This was my first attempt at purchasing Victory Leo.
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| (Seller took this picture) |
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| (Seller took this picture) |
This was purchased from a Private Collector off of a message board. Upon first glance, everything looks great! Colors are sharp, white, and the figure is complete. All that was missing was some paperwork(missiles were there, just not photographed). Then after the excitement wore off, I noticed a small crack in the right chest on the landing gear. This made me sad enough to pursue and purchase a second Victory Leo. Not only to fix the landing gear issue to have an unbroken Victory Leo, but to also acquire some paperwork. The box/instructions are probably the most important thing to me when i consider buying a toy i don't have. Some times i'll make due with out them if the deal is good. The crack wasn't disclosed to me, and I didn't notice it in the pictures. It might not have dismayed me to purchase it but i would have negotiated a little more on the prize. The crack is actually hard to see in the pictures now that i'm looking at them again. It was near the top. I have plenty more pictures below which reference the crack.
Moving on, the second Victory Leo I purchased came from eBay. Both came from Singapore. Not sure if that's weird or not.
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| (Seller took this picture) |
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| (Seller took this picture) |
After i saw this listing, i added it to my Watch list immediately. I then spent the next 4 hours mulling it over. All I could think for those 4 hours was whether or not i should by it, pass on it, what would fiancé think, selling the other one, etc etc. I ate Chipotle for dinner that night and decided "WHAT THE F**K!" and went for it. Chipotle's guac is delicious and will always put me in a good mood. That was probably the deciding factor. This purchase was also at a great price which included shipping in the upfront price. As you can see, all the paperwork is there! Stickers unapplied, product catalogues, and mail away forms. It was however missing the missiles. Which was fine as my first set already had the full sprue with all 3 missiles attached to it. I also made sure to ask about the landing gear ahead of time too! Gotta make sure that's not broken. It was a major factor for buying a second one.
Upon arrival, i pulled Victory Leo out and inspected the figure since the seller wasn't sure if it was new white or slightly yellowed. This would have been the deciding factor to whether or not I would part-swap the landing gear from this Victory Leo to the previous one. After inspection, turns out both figures were the same whiteness, which made my Star Saber look yellow(guess who's getting replaced next!).
So you would hope this adventure would end there. NOPE! I took my current Victory Saber (Star Saber and VIctory Leo combined for those who don't know) and took it apart to combine the new Victory Leo to Star Saber and found another issue.
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| (comparison shot before dismantle. notice my off white Star Saber...) |
The peg on the inside the chest on the new Victory Leo that would have helped hold the two halves together in bot mode was broken.
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| (front has peg missing while back has peg/broken landing gear) |
So now the figure i want to keep has a broken peg. What's a guy to do?!!? Bust out his tools and party!
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| (small tools for big problems!) |
So now the problem becomes a little bigger than just swapping landing gear. We now have to move stickers from one figure to the other and move parts from one back to the other. The landing gear was the easy fix. All that took was a little unscrewing and screwing back in.
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| (dismantle party. You can see the cracked landing gear. Star Saber watches) |
The hard part was trying to figure out how to swap out the peg with the most minimal amount of work. Unfortunately, some sticker removal was called for. Fortunately, i've gotten pretty good at removing stickers over the last year. (Sorry Reprolabels. Strictly original stickers on vintage pieces for me til i die!) This trick is something i learned from reading Heroic Decepticon's Blog. Lots of great reads there. Check it out!
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| (post gear swap/pre sticker move) |
To remove stickers, you'll need Zippo brand lighter fluid. These are easily found in cigar/smoke shops or through Amazon. Fairly cheap. I would also recommend using a pair of tweezers and a hobby knife. Basically what you want to do is to drown the sticker in the light fluid. Focus on the edges. Don't forget to put down some newspaper underneath to prevent making a mess. I cannot be held responsible for your wife walking in and seeing you ruin your dinning room table. Also, stay away from flames. For obvious reasons. Anyways, once the corners have been saturated, take the hobby knife and slowly slide it under the sticker to get some lift. Once you have a little lift, douse the area with more lighter fluid. The chemicals in the Zippo light fluid cancel out the stickiness of the stickers for a short while... Once you've doused, go in with the tweezers and start lifting. For your first attempt, i would tackle something small and not hard to come by for practice. This trick also works on stickers that were placed on packages. -stupid price tags- I generally only go 3/4 of the way before i switch directions and pull from the other side to finish. Continually douse lighter fluid after a few seconds while lifting with the tweezers. The great thing about the trick is that your stickers will return back to their original state of stickiness once the alcohol evaporates! Just be careful near clear plastic. I hear this process can leave a smokey after look. Also, this will not work on clear stickers (i.e. G1 Omega Supreme, Roadbuster, Whirl...) It will all together remove the stickiness.
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| (remember to keep work space of figure closest to news paper so run off of lighter fluid doesn't cover entire figure!) |
So the yellow leg of Victory Leo has a lot of stickers on it. By only removing the two front stickers that were placed on the seems and doing a partial lifting of the back sticker, it allowed me to save 20 minutes and the stress of pulling more stickers. (Consider the rare nature of the figure. You can't rip the stickers!!) I was able to just move the bottom part with all of the stickers over to the other figure's bottom half and move the unapplied sticker portion over.
Once that task was completed, it was time to reassemble Victory Leo(s)!
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| (after a head swap first...WHAT??? He had a loose tusk) |
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| (HEAD ON!) |
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| (This picture almost made me consider keeping both... If i don't sell the other one soon, i may keep both!) |
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| (ahhh. The paper work. I can rest easy now) |
Thanks for reading my first blog post! Hopefully your brain hasn't melted from all that reading. Follow me on twitter! @PumaTheHunter Still working on figuring out how to build a store locater/database for collecting store info with TF products. Might have to find an actual webmaster to help me do that.
Until next time, Happy Hunting!
-Puma
