look even more incredible than they do in WETA’s promotional materials. The amazing Canadian graphic designer Marian Bantjes created the elaborate borders surrounding the text—I love the way her ornate design looks ornate and period-appropriate, but it also hints at computer circuitry.

I got to craft a few little squibs of archaic sci-fi product copy for each of the devices, and it’s one of my favorite bits of writing that I ever got to do for Wired. Images and full article text below. BONUS: I added a few illustrations by Broadmore to the online version of the article to make it a more satisfying slide show, and those images and accompanying captions are under the magazine feature.

HED: Feeling lucky, steam punk?
DEK: Toys from WETA, the New Zealand f/x shop, evoke nostalgia for a sci-fi history that never was

THE WEAPON:​
Goliathon 83
Infinity Beam Projector

THE PITCH: Has your brass automaton butler achieved sentience and embarked upon a murderous rampage? The 10-pound Goliathon will dispatch him. At lower settings, it can fricassee a dodo.

THE GEAR: Archaic marketing hyperbole aside, the tubes, valves, and radiator fins — "aged" with a secret rust-texturing process — are pure Jules Verne. "I love the imagery from that era," Weta artist Greg Broadmore says, "the beautiful forms jammed together with all their extraneous mechanical details."

HUZZAH! Dr. Grordbort's Infallible Aether Oscillators, once the cutting edge of ray-pistol technology, were thought to be lost for all time. But 1,500 of the vintage firearms were recently discovered in an attic in New Zealand, and they will be offered for sale to the general public for the eminently reasonable price of $690 each. Plus, today only, the solicitors will include a pressed-tin case with genuine moon-velvet lining.

OK, these aren't authentic aether oscillators — there's no such thing. Sold by kiwi special-effects house Weta, they're expensive toys for geeks, crafted by the same people who designed props and miniatures for King Kong and the Lord of the Rings films. But there's no movie tie-in here. This line of toy laser guns started out as drawings by artist Greg Broadmore; they then were crafted by modelmaker David Tremont and cast in metal.

THE WEAPON:​
Manmelter 3600ZX
Sub-Atomic Disintegrator Pistol

THE PITCH: Only a mile-wide Difference Engine commissioned from Babbage himself could calculate the potential lethality of this, the latest amelioration in wave-ordnance!

THE GEAR: All the knobs and dials move — the switch on the back makes a satisfying thunk when activated. "Every part should be designed and scratch-built to remain unique," says Weta modelmaker David Tremont. "To have a hose fitting or model kit parts or any recognizable pieces would spoil the illusion."

THE WEAPON:​
F.M.O.M. Industries
Wave Disrupter

THE PITCH: Riding the star-zeppelin to the rain forests of Vasplurgia? To safeguard your safari, you had best pack an extra pith helmet and one of these elegant ray-pistols!

THE GEAR: The arcing barrel and quasi-nautical motif suggest streamline moderne. Broadmore likes to say that Tremont lost his fingertip in a lathe while making the disrupter. "We never recovered it," he says. "Think of it as a golden ticket — if it's inside your gun, you win a trip to Weta Workshop. Or maybe just a chocolate bar."

In this illustration by Broadmore, Lord Cockswain poses with his latest kill and his elegant retrofurist rifle, The Unnatural Selector. "What I've always been fascinated by is the macho idiocy of the 'hero' in science fiction," says Broadmore. "The 'heroic' attitude of killing anything and everything in sight, especially if it's jeopardizing the swooning heroine."

Broadmore, who designed several of the dinosaurs in King Kong, first conceived of this kind of weaponry a few years ago. They ended up becoming a line of beautifully crafted toys. "I started drawing these things just for fun," he says. "I did dozens of designs, all really stylized and Flash Gordon-looking. I remember those black and white serials playing on TV as a kid and the imagery always stuck with me. Really hokey, but really scary and weird at the same time. And, of course, if you're a fan of classic rayguns you'll see the influence of the old toy rayguns. The Buck Rogers disintegrator pistol — of course directly referenced in Han Solo's blaster in Star Wars — is iconic, and that original raygun, along with many others, inspired me massively.

A detailed rundown of product features in the F.M.O.M. Industries Wave Disrupter Pistol. Ming the Merciless himself would quail at the sight of this beauty!

Illustrations like this are more than just the jumping off point for Weta's line of toy rayguns. They also sketch out the backstory of the imaginary universe that the weapons come from. "Each gun is designed to have its own little history," says Broadmore, which he will explore further in the illustrated book titled Doctor Grordbort's Contapulatronic Dingus Directory — complete, he claims, with "dozens of weird-arse devices and a look into the world behind the rayguns."

In this illustration by Broadmore, a fetching Moon Mistress makes short work of foes with her trusty F.M.O.M. Industries Wave Disrupter. David Tremont, a Weta modelmaker who designed the castle of Minas Tirith for Return of the King, took Broadmore's paintings and made them into 3-D objects. "The masters were turned in wood, aluminum, and plastic," says Tremont. "Putty was used to blend sections together and texture the surface. The guns were kept in many pieces for molding. Resin copies were cast out to be used as master patterns for mass production."

Broadmore says the final product is "a shaky-looking old contraption that looks like it could level a building, or accidentally melt your face, if only you had the ammo. They're covered in rust and verdigris; the cases are old and pitted. If I had my way, we'd put flattened moths and dust in the cases before we shipped them."