Rewind back to Sunday, when there was a HUGE Doll show happening in my area, and I happen to buy a lot of dolls for very nice prices. Included were a bag of three "TLC" 'G.I Joes' pieces in need of repair which I bought for $10, because even though a lot of parts were missing, I figured for that price, if I could salvage at least one Joe from it it'd be worth it.
As you can see, I got three flock head guys, with almost all of their limbs intact, however all of their hands were dried, discoloured and brittle. The first one had an almost perfect intact flock, and asides from his scuffed face and missing hand, was in the best condition including his elastic being tight. Poor middle guy had no feet, only masking tape stuck on, as well as a later Muscle body arm shoved onto him rather than his actual arm, however his intact pieces had less scratches and better elastic than the third guy. His flock was also really full asides from a much thinner hairline than the first.
And poor Blondie was the worst. He had deep scratches on his torso, smelled far worst than the other two, was incredibly loose and his flocking was missing in rather large patches.
I played a bit of musical body parts, switching around the better parts of Blondie and gave them to Masking Tape guy, as well as digging through my doll parts and finding a spare pair of Cotsworld hands, and Obitsu Male Normal hands which fitted perfect on these two.
With that, I knew I still had to clean these guys up and get rid of a lot of dust and lint from these poor guys' heads.
Alpha joe had perfect flock but scary amounts of dust:
Masking Tape guy had a bad hairline but otherwise had nice flock:
While Blondie needs a patch job or at least a decent hat:
At this point, I decided to finally look at their markings, lo and behold, all three were actually Palitoys Action Man guys. (Anyone can fill me in on how the distribution for Gi Joe vs Action Man worked for Australia? We tend to get a mix of English and American vintage here haha) I also carefully touched up their paint jobs, carefully sanding out what I can on the scratched noses and making their eyes look more defined. I also cleaned their hair, with thanks to Omar, using tweezers and a needle to pick out all the junk. Their hair feels brand new, except poor blondie.
