MU Iron Man fix: 25A metal t-bar
 

Thanks to my li'l buddy Liftoff last weekend, I lucked into an MU Iron Man. He's not quite perfect, but damn near close enough for my needs - except the wobbly hips. For some reason this team decided to copy the 25A metal t-bar in plastic form. As I've discovered by cracking the fig apart, the hips balls are virtually identical so there shouldn't be significant problems swapping between 25A and MU legs if that's what ya wanna do.

Unfortunately, th e plastic t-bar is wobbly and inspires no confidence in me regarding its long-term staying power. There's just enough friction between the hip ball and the thigh socket to twist the horizontal bar and I fear that enough of this twisting back and forth will cause stress fractures and tears to the point that one day a leg simply falls off.

So, scrounging up a random shiatty Duke fig to volunteer his metal t-bar, I cracked IM's abdomen. Since it'd made the decision to trash the plastic t-bar either way, I risked tearing it apart by simply pulling the thighs off it, since I could see they were each a solid hunk of plastic. Thankfully for my ability to take these pics, it held together. So now that the legs were removed, I wedged my x-acto into his taint sideways and twisted. The abdomen (and the chest, later on) cracked quite nicely, with no muss or fuss; much more easily and cleanly than a 25A fig.

To my surprise, the MU plastic t-bar isn't an exact copy of the metal 25A t-bar. Rather, the vertical neck is about 1mm longer (and there's apparently an attempt they made at stabilizing the overall t-bar wobbliness in the form of a small pin reaching backwards from the top ball, as if wanting to project out from IM's back. It's probably useless as all the wobbliness I noticed involved twisting of the t-bar itself, not bouncing around in the abdomen shell). This longer neck means the 'trays' engineered into the interior of IM's abdomenal shells isn't the exact same shape as the 25A t-bar needs so I had to shave off a bit of material to essentially make the ball socket come down a bit more towards the taint. Once that was taken care of, the pieces all came back together like a dream and he's no longer got any wobblies and I've no longer got any fears of him simply falling apart on me one day.

I'm going to do some more work on him, but I figured youse guys would be interested in this. The MU hip balls have li'l nubbins on them to increase the traction with the thigh socket, and as the 25A balls lack them, the hips are still pretty loose, but some superglue will take care of that with no problem.

As IM's the only MU fig I've gotten so far, I don't know if all the other figs suffer this problem to the same degree as IM. If so, I really hope Hasbro either drops the plastic t-bar in favor of a metal one, or increases the diameter of the rods of it to about lightsaber thickness.

Awesome mod, i'll remember that if i run into that problem with my MU figures.

My Iron Man is the same, t-bar just torques around instead of the legs swiveling on the balls.

The other MU figs I've opened are just as bad too. I have noticed if you bring the legs up to the sides (like doing the splits) and then rotate the legs (twist them) back and forth for a while they do loosen up.

I have also noticed that the wave 2 fig I have (Captain America) does not have this issue, while all the Wave 1 figs I've opened (DD, IM, Wolverine) do. I'm wondering if it's because the Wave 1 figs sat so long... if the plastic got "stuck" together.

I have found that all the figures I have opened have this problem. Why they made them so cheap in this one area sucks but thankfully I have a regiment of t-bar fodder in a bag ready to swap out for the less than satisfactory MU t-bar Hasbro thought was good enough. I can't believe any of these would survive a kid playing with them as they feel as if they are going to snap right out of the package.

....and why did they make the Wolverine Origin toys so much better in that area? Im not a big fan of this kind of articulation but it sure beats a flimsy pin of cheap plastic made to break.

GI Joe T-bar
 

Can anyone tell me how to get a T-bar for a GI joe figure. The T-bar broke sine it is old... I would like to get it replaced. any help is GREATLY appreciated!