Imagination Station: Old Friends Reunited...

Last week, I was at my mom and dad's to see my brother who had come from out of state with his family and I found myself in our old toy closet with avalanches and landslides of games and Fisher Price toys everywhere. As I was rummaging through, I found the camo shirt that belonged to my old G.I. Joe. figure I owned as a child and I had the thought, "Wouldn't it be great if I could find my old figure?" I really had almost forgotten about this favorite treasure of mine and was suddenly flooded with memories.

For hours I searched through all of the boxes, some of them five and six times because everything started to look the same with all the little pieces of old toys. I almost gave up, but soon into my search and rescue mission, my brother got into it too and near the end of the third hour found the last piece! I was ready to cut my losses and submit a casualty report but my bro didn't give up!

So I had the whole figure... but it was in pieces.

Now, I really do consider this lucky because it's been over 25 years since I've even seen this figure, and to have survived grandchildren now going through those toys all the time, to have his boots, head, biceps, forearms with very aged and broken kung-fu grip hands, the lower half of his body (still together), torso, with his camo cutoffs, pants, and shirt all reunited again is truly AMAZING!!!

So, now putting him together...

Hmmm.

I try to be very careful about the projects I do. But this one really stood apart from the others because it had a lot more to do with sentimentality for this actual figure than creating a "mint looking right out of the box" Joe. So buying replacement parts to fix things I destroyed was not what I wanted to do. I even wanted to keep his flocked hair's missing parts and dirty face the same because that's how I remember him. (I did that damage early on.) I'd love to replace his missing gun and broken hands someday but I was still so excited to have my complete figure!

I had to do some homework.
There's a lot of info out there on fixing up vintage 12" G.I. Joes.

After watching about 15 youtube videos and going to several different websites I wrote to a few people that were long time collectors for some advice on how to handle my predicament.

Charlotte Beckmann was very helpful as I was learning about G.I. Joes. She introduced me to thetrenchesforum.com/forums. It's a forum where Joe collectors gather to discuss their collections and give tips on repairs and restorations. She even put me in touch with a member named Ray Cairo of "Flock Concepts" flockconcepts.proboards.com who is highly revered for his G.I. Joe work and who offered to completely restore my beloved figure. However, because this project was so personal to me, I just really felt like I needed to do it myself. I really can't thank them enough though, for how thoughtful and supportive they were to me with this project.

Another very informative website I found was by Mark Wright tibranch.com/beachhead who told me the version I had was one of the last of the "Adventure Team Land Adventurer" with kung-fu grip muscle body version.

Whew, that's a mouth full!

He said these, unfortunately, were the worst designed Joes and usually fell apart after a few decades because the plastic that held them together deteriorated. That's exactly what happened with mine. The plastic joint parts had gotten so brittle that you could scrape pieces off with your fingernail. Almost like the consistency of chocolate.

Mark also educated me on the term "restringing" a G.I. Joe. That's the Joe word for pulling the top and bottom parts together with a nylon band the way the torso was originally attached to the lower half. He said he'd never done it, and didn't know anyone to recommend because he'd never used anyone's service or known anyone who has.

That actually made me quite intrigued, and excited to accept the challenge.

Looking up "restringing a G.I. Joe figure" was very helpful too. I found several examples that gave me a good look at the inner-workings of my figure that I would need to be prepared to deal with.

So with that I decided to start...

I made a tool to separate glued pieces without the risk of hurting the figure from a wooden sponge paint brush handle.

A hook to pull the elastic through the body...

elastic ribbon and electrical connectors!

This was the hardest part! I had to BREAK my figure!!!

I've seen a lot of people break apart the torso and the upper arms but I didn't want to break him up more than absolutely necessary. And I really thought I could do this without popping open his torso. Just the upper arms/ biceps.

What AM I doing?

This is what I use the little hook I made for.

Gettin' all the stringing done at once.

To replace the brittle broken plastic that was in the biceps, I decided to find a strong, foolproof connecting material. How about a nail? I measured the width I needed and cut two.

And then attached it to the arm string, with two knots.

Now to string the forearm and prepare it to connect it to the bicep. I used a pliers handle to give me the length I needed...

so I could do this. The connecting stem inside the bicep was the perfect place to make a forearm connection. Oh, and I used a piece of plastic from one of the electrical connectors on the end of my nails so they wouldn't rattle back and forth when the arms were back together.

I had to hold it tight until I had it all together, and I let it set for a bit.

Then I did the same thing to the other arm. Keeping it tight was essential to making this work!

The next step.

How do I connect the upper body to the lower body when the plastic connecting loop (which is still in good, strong condition) is broken in half? A lot of stress of picking the figure up, posing him and helping him stand will depend on the integrity of this connection. It's important to get this right.

I decided the best thing to do was get rid of most of the connecting loop that was broken because it would get in the way of any new connection and good mobility.

Next, I snipped one of the electrical rivets so I could "hook" it around some of the remaining connecting plastic inside. Then, keeping the string tight and crimping the other rivet about an inch away from the first one (before trimming the excess for stretching purposes) I connected it to the other side of the connecting plastic inside Joe's, um... private area.

Wow! How exciting!!! He's really coming together!

Now to put his head back on his shoulders.

I carefully got under the edge of the outer plastic of the head with a small flat screwdriver so I could pull out the cone stem inside. Once I got it out, I removed the remaining broken connecting plastic from the head cone and fed the string through the top. Before tying it on, I threaded on a little ball of metal wire (to prevent knots in the string from popping back through the hole in the head cone because my 1/4" string wasn't wide enough on its own), and tied it down tightly with a couple of knots.