Captain Scarlet

Hi and season's greetings.

I wanted to describe the unbelievably painstaking and arduous ordeal I had to go through to transform my 1:6 Captain Scarlet figure from a virtual total write-off to something which I am now very happy to display.
(I am not aware of a specific thread on this subject but, if such exists, please feel free to move my comments and add them to any relevant conversation.)

I bought my figure direct from Big Chief Studio and, like everyone else, I had to wait over two years after making the full payment.
When I finally received the figure, the packaging was superb and I could immediately see that it had such wonderful potential - but oh my lord, the unending quality issues which rapidly unfolded!!!
Because of - quite frankly - absolutely awful workmanship in the Chinese factory (Big Chief's apparent second choice due to previous quality comcerns!) I have had to work ridiculously hard to get it looking as you see it here.

First, I had to reset and reglue all the magnets in the head, hairpieces and cap (the tiny magnet for the rotating cap mike being particularly troublesome). I also re-sprayed his hair jet black (as the Chinese factory had given him very strange auburn streaks) and a much heavier 5 o'clock shadow which included his upper lip.

Then came the red tunic! After encountering a completely broken popper (one of four which were all crudely sewn and totally misaligned) plus a rubber pocket zipper panel which fell off upon first handling, I thought bugger it, I may as well completely redo the entire thing.
I unpicked the stitching at the front of the collar roll and removed all the poppers, then carefully pulled away the poorly glued strip of cheap, black leatherette before painstakingly removing the two sections (why two!?) of faux, silver zipper.

I carefully bonded said silver zipper into one, continuous strip and then, as I had to replace it anyway, I completely remade the grey pocket zipper using both cloth and photo-etched metal. I also cut out the tunic opening for this pocket as it was noticeably wider on the original puppet. The poppers (with the broken one luckily being able to be replaced by one in my stash) were then correctly realigned and carefully sewn back on.
Afterwards, I completely remade the front false zip, belt and gun holster from a thin, black leatherette as the originals were all poorly made, inaccurate and badly sized. This endeavour also gave me the opportunity to fashion a working prong for the belt buckle - as was always seen on the puppet uniforms.
Lastly, I also carefully applied black leatherette to the underside of the shoulder light units as this both protected the delicate wiring and obscured them as they were overly visible.

Turning my attention to the first of two other poorly executed details, I ran a red marker pen over all the exposed white seams of the boots, rendering them invisible. Then came the last major challenge; I had to reproduce and print off new spectrum symbols for each sleeve as those provided were not only poorly printed and unevenly cut out, but (badly) glued onto the sleeves with the Spectrum 'S' positioned horizontally instead of vertically!!

Finally, after days of laborious work - which, frankly, should never be necessary on a figure of this price - I now have a Captain Scarlet I can be proud of. However, I will almost certainly never purchase another Big Chief figure.

PS: most of these photos seem to have uploaded on their sides - for which I apologise.

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