Last Revised: June 22nd, 2025 (comments only updated)

Hello Readers (and especially my Flower Power Cruise Friends!).

As many of you know, I have been creating “Action Figures” for friends we made on our Flower Power Cruise last March. The cruise was 7 days and started from Fort Lauderdale, and we made stops in Falmouth, Jamaica, and the Cayman Islands. In addition, numerous 1960s-1970s bands were on the cruise to entertain us while we traveled. Some bands were The Cowsills, Jay and the Americans, Ron Dante, Jefferson Starship, and many more.

Below is a gallery of action figures I have made. For ones that may not make sense to you I have added some commentary below the figure.

Now, some of the action figures have issues. This is caused by what they call hallucinations in the AI world. AI bots have always produced at least some hallucinations, which occur when the AI bot creates incorrect information based on the information it has access to. Still, according to company tests, OpenAI’s newest o3 and o4-mini models have hallucinated 30-50% of the time for reasons that aren’t entirely clear. So, if you see a word misspelled, or multiple Groovy Bears or Milk Shakes, AI is hallucinating, and it’s not me.

Thanks for visiting my blog.

Best regards,

Mike

p.s. If you want to see my second post on creating action figures and logos, click this link.

Creating Martha – My First True Attempt at Making Action Figures with ChatGPT

Martha was one of the first action figures I made. I added a white shirt and a pink poodle skirt image from a catalog, and you see that in the figure above. ChatGPT keeps hallucinating no matter what I tried, adding two Groovy Bears (more on the Groovy Bear later) and two Chocolate Milk Shakes. I tried experimenting, and it returned with a Martha version NOT in a Poodle Shirt and White Blouse.

I kept tweaking, and it then also added The Archies band in the background. I think it knows The Archies hung out at Pops Soda Shoppe. I was working on it for Ron Dante last time, and he is the lead singer of The Archies.

ChatGPT took us from a Soda Fountain Shoppe to the movie Grease! Martha was not happy with this version at all. Onward I went to get it right!

Some of the many Martha tests I have tried.

Here is the final version of Martha. I should make her figure thinner, like in real life. Now, I have to make her a two-pack with Dean Torrence.

Another try tweaking Martha’s action figure (you can tell I am a perfectionist): ChatGPT made the Poodle on the Poodle Skirt the same color as the Groovy Bear. I can live with this for now. Martha’s action figure is now more proportional (she is not tight in the bubble, with her hands pushed tightly against her side). Her arms are free and unencumbered in this one, so I am moving on to my list of action figures to create for my fellow Cruisers.

Peter Noone and Herman’s Hermits

Peter’s figure actually has a really cool story behind it. We went to Peter’s concert, and he jumped off the stage and started walking around the audience while singing. He grabbed one lady’s purse and threw it on the stage. Then, he grabbed another lady’s bade and threw it on the stage. The audience laughed while he was doing this. Then, he came upon a man in gold sparkle shoes. He kept teasing the man about the shoes.

The lady whose purse he threw on stage sent me a photo of the purse. The same with the lady with the badge. I had a photos of the shoes, too. I used all three photos and Peter’s headshot to make the action figure above. I thought it was pretty cool to have the true-life artifacts as part of the accessories.

More Entertainers and Guests from the 2025 Flower Power Cruise

Another passenger, Arlene, asked me to make an action figure of her and Dean Torrence. Dean was part of the duo Jan and Dean in the surfing era of the 1960s. ChatGPT surprised me by asking if I wanted to show them dancing on a disco-like dance floor, too. I said sure, and the action figure above is what it created.

I seem to notice that if you continue to regenerate a figure repeatedly, ChatGPT will start to make the figures look cartoonish or like Toons from the movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

I wanted to show you the before-and-after of the action figure above. I took a screenshot of a frame of video from Peter’s concert on the cruise that Denise did, and I gave instructions to use the three people in the video clip to make a three-pack action figure. Below is the photo I used to create the action figure above. Denise is the one in the middle showing the two peace signs.

Dr. Hitch presented an archeological dig they did on a fire pit they found by accident on one of the inside roads to Bethel Woods. To put this in more context, the center of the arts is located on what used to be Max Yasgur’s farm, where Woodstock took place in 1969. If I remember correctly, the fire pit was two feet in diameter and about 12 inches deep. He displayed the items found in the pit, and talked about having steel soda cans back then, the kids made bologna sandwiches which would have been something their moms might have made them for lunch back then, and they were even able to trace one of the loaves of bread back to a specific store in New York based on the plastic wrapper around it.

I took a headshot of Dr. Hitch, photos of the items on display from his presentation, and one of the famous photos from Woodstock 1969. I used Dr. Hitch’s headshot to create his action figure in the bubble on the left, and the photos of the items from the fire pit to create the accessories in the bubble on the right, and the famous photo to use as the background for the card.

Friends and Co-Workers

My friend Tim is an archaeologist and an expert on the history of most coins and currency.

Dotti is my Vice President. I still need to add a cowboy hat to hers. She was a good sport, letting me do this.

Dotti asked me where her cowboy hat was, so I added one. I asked ChatGPT to make it slightly tilted, brown, and weathered. Here is how it looks.

Tony and Groovy Bear!

Tony gives out Groovy Bears each year on the cruise. I saw him set up in the pool area, but I did not go over to it as I was unaware of what was happening (it was our first cruise). Spinning the wheel is a way to win a free Groovy bear. By the way, I made his action figure and accessories from photos he had given me. See photos below.

Left: Groovy Bear, Middle: Tony, Right: The Wheel

During my initial creation of his action figure, I accidentally hit the Enter key too early, so the Groovy Bear got its own action figure. See the figure below.

Creating Action Figures Using ChatGPT Class I Taught at Work and Some Results

The one above was some experimenting I did using branding from work. It features one of our advertising spokespersons, former Tampa Bay/New England Patriots Rob Gronkowski, and my Director, Brandon. Two quality people who help USAA with our mission.

My coworker, Eric Carlson, has been a very helpful wingman in my testing and preparation for this presentation. In testing the instructions, Eric created the Brandon figure above. Notice ChatGPT’s hallucination about creating two Jeeps.

But Eric was not satisfied. He is very creative and decided to give his Brandon a The Purge movie theme. It is actually pretty frightening. See figure above.

Mike Goes Crazy and Starts Making Action Figures of Everyone He Knows, Including the Grandkids!

This is a friend of mine’s brother. He said, “Hey, can you make a figure of my brother? He drinks a lot of Red Bull, smokes, and loves basketball. He also just proposed to his girlfriend. NOTE: Big diamond in his right hand.”

Susan was my childhood crush when I was 10 years old. I had just finished reading The Cowsills comic book back then, and I was hooked. Susan played the drums. I played the drums. It was meant to be!

The example above was me doing a “what if.” I did not provide any photos or images at all and asked ChatGPT to find the information it needed to create a Tom Cruise Top Gun: Maverick action figure. I also told it to use the Kenner-style action figure format from back in the early Star Wars action figure days.

This is still a work in progress. This is my friend Denise and Ron Dante. She is a big fan of Ron’s (me too!).. This early experiment had a boxed action figure look. Everything needs more refinement. I am hoping to circle back to this one in the future.

I did not create this one, though they did a great job. I am a big fan of Charles and Bruce (Ruby, too, RIP). I am speculating that whoever made this has some hallucination issues with the leashes or leads.

But I did find one of the photos Charles took (he is a photographer), and used it to create my own playful version. Here it is.

June 22nd, 2025: An early Krypto. I created a better version in my new post and part 2.

May 18th, 2025: Here are some new ones.

My friends Kate and Chad have a collectible store on eBay Live. They sell high-quality coins and notes (currency). Check them out; it is called Kate’s Collectibles. I created this from headshots of both of them. I just guessed what they should wear, and Kate said I was very close. She has asked me to create a fairly challenging example, so watch for that soon.

The two above relate to the TV show Andor and my work. Poor Dotti, my VP. She is a saint! I am constantly making action figures of her. She has a good sense of humor, though.

I love K2SO, Cassian Andor’s robot. Since we are working on a big project at work with aggressive deadlines, I thought I would combine the robots. Since Dotti asked me to add a cowboy hat to the one I made for her, I added cowboy hats to the robots.

I think both of these turned out great. The only caveat is that the robot’s face in the second action figure in the blister bubble is missing. I can tinkering and add it later, but I wanted to post these for now.

This is one I made of my grandson, Milo. He loves Pokémon, so I made a simple one of him surrounded by Pokémon figures. Interestingly, he just lost one of his front baby teeth a week or so ago. ChatGPT added it back in on its own. His mom wants me to show it without the tooth, so that is another one I need to fix.

I was goofing around the other night and asked ChatGPT to make a couple of carded figures using pieces (coins) from my ANA presentation last February. The two cards above were from that. I showed these to several coin-collector friends, and they immediately said, “Wait, those look fake.” A good numismatist will zero in on that quickly.

The other day, I was trying to make an action figure of Jar Jar Binks from Star Wars as a coin collector. No matter what I did, it kept telling me I was violating their standards. I assume Disney and Lucasfilm are pretty serious about protecting their IP. It offered me options to use a fantasy figure or space alien, and I finally said, “Fine, go ahead.” The above figure is what it created. I am assuming the two green tokens are space alien money.

Here is a request from Arlene. As you can see, I have gotten better at making my action figures more realistic-looking.

Dean Torrence was part of the American rock duo Jan and Dean, which consisted of William Jan Berry (April 3, 1941 – March 26, 2004) and Dean Ormsby Torrence (born March 10, 1940). In the early 1960s, they pioneered the California Sound and vocal surf music styles later popularized by the Beach Boys.

Among their most successful songs was 1963’s “Surf City,” the first surf song to reach the #1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 in the US. Their other charting top 10 singles were “Baby Talk” (1959), “Drag City” (1963), “Dead Man’s Curve” (1964; inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2008), and “The Little Old Lady (from Pasadena)” (1964).

I still have more to add, I just need to find them all. Stay tuned. I will be adding them soon.