Passing on some tips, tricks or minutiae for action figure customizing.
Howdy from the dark, dank Buzzy Cave!
When I first saw the news about the Masters of the Universe Classics line from Mattel the first thing I thought was, “Cool! Barbarian figures to make custom barbarians with!” Then a couple things put me off the idea – the biggest reason being the tiny hands. I can’t stand the way they look. I understand that Mattel and the Four Horsemen are incorporating a lot of the aesthetic from the original He-Man/MOTU line in MOTUC and the small hands are part of that package, but the little hands on the end of those huge arms really bugged me. But recently I’ve seen some very cool customs made with MOTUC bases and I’ve been inspired to try using them for a couple projects, which leads us here: how to fix those hideous, tiny hands!
Tools & Supplies
- MOTUC Figure
- Hands from a Jakks WWE Backlash Figure – I used a Randy Orton – TRU has a nice discount on them right now too.
- 2 Nylon Screws
- Exacto Knife with a good blade
- Dremel with Drill Bit and Cutting Wheel
- Hair Dryer or Hot Water (whichever is your choice for heating and popping parts)
I used my hairdryer to heat n’ pop the hands off of He-Man and Randy Orton and compared to see if/how the Orton hands would work. As you can see, the RO hands have a bit more wrist on them than the He-Man hands and if you tried to just do a straight swap, the extra bit of wrist will give him gorilla looking arms.
I warmed up the RO hand a little bit with the hair dryer to soften the plastic, which makes cutting a little easier, and chopped off some of the unnecessary, extra wrist. I cut at a little bit of an angle to match the cut of the He-Man wrist. I left a little more wrist in comparison to the stock He-Man hand and then sanded it down until it looked right when doing test fits against the wrist.
Then I drilled screw holes in the hands. The screws I used are pretty big, 3/16ths, so I used my Dremel with the biggest bit it has to make a pilot hole first then used a variable speed drill with a 3/16ths bit to widen the hole. You want to go slow and check your work often, because you need to go deep enough to get a good fit on the screw but not so deep that the drill bit pops through the other side of the hand. With some forethought and planning (which I didn’t do), you could use smaller screws.
Next step is to mod the wrist peg holes with the appropriate size drill bit, in my case a 3/16ths. Like the hands, you need to make the peg hole nice and deep but not so deep that you bust through to the elbow joint. I went about 5/16ths of an inch deep. Then I screwed in the nylon screw.
I estimated the depth of the hole I drilled in the hand and used my Dremel with the cutting disc to lop off some of the screw. Good idea to wear eye protection when doing this as stuff will fly. Then I screwed the hand onto the cut end of the nylon screw.
Vous lez! The hands are snug up against the wrist cuts and because of the screws fitting nice and deep in both the forearms and hands, I can turn turn the hands without fear of them popping. No glue needed! Most importantly, now he has hands that fit the size and scale of his body!
If I was just swapping the hands I’d give them a light sanding and paint them with Reaper Tanned Flesh to match He-Man’s flesh tone but I plan on turning this He-Man into someone else so there’s more work ahead before I do that.
Hope this helps and thanks for checking it out!
Nice customizing tips BUT… The new hands look ridiculous. He looks like he’s wearing a set of the Hulk Hands, lol. I for one think the stock hands are just fine.
That nylon screw is a great trick Buzzy!
thanx Sandman21xxi!
well Chris, everyone is entitled to their opinion.
Seems like a lot of trouble for a minor change.
wasn’t that much trouble. only took about 15 minutes to do both hands.
like I said in the article, it’s a small part of what will be a much larger project. I thought it might be a helpful tutorial that others could apply to other custom jobs.