Free Radicals

Set Size: 6 Buttons / 8 Buttons (with 2020 additions)
Designers: Dana Huyler, Orgg (2020 additions)
Photographer: Mike Hollingshead
New Rules: Doppelganger Dice

Free Radicals is the first set created exclusively for Button Men Online by Dana Huyler. It is the first set to use Doppelganger Dice, the skill created by Huyler himself.

The art is only known for one of the original buttons, Maskin, which uses a picture from this website. Mike Hollingshead, the weather photographer, when contacted about the image said the following:

Yeah I have no idea on that one. The image used for it is news to me. And on that I'm guessing it was just grabbed. Not even sure if I have that image with any stock companies, actually pretty sure I don't and I don't remember anyone asking.

When asked for permission to create the rest of the set using images from his gallery, Mr. Hollingshead said "Sure thing, not a problem at all for that." In March of 2020, the 'new' Free Radicals set was produced, adding two buttons not in the original set and using a slightly different font and different dice frames than the original Maskin button. The Doppelganger Dice frame is a photo of an eclipse by Hollingshead, and the normal frames are partially transparent in order to meld with the photography illustrating the characters.

In April of 2020, Dana Huyler, the original programmer of Button Men Online, revealed the following about the set:

Free Radicals were the first set I created, as I ran the site, I decided to make a few sets on my own. The names of the buttons were friends, except for Maskin, who was my pet Dalmatian at the time. The flavor text was just fun to write and were inside jokes.
The set has the standard idea of two dice with the themed skill with each button. The recipes were only lightly tested, and I had fun playing around with some fun ideas, like 16 sided dice. Maskin was fast with low dice. CynCyn has two X dice, allowing for flexibility. Lorrie and Randy where the power hitters.
[I] created Doppelganger Dice for the site (I thought them up before I knew about flipside.com's Morphing Dice.)