Oddity Central

Oddity Central

Fan Spends 14 Months Building Awesome Iron Man Suit Out of Cardboard and Fiberglass

Posted: 09 May 2012 09:39 AM PDT


Mark Pearson, a 44-year-old repairman who loves comic books, has spent 14 months of his life creating an almost perfect replica of Tony Stark’s Iron Man suit, from sheets of cardboard covered in fiberglass.

Perason certainly isn’t the first one to build a replica of the famous Iron man suit, but his is definitely one of the most realistic looking, regardless of the materials during the build.  ”I don't know why I did it”, the repairman from Bradford, West Yorkshire, says, “I guess it was just a moment of madness. I decided on making the helmet then I said to my partner – I'm going to make the full suit.” The comics fan bought himself a 12ft cardboard model of Robert Downey Jr. in his iconic superhero suit, started work on the helmet, but simply couldn’t stop. He downloaded the templates from the Internet, and made them into cardboard moulds. Once those were all created, he was able to create the fiberglass parts of his magnificent Iron Man suit.

Photo: Ross Parry Agency

Mark’s partner, Karen Hopkins, wasn’t very thrilled with his idea. “She said to me 'you're 44, what are you doing making a model of a man from comic books?” the repairman remembers, but when she finally saw it finished and the reactions it provoked all over their home town, she was delighted. But the strangest thing about this particular Iron Man suit is that it DOESN’T fit its own maker. Mark is just 5ft 6in, so he had to find a suitable Tony Stark type guy to put on his fiberglass creation. He was able to convince 24-year-old Darren Higgins, a local supermarket manager, to put on the armor and stand in front of the Bradford cinema, waving at film goers attending a screening of The Avengers.

The Iron Man suit made by Mark Pearson started out as a set of 400 sheets of cardboard that he turned into a 3D structure, and later into a fiberglass replica. It has some nice touches, like flashing lights for the eyes, hands and chest, but Pearson says he also used quite a few household objects. For example, the art reactor in the chest started off as an ordinary ashtray. He says the suit is still a work in progress, and that he has some cool ideas about what to add to it next. “All it's missing is the ability to fly – but that would have been a bit tricky. I really would have needed superpowers myself to have made that possible”, Mark says.

Photo: Ross Parry Agency

Asked why he chose Iron Man’s suit, the English repairman said “I'm not sure why I picked Iron Man. I'm a big fan and I think I like the fact that he is not really a superhero, he is just a man with a flying suit. But what a suit – it's the Ferrari of superhero suits.” I’d have to agree with him on that one. About the new Avengers movie, he really enjoyed it, especially to see what the new Iron Man suit can do, and said ”it looked almost as good as mine”.

via The Sun, Soda Head

Fan Spends 14 Months Building Awesome Iron Man Suit Out of Cardboard and Fiberglass was originally posted at OddityCentral.com

Evil Clown Will Stalk and Attack Your Child for a Fee

Posted: 09 May 2012 07:17 AM PDT


He may look like one, but Dominic Deville is not some escaped lunatic out to hurt your kids. He’s an evil clown for hire who stalks young victims for a week, sending them scary texts, making prank phone calls, stalking them from a distance, and ultimately attacks them with a pie to the face. And yes, he expects to get paid for it.

If you’ve ever seen Stephen King’s “It”, you know clowns can be very scary. I myself am terrified of them, to be honest, and I’ve never even seen that movie, just some quick scenes of it. But horror films like this are exactly what inspired Dominic Deville to start up his lucrative business, Evil Clown, in Lucerne, Switzerland. His service requires him to put on an evil clown outfit and scaring a child senseless for a week. During this time, he stalks his “prey” from a distance, sending them creepy messages, making prank calls and warning them they are being watched and that they’ll soon be attacked. ”The child feels more and more that it is being pursued,” Deville told Metro, but “the clown's one and only aim is to smash a cake into the face of his victim, when they least expect it, during the course of seven days.” And if they manage to avoid the hit, they are given the cake as a present.

According to the evil clown himself, the scary fun can be stopped at any time, if the chilled gets too freaked out or the parents so demand.  Deville says that ”the clown will never break into a residence or show up at work. 'It's all in fun and if, at any point, the kids get scared or their parents are concerned, we stop right there”, but goes on to add that that almost never happens because “most kids absolutely love being scared senseless”. Yeah, of course they do… There’s nothing like an evil clown stalking you and sending you creepy messages. I’d probably be in therapy right now if this service was around while I was growing up.

I’m sure many of you would love to be able to set up a “surprise” like this for your young ones, but I for one am glad this evil clown works in Lucerne, Switzerland, which is pretty far away.

via Huffington Post

Evil Clown Will Stalk and Attack Your Child for a Fee was originally posted at OddityCentral.com

13-Year-Old Girl Invents Lollipops That Cure Hiccups

Posted: 09 May 2012 06:38 AM PDT


Hiccups, we all get them from time to time, and the most annoying thing about them is they are so darn hard to get rid of. But 13-year-old Mallory Kievman seems to have finally found a cure to this irritating problem – a hiccup-stopping lollipop called the Hiccupop.

Mallory’s quest to find a real cure for hiccups started during the summer of 2010. She had tried to cure her uncontrollable hiccups by swallowing saltwater, making herself gag, eating a spoonful of sugar, drinking a glass of water upside-down or sipping pickle juice. None of those seemed to work on their own, but the ambitious young girl was determined to find a real cure for the annoying problem man has been facing since the beginning of time. Fast forward two years and almost 100 folk remedies tried, Mallory Kievman has reached her goal and is starting a company to commercialize and promote her magic product – Hiccupops.

Believe it or not, the stubborn inventor created the special hiccup-stopper right in her family’s kitchen, in Manchester, Connecticut. After a lengthy process of trial and error, Mallory decided to incorporate her three favorite cures – lollipops, apple cider vinegar and sugar - into one killer combo she named Hiccupops. "It triggers a set of nerves in your throat and mouth that are responsible for the hiccup reflex arc. It basically over-stimulates those nerves and cancels out the message to hiccup,” the 13-year-old says.

But Mallory didn’t just rest on her laurels after inventing Hiccupops, she went on to present her product to the world, and during a convention for kids, she met Danny Briere, a serial entrepreneur and founder of Startup Connecticut. She new that people would immediately fall in love with Hiccupops or just think she was nuts. Lucky for her, and everyone who hates hiccups, Briere loved her idea and decided to help this young girl launch her own company. "It's very rare, when you're evaluating businesses, that you can envision a company or product being around 100 years from now. Hiccupops is one of those things. It solves a very simple, basic need”, Briere said about Mallory’s invention, and it’s hard to disagree with him on this one.

Now, Mallory Kievman will have her own team of consultants, as the University of Connecticut’s Innovation Accelerator is preparing to dispatch a group of graduate business students to help the 13-year-old inventor launch Hiccupops, this summer. Mallory hopes her hiccup-stopping lollipop will become a staple of school nurses' offices and drugstores, and that it will even bring serious benefit to people suffering from cancer, as it is known that chemotherapy causes hiccupops. Now that she’s managed to find a formula that hardens well and is stable for shelf storage, Mallory is focusing on tweaking the taste of her Hiccupops.

via The New York Times

13-Year-Old Girl Invents Lollipops That Cure Hiccups was originally posted at OddityCentral.com

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