Rescuing a 30th Sailor

[Shermanator]

I opened the sailor box and cut the wires holding him in place. He's now free from prison after serving a 26 year sentence. Here's what he looks like straight out of the box:






The parts of the suit that are missing from his back are still stuck to the inside of the box. The suit exists in three different states. The outward facing parts of the suit are completely brittle and flake apart after just giving a gentle tug on them. The section of the pants that are between his thighs is gooey and sticky. Interestingly, the sections of the of the sleeves that were not in contact with the arms are still supple and stretchy. This makes me wonder, if Hasbro had packaged the figure wearing his sailor uniform and had the wetsuit to the side along with the equipment, would it have survived okay to the present day? Does anyone have one of these suits that was left off of a figure for years and if so, what condition is it in?

After about 30 minutes of pulling and scraping with a blunt instrument I managed to get almost all the suit residue off him:



Spent another 30 minutes or so cleaning him with different solvents. Tried lighter fluid first but it didn't help much, then moved to rubbing alcohol. I managed to get about 99.5% of the suit residue off him.

As TNshooter suggested, I suspect a body swap will be next.

[TNshooter]

I have couple of them, a soldier and a marine. I haven't opened them, but I believe the bodies are better than the HOF, more like the early Modern Action Man. A bit more pose-able than the HOF. The nice thing is that the heads will fit
CC bodies. And some are making wetsuits that are not exactly rubber, so they last longer. So if the suit is gone, and the body has it glued to them, you can replace the body with CC and get a new suit. Or find a MAM body as a
replacement. The HOF heads kinda puff a bit around the neck when put on a CC body, but if there's a collar on the suit it will cover that.

Let us know how it goes!

Daryl

[ATC]

Looking forward to the update on unboxing this one! I'm curious how badly the wetsuit has deteriorated. Keep us all posted!