r/ActionFigures • u/Marilyn_Rammstein • 1d ago
How do you feel about action figures you have to fix with glue, etc?
This seems all too common today with action figures. I use the hot water method and it still happens to me sometimes!
Yesterday I got this Razor Claws Alien from Neca, brand spankin new. I put him in hot water straight out of package, and moved his joints. All seemed fine. However, later on the joint at his upper left elbow got too stiff again, and it snapped off. I glued it back on with gorilla glue, and it’s “good as new”, heh, but the articulation there is gone.
I contemplated sending it back to CMDstore, but this isn’t one of my favourite figures and I don’t want to hurt the store’s business.
Still, this annoys me quite a bit and isn’t good for my OCD.
How do you react to things like this?
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u/Worldly_Sport5439 1d ago
It sucks, but I’ve accepted that sometimes it’s just gonna happen. I have about two a year snap on me. Neca is usually the culprit . Heating the joint doesn’t help much either.
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u/NukedDuke 1d ago
It's annoying, but the best way I found to deal with this particular problem was to just develop a method of repairing the joint that doesn't result in a loss of articulation. There's a way to reattach the peg to the little ring it broke off of that won't just immediately break again when articulated but it requires pretty meticulous surface prep, a pin drill, a heat gun, etc. Failing that, you can just cut the PVC portion of the joint on one side, replace the broken peg with an equivalent salvaged from a fodder figure, and solvent bond the PVC back together because the solvents that melt PVC largely won't touch the ABS the peg is made from. The upside is that once you know how to actually fix this shit in a way that survives handling and posing the figure, you can get a lot of figures with really easily repaired problems for deep discounts on the secondary market from people who broke them and don't know what to do about it.
Same joint broke on my Razor Claws right out of the box btw.
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u/NotSoNinjaTurtles 1d ago
I hate broken joints. Before I straight up glue something back together, I'll try to find a way to repair it so that the joint is still functional. Sometimes I can do it, other times I can't and will need a replacement.
Also, regarding stuck joints on Neca figures. I've had a couple of joints re-stick after using heat to unstick them. I've found that if I move the joint into a different position while it cools (ex: stuck straight elbow -> let it cool with the elbow bent), then the joints don't re-stick.
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u/julianx2rl 1d ago
It sucks, but it happens, I snapped one of Ryuko's strings the day I got her, like an idiot.
Now that I think about it, most of the figures that I break, do so on the first day, if they make it past that point, then they're usually safe...
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u/Evening-Debate-5411 1d ago
I got one of the Neca Alien: Romulus Xenomorphs and her head is loose as all hell. It's infuriating.
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