I was cleaning out my closet and came across two small Godzilla toys. They are about the right size for Huge creatures in a D&D Minis game. A little Googling led me to places where I can buy a bag of circular bases for chump change.

So, my question is this: Have any of you gone out and thrift shopped for small toys that could be glued onto a minis base for a mini? What were the results? Is it a cheaper route than the standard purchase and paint of minis in practice?

I did all sorts of toys as minis for my 3.5 campaign.  I found that for size Huge and above you can get by much cheaper with toys glued to cheapass bases.  For Large and smaller, I found it easier and pretty cheap to bid for lots of DDM commons on eBay.

Sure, as a matter of fact Gary Gygax's first red dragon was a stegasaus with pterodactyl wings so it's a time honoured tradition.

While researching this idea, I found this gem. A viking longship model in 1/60th scale, which is equivalent to 1"=5'. This begs to become a D&D minis scenario.

http://www.prestostore.com/cgi-bin/pro15.pl?ref=thedustyloft&ct=65767&pd=288317

I used ink-jet printer and Shrinky dink material designed for ink jet printer to make mini's for my nephew and niece for their superheroes (scale wasn't an issue so much as just having a symbolic representation.)

Using Heromachine, an art program (to resize and tweak the image for ink jet printing) would work for you to do the same.

(I'm artistic enough to get decent examples for them)

Albeit I need more ink :/

At one point, when Aetherverse/Multiverse was still alive, I really, really, really wanted to get a ton of sculpey and just make a big army of DQ slimes of all different colors and types.

Even had a full army list for them and everything.  But like so many ambitious plans, it never actually happened.

There are quite a few places where you can download paper miniatures that you can print and build.

The decade I spent playing Warhammer this was one of my primary passtimes.  Going to craft stores, toy stores, dollar stores, and goodwills.  My group was very competitive in the painting, converting, and scenery aspects of the hobby.  We didn't just stick to GW bits to come up with unique conversions and awsome scenery.  There is an awfull lot you can do and make (on a budget) if you keep your eyes open.

Been there, done that.

A lot of the local "reject shops" sell cheap kids toys, like small tubs of dinosaurs, toy soldiers, scenary and so forth.  It's not particularly good quality stuff, but it works pretty well.  If you are handy with a hobby knife and some glue, you can take packs of dinosaurs and turn them into all sorts of nasty monsters.  It is pretty time consuming, though.

These days, I tend to favour cardboard minis.  I use either Character Artist (an add-on for Campaign Cartographer) or Hero Machine to design the characters.  I print them out of thick paper and use a paperclip on the base.  If I need extra weight, I have a box of small disc-shaped magnets that I attach to the paperclip base.  Works nicely.

Having said that, I can't remember the last time I actually used minis in a game

I just played in a one-shot of Dark Suns using Savage World.  The GM made a big sand-worm out of paperclips and masking tape and a salt golem (that sprung out of a pile of salt) out of playdough.  They were actually both quite effective in an arts & craft kind of way.

i've used some stuff from pet shops, especially the fish section.  Boxes, cardboard and more have been claimed for the sake of a mini.  Not saying I never bought any...

I know this doesn't count but I attempted to come up with my own rules for a miniature-based wargame.