Guess what I woke up to this morning?
Well hey sugar. Sweet Grandmere's beignets, what did you do to your leg?!
You might have known this already, but Monster High dolls have some leg problems. It's the price of beauty, I suppose. If this were a standard teen female doll, I could remove the peg and replace it with a CAM leg, as I did for both Ghoulia and Abbey; but a female CAM leg won't fit a male doll because the pegs are thicker in male dolls.
This worked to my (and Heath's) benefit, though. I attempted a peg repair for Ghoulia which failed because the peg was too thin. It seems, this time, the peg repair was a success because of its thickness.
Um, I suppose I should apologize for the skimpy Home Ick micro-apron, but I figured there wouldn't be much benefit to posting jeans-clad photos of a leg repair.. and I couldn't stomach the thought of putting him in those awful Mattel shorts the other boys came with. And if I just took photos without the apron. Well. This would be a different sort of post entirely, involving an awful lot of teenybopper-type giggling.
So here's a look at the break itself. I drew a line to show where the peg snapped. Also, do you see that little hollow in the center of the peg? I'm not sure if it's a manufacturing defect but I suspect that may have made the peg susceptible to breakage in the first place. If the peg was that thick and solid, it would be very difficult to snap.
This was a fairly simple fix. I did the same thing I originally tried with Ghoulia: simply applying super glue to the broken peg and the broken base, and then fitting the two pieces together. I held it in front of my desk lamp so the heat would help cure the glue faster. The hardest part was making sure the two pieces were properly fit together and then not allowing one to drift out of alignment with the other.
When I first saw the break I made the following assumptions:
~ I will not be able to bend the knee again.
~ The knee will probably require additional support, a "brace" of some sort to keep the leg rigid so it doesn't fall off or snap again.
~ The re-attached leg may be so crooked it will make it impossible for the doll to stand on his own again.
~ The leg will not be able to rotate side-to-side again.
Thankfully, except for the last one, all of these assumptions were proven false!
Here's Heath, post-repair, sitting happily on the edge of the Frankenputer. I did have to 'break' a thin layer of super glue that had dribbled over the top of the knee joint, but it seems the internal peg has sealed well. The leg is not wobbly or loose at all. The knee feels stiff but not difficult, the way it felt when he first came out of the box.
However, it will not rotate side-to-side, because any attempt to do so would place pressure on the broken segment of the peg and possibly break the two pieces out of alignment again. While I could keep repairing the leg over and over, I am concerned that over time the layers of glue will build up to the point where the leg becomes useless. So, for now, he has a bad knee.. functional, but not very flexible.
Notice how Heath's right foot now turns inward a bit, due to the angle of the peg when it broke. That's actually kinda cute. Awkward Heath!
For the record, the broken Heath belongs to little t, who hopefully has learned that the floor is not a suitable storage space for his precious dolls. Here's my own Heath, chillin' in the easy chair with a "No Shame" Sundae:
So, TLDR: MH male dolls have thicker knee joints, which makes repair easier but also reduces flexibility in the event of a break. And Heath has pretty nice legs.
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