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Words, Photos, and Ideas by Chuck Freedman

Fixing Snake Eyes

May 26, 2009

Collection

After sitting in a box for 5 years (that’s 5 years too long), I finally unpacked my G.I. Joe collection to display all 75+ of them in my custom-built glass cabinet. Upon opening the box and sorting them out, I discovered about 12 of them were broken. Having a fixed bunch of them before, I thankfully had the tools, parts and knowledge to do the repair work.

My collection of 3 3/4″ Joes spans from 1982 – 1988 and includes most of my favorite characters, including Flamethrower, my all time favorite. As many of them are around 25 years old (hard to believe it), they tend to suffer from a similar problem. The black rubber band that holds the waist and torso together (called and O-ring), being made of some organic material, can rot and break. So when I opened the box of figures, here’s something of what I saw:

Broken

This wasn’t the first time I saw this. Several years earlier, I had to repair many of the figures and ordered replacement O-rings from a site called smalljoes.com. So, here are the steps I took to fix my injured G.I. Joes including one my favorites, Snake Eyes:

Unscrewed

The first step is to unscrew the back, which allows you to disassemble the figure, and take out the rotted O-ring. You put the new O-ring on the hook at the top of the legs and put the waist over it, pulling the O-ring through.

Oring

Next stretch the O-ring in the back and snap the chest piece on it. Next, carefully add in the head/neck, followed by each arm.

Together

Holding the figure together, you now tighten the screw and your done.

Salute

It takes less than a minute and should preserve your figure for several years, especially if it’s retired from active duty and sitting on your shelve.

Another great collector piece to get is the foot stand. I prefer the clear ones, but they make all colors as well. These are great for displaying the figures in on the shelf. Enjoy your collection!

Also, I should note that I recently bumped into an old friend of mine who works for Hasbro in the G.I. Joe marketing group (dream job!). I checked out the site and it’s use of Flash and sound emulates a DVD! Pretty nice effort leading up to the movie this summer. Looking forward to it!

6 thoughts on “Fixing Snake Eyes”

  1. Ryan Stewart says:
    May 26, 2009 at 2:25 pm

    Haha, dude that is awesome. And you even got some Flash in there at the bottom! 🙂

    =Ryan

  2. mrm says:
    May 27, 2009 at 9:00 pm

    Do you have a larger version of your collection photo? I had a GI Joe knock-off when I was little but I lost it while playing outside. I never forgave myself for taking it outdoors (I would always play with it indoors, making parachutes for them and all sorts of addons) and I’m trying to identify which one of the characters it was. They were so rare in our neighbourhood that only me and my brother had one.

  3. mrm says:
    May 27, 2009 at 9:11 pm

    Hey, maybe you can help me identify him! His face looked a lot like Smoke from MK3 (http://www.mortalkombatwarehouse.com/mk3/smoke/#cutout) and his body -as I remember it- sort of like a Cobra Commander (http://www.yojoe.com/action/83/cobracommander1p5.shtml), but his uniform color was black. Thanks!

  4. mrm says:
    May 27, 2009 at 10:08 pm

    Well, after 3 friggin hours browsing yojoe.com, I finally found what I was looking for. And I’m a bit disappointed, too… The head was from Night Creeper version 2 or 3, the body was from the aforementioned Cobra Commander 1.5, and it also had a jetpack accessory from Astro-Viper (quite the Frankenstein monster). Now that I shared this useless crap with you, you may remove this comment and the other two if you think it’s spam; I won’t mind.

  5. Joshua Hirsch says:
    May 28, 2009 at 10:07 am

    pork chop sandwiches!!

  6. johnny_generic says:
    July 6, 2009 at 11:42 am

    Hah, you sure did fix Snake Eyes’ “O-Ring”… great job.

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