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At MegoMeet this summer, I picked up a CTVT Space 1999 Alan Carter in Space Suit from Paul/Hulk for $8, which - with a Doc Mego body swap and some tweaking - was $8 well spent! Here are pics of my slightly-tweaked figure. (Click on thumbnails for gallery view)
CTVT really captured the "Mego Style" with this appealing figure. The costume and accessories are colorful and elaborate, detailed but not 100 per-cent accurate. Maybe it's the bright, toy-like look to it or the classic SF Gary Anderson designed space suit, but it looks great and is a real stand-out.
The CTVT body was junk, didn't stand properly - especially with the bulky suit and the harness - and had a broken left ankle, so I replaced it with a Doc Mego body. There are screws hidden on the inside faces of the suit's two life support units which are a challenge to get out, but after that it's a simple matter to swap the head, hands & put the orange suit on. I'd caution that the suit is tailored for the CTVT body, so it is a little tight on the Doc Mego body. Be careful to remove the decal ‘patches' first. The head also looks a tad small, but not too bad.
There are a couple of really big problems with CTVT's 1999 space suit design that needed work:
First of all, the collar for the helmet just floats around and is constantly pushed out of place by the pull tab on the suit's zipper. So I removed the tab, and used a couple of those clear silicone rubber bands that toys are now held into blister packaging with to tie the collar down onto the shoulder straps of the life support harness. They make the helmet fit a little tight, but that isn't a huge problem. Perhaps in the future I'll put a couple of little holes into the collar and stitch it to the suit.
Second, the helmet is pretty poorly made. The tooling on the visor wasn't smoothed in the bubble area, so it is clouded with scratches and textures. Also, the port in the helmet is a tiny little square hole you can barely see the face through. So, after fixing a broken pin on the visor and re-gluing the two halves of the helmet together properly, I cut the helmet viewport a bit larger into of a rounded trapezoid shape, and carved the visor's lower edge down a bit where it touches the chin of the helmet so it would fall properly over the enlarged hole and be a bit more flush to the helmet. (The pic above shows the modified helmet.)
The head is an excellent likeness of Alan Carter. He's got a bit too much of a tan (he looks like he's from India) that might bother some people. But the eyes are sharp and the details good, so I don't mind it. In comparison to other scale heads like Mego's Trek characters Alan Carter looks rather toy-like, but that's fine for this colorful ‘toy' as far as I'm concerned.
The patches and life-support unit's deco are glossy decals. They may need a bit of a trim, and they don't sit quite properly on the textures of the backpack, but I wasn't inclined to trim them up and re-apply them - even though that might help. I can feel a lot of panels detailed into the pieces under the decals, so a genuine paint job might help.
Highly recommended if you can pick it up cheaply and are willing to tweak him a bit!
CTVT really captured the "Mego Style" with this appealing figure. The costume and accessories are colorful and elaborate, detailed but not 100 per-cent accurate. Maybe it's the bright, toy-like look to it or the classic SF Gary Anderson designed space suit, but it looks great and is a real stand-out.
The CTVT body was junk, didn't stand properly - especially with the bulky suit and the harness - and had a broken left ankle, so I replaced it with a Doc Mego body. There are screws hidden on the inside faces of the suit's two life support units which are a challenge to get out, but after that it's a simple matter to swap the head, hands & put the orange suit on. I'd caution that the suit is tailored for the CTVT body, so it is a little tight on the Doc Mego body. Be careful to remove the decal ‘patches' first. The head also looks a tad small, but not too bad.
There are a couple of really big problems with CTVT's 1999 space suit design that needed work:
First of all, the collar for the helmet just floats around and is constantly pushed out of place by the pull tab on the suit's zipper. So I removed the tab, and used a couple of those clear silicone rubber bands that toys are now held into blister packaging with to tie the collar down onto the shoulder straps of the life support harness. They make the helmet fit a little tight, but that isn't a huge problem. Perhaps in the future I'll put a couple of little holes into the collar and stitch it to the suit.
Second, the helmet is pretty poorly made. The tooling on the visor wasn't smoothed in the bubble area, so it is clouded with scratches and textures. Also, the port in the helmet is a tiny little square hole you can barely see the face through. So, after fixing a broken pin on the visor and re-gluing the two halves of the helmet together properly, I cut the helmet viewport a bit larger into of a rounded trapezoid shape, and carved the visor's lower edge down a bit where it touches the chin of the helmet so it would fall properly over the enlarged hole and be a bit more flush to the helmet. (The pic above shows the modified helmet.)
The head is an excellent likeness of Alan Carter. He's got a bit too much of a tan (he looks like he's from India) that might bother some people. But the eyes are sharp and the details good, so I don't mind it. In comparison to other scale heads like Mego's Trek characters Alan Carter looks rather toy-like, but that's fine for this colorful ‘toy' as far as I'm concerned.
The patches and life-support unit's deco are glossy decals. They may need a bit of a trim, and they don't sit quite properly on the textures of the backpack, but I wasn't inclined to trim them up and re-apply them - even though that might help. I can feel a lot of panels detailed into the pieces under the decals, so a genuine paint job might help.
Highly recommended if you can pick it up cheaply and are willing to tweak him a bit!