With many of the custom figures I build, I find myself wondering, "Why has no one tried this recipe before?" Generally, this is due to my inherent low self-esteem: there are so many incredibly skilled customizers here on the Realm, and most of my mods tend to be fairly simple by comparison, so I find it hard to believe that I might be the first to take on a project or do it well. Case in point: this here easy little mod of Marvel Legends Mandarin.

Every ML collector knows the sad tale of the Face-Off Iron Man/Mandarin 2-packs. Mandarin was packaged with the '90s classic "red pants" Modular Armor Iron Man, and the announcement was met with much rejoicing. (Yaaaaaay) But our joy soon turned to woe as the figures hit shelves, and we discovered that, not only was the standard green cloaked figure wearing a molded-on battle mask while the rarer variant red cloaked figure had the unmasked head, but ALL versions of the Mandarin were wearing a hard rubber cape that rendered all the articulation moot, and made ANY AND ALL posing impossible. Supposedly, the cloak was supposed to be softer, but it was a manufacturing error where the rubber formula was mixed too "thick" or something, and they had no way of fixing the problem after the fact.

Starved of our promised awesome Mandarin toy, the fandom was forced to eat Sir Robin's minstrels. (Yaaaaaay)

Since Hasbro is far too busy doing the VERY important and vital work of re-releasing characters to make up for past blunders (Black Bolt, White Queen, Nova, Hydra), producing endless Wolverine variants and alternate Iron Man armors (so when do I get my Patch and Iron Man 2020?), or trying (and failing) to top ToyBiz (Magneto, Cyclops, Sabertooth, and the aforementioned Iron Man and Wolverine figures), they obviously don't have time to release the figures the fans have been begging for. Like, you know, LOKI, or Rescue, or Bulldozer (Hey, you got 3/4 of the Wrecking Crew, that's plenty, right?). Or Mandarin. But I digress.

So, what to do? Well, if you're like me, you take the two Mandarin figures (since you bought both of them off the shelf when they were first released) and you remove their cloaks, discovering in the process that, underneath that thick rubber monstrosity, Mandarin's base body is actually a fully articulated, solid black X-Men Classics Archangel body. Then you curse a bit because ToyBiz just SHOULD NOT be forgiven for bungling this toy so badly. Then you realize the futility of cursing ToyBiz since they don't exist anymore. THEN you cut the arms off the green robe, and put the now armless robe on the body with the unmasked head.

Following that, you bulk up the underlying arms with epoxy putty and add the ends of the robe arms to the forearms of the figure. You sculpt the linework from the original cloak onto the upper arms and make sure the transition is mostly seamless. As a finishing touch to the sculpt of the figure, you cut two slits up the front of his robe and glue them slightly overlapped so it still looks like a complete robe, but the legs can actually be posed underneath, and stick out if needed.

Next, you take the masked head off the other figure and you remove the bottom half of the head, just under the mask. You use your Dremel to hollow out the entire mask and smooth the interior so that it can be slipped on and off the unmasked head (not perfectly, but suitably). You repaint his accessory magic flame blasts with various transparent paints, and you paint the figure itself head to toe.

And if you do all that, you're left with an excellent (not perfect, but EXPONENTIALLY improved) poseable, classic Marvel Legends Mandarin action figure, with moveable arms, functional legs, a removable battle mask, and multiple magic attacks!

Ultimately, I feel like the ToyBiz Mandarin figure really wasn't a bad toy at its core. It just needed some work to bring its potential to the surface. And as noted above, I'm stunned no one else on the Realm has ever tried to do it yet. In any case, at least for me, he's now the toy I'd originally hoped for.

Excelsior!