New Legs for a Vintage Joe

When a Vintage GI Joe came into our workshop to have a restring and a couple of thighs replaced (plus a lower leg that the customer hadn’t noticed a split on) I found myself having to explain to one of my guys that this type of damage is generally caused by old age and is not necessarily a sign of poor quality or physical abuse.

You have to remember that some of these vintage Joes are 60 years old and cracks can appear out of the blue. But what actually causes these cracks? Are they caused by a mis-spent youth? Did this Joe in his infancy take a tumble down the stairs in his new jeep or have one too many a leap out of a bedroom window while testing his parachute?. He may well of done, but that wouldn’t have caused this kind of damage.

Because back in the 1960’s when a kid got his GI Joe the plastic was new and still had a degree of flexibility in it, plus they were made to be played with and unlike other 12″ figures from that era they were designed to be robust and take a moderate amount of abuse.

Like I said earlier, the main cause of this type of crack is generally due to old age, because over time the plastic shrinks but the metal in the rivet doesn’t, neither does the nylon that is used in the joint posts, and that is why you will often see stress cracks appearing at the joints of your vintage figures.

These cracks are made worse by movement and one of the more common cracks we see is at the top of the thigh, this crack is caused by the plastic contracting near the rivet (which is already under pressure from the elastic) causing a hairline crack to appear which is then opened further at the top of the leg by the pressure from the hip ball, this is another reason why you should never over tighten your figure by twisting the torso or use a heavy cord when restringing.

Although there are many ways to repair these cracks it is best just to replace the damaged parts. However, sourcing matching numbered parts is becoming harder as most collectors are reluctant to part with spares, and those that do have parts for sale are asking top money for them. The other problem is trying to match the colour of the spares to your figure, as many things can cause a figure to fade and no two figures will fade at the same rate giving you slight variations in the skin tone. Fortunately for our customer we had some donor parts that were a pretty good match and soon had his vintage Joe repaired, cleaned up and ready for re-deployment.

There’s not much that you can do to avoid these cracks as they are age related, and even if you have the time (and patience) to strip down your figure, remove and sand down all the rivets, then file a millimetre off every nylon post and joint ring, it is not guaranteed that your figure will remain crack free.

It is worth pointing out that if you don’t have any spares and you’re not worried about having matching numbered parts, then there are some companies that do supply 40th anniversary or new stock parts which are cast from the original moulds, neither of which will be noticeable once you have the uniform on your figure.