What is the best method to repair broken knee joints?

[SKotK]

So, I just received an eBay Mugato in a cut-bubble package that otherwise would be dead mint, if not for the fact that both legs are broken at the knee joint pin. The seller has been understanding on it and should be refunding me back a good part of what I paid, considering a broken Mugato is worth far less than a mint Mugato would be.

However, that still leaves me with a minty Mugato that doesn't have a leg to stand on. The pins are still there, but are of course snapped off from the inside point.

Mugato broken.jpg

So is there a way to actually repair the joint, or is it a lost cause? Would I have to source a replacement pin somehow, or a pair of unbroken legs? Has anyone successfully fixed a broken pin?

I'm sure this has come up many times before, since it's one of most common things to be broken on Megos (if not THE most common). I have an otherwise mint Andorian as well with the same injury to one leg.

--SKot

[PNGwynne]

All of my Mugatos have been broken. I have used Doc Mego factory-made replacement pins, which are excellent. They have a slight orange tint, so it's not too obtrusive. Or, buy partial figure until you have the right assortment of intact parts lol.

It may be possible the re-glue a vintage pin, but I personally did not feel it was worth the trouble in the case of a Mugato. There are also ways to punch out a good pin and reinstall it, so you might be able to do this with an extra Mugato leg to fix your figure.

[TrekStar]

For some reason a lot of original Mugatos came with loose or broken knee pins, maybe because they came in another
color besides flesh, Mugatos were the only orange color bodies Mego sold, at least Andorian and Keeper had the
same color powder blue bodies and some of those pins were loose or broken too.

I know FTC had different color joint pins and they do or did have orange color pins, that's what I used to fix up
one of my Mugatos, FTC pins I think are closer to Mego scale then Doc's repro size ones, but don't hold me to
that, Doc's pins might be fine too, just not sure if he has them in orange?

Another alternative is to use regular flesh Mego pins and paint them orange?

[Gorn Captain]

Jeez, how many Mugatos do you guys have?
No wonder I had so much trouble finding one...

[PNGwynne]

Doc pins are fine. They are cast in an orangish flesh tone.

I've have a few Mugatos, only one was nice.

[SKotK]

Jeez, how many Mugatos do you guys have?
No wonder I had so much trouble finding one...

Haha! Well, after numerous attempts, I finally just got my first one...and it's broken. But I'm not going to let that stop me.

So I placed an order for 3 colored pins from Doc Mego, asking him to get me as close as possible to the right color for 2 Mugato and 1 Andorian knee joint pin. Hopefully his will do the trick. In the meantime, I'm going to poke around with my broken ones and see if they might be repairable. It doesn't seem terribly likely, but it's worth a shot.

Question: how do you pop the "short end" of the broken pin out of the other side of the knee joint? I've got to get it out of there one way or another regardless.

--SKot

[PNGwynne]

Use an awl or some-such, from the opposite side.

[dr_cyclops]

http://www.megomuseum.com/custom/kneepin.shtml

[cjefferys]

This is a very common problem for Mugatos (and Keepers/Andorians). After dealing with this problem in different ways a lot as a collector of 12" Megos (broken knee pins galore!) at this point I just take the simplest route of gluing the two parts of the pin together. It doesn't affect the rest of the figure, just the pin itself, the knee still moves and it holds up just fine if you are just displaying the figure (as opposed to heavily playing with it). That's what I did with my Mugato. As for his other usual problem, the belt stain, nothing can really be done with that.

[scoth70]

i have an unbroken leg mugato in my collection and an unbroken spare naked mugato on stand by for when any legs do decide to break

but the broken pins can be glued together in the knee joint..and put some tight clamps on the pins while it sticks... it does do the job

[PNGwynne]

I feel like a complete dunce to admit that, in all these yeas, I never thought to just completely glue the pins together.

[SKotK]

Doc sent me a whole bag of knee joint pins in various colors, particularly the light blue and orange. I've got more knee pins than I'll ever need! I may still try to glue the original pins before I go with these, though.

--SKot