I know it only appears for a brief hazard that could hardly even be called an encounter, but I was intrigued by the concept of the robotic ice-cream truck that shows up in Parzival’s quest for “Kameloth” in the Fallout: Wasteland Warfare RPG supplement, and wanted to fix one up. (Sure, the one we encounter might be doomed to just be a one-and-done test for the PCs – dive out of the way or take damage! – but I feel like it could be easily expanded into something more interesting.)
This is built around a Happy Meal “Paw Patrol” (fire engine) toy that has about the same wheel width as the Chryslus car shown in the background. I used a pill bottle to give it a roof and back, half a 30mm round-lipped slotted base and a 40K vehicle bit to make the robot “face” and “sensor array” (and to cover up the gap from the pill bottle neck), and a Tehnolog/Platformer/Robogear hatch with the corners trimmed off, on the back. The “soft-serve” cone on the roof is a Shopkins figure, repainted.
For the extendable robo-arm, I used some safety wire, and wrapped THAT with even thinner-gauge wire, then used a couple of pieces of plastic sprue to make a claw-hand, and some more putty to make a little soft-serve “swirl” cone.
I sketched a “Happy Freeze” logo on a Wacom tablet in Photoshop, and added the logo with a retro font from FontDiner.com (“Jazz Dark”), printing a sheet with copies of this in various sizes (.5", .75", 1") to see what would fit best as a “label” on the side.
I found a photo of a menu from a “Dairy Clipper” ice cream truck, and modified it in Photoshop, changing all the cents to dollars for Fallout-esque inflation, cleaning up the border, and changing the name. I used a tiny print of this for the menu on the side of the robot/truck.
