"Painting Zinkies or other rubbery toys" Topic

I bought some sets of Zinkies on clearance at Target and put up a quick review on my blog.

They're made of a kind of squishy rubber, and I'm not sure how it will stand up to painting. I welcome any suggestions!

undercoat with white glue, like I do with 1/72 soft plastic?

I've had success on the Reaper Bones PVC with Liquitex gesso as a primer. It also works on soft plastics and weird consumer product plastics (Tropicana/Dole juice lids make fabulous pillar bases). Then acrylics on top, as normal except you should really only use water as a thinner (chemical thinners are bad for the gesso). The original paint is probably vinyl, so cel-vinyl paints should also work.

Maybe some of the Krylon fusion plastic primer .

My first bet would be to try Krylon Fusion or Rustoleum Plastic Primer. That stuff is magic.

Thanks guys! Part of my concern, in addition to whether paint will stick, is if the flexibility of the material will cause the paint to crack. Any thoughts?

I've painted plastic Army Men figures, no primer, then DIP'ed them: the paint will crack, it will pull away from the plastic, if you bend the figures' weapons/extremities. It does take a bit of bending, beyond normal handling, however, to cause the separation; hard rubbing will also separate the paint/DIP from the plastic -- never used plastic primers, though.

As to your figures, I could not say for certain. If they are soft, and flexible, the paint most likely will separate, if they are bent/flexed sufficiently. What is "sufficiently"? You will need to experiment to find out. Cheers!

I'd second Rutoleum Plastic Primer.

Regards,

J. P. Kelly