Head, torso, legs: CORPS "Hammer"
Arms: CORPS "Fox"
Waist piece: Star Wars "Ric Ole"


The Grenzschutzgruppe 9 (GSG 9) is the counter-terrorism unit of the German Federal Police, the first and best such unit in the world. Borne out of the 1972 Olympic Games kidnapping depicted in the movie "Munich", GSG9 is Germany's clear and final response to terrorism.

Hanz is a sniper par excellence, excelling in securing locations, neutralizing targets, target spotting and fugitive hunting. While he doesn't add much to the conversation, he's a cold and calculating customer in the field.

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Back in 2000 I had a lot of custom fodder with broken waist pieces. I also really wanted to see a Joe in a long coat - and this was 2 years before Claws Commander would see the shelves. This was an experiment in both waist piece replacement, and creating a toy from a model.

Yes, this is a 3 3/4 take on the Hans 12" GSG9 Sniper. I think that it's a pretty good likeness. The Glock 17 and the H&K are the right guns and come to him from Air Power Eagle Raid.

The face is "hammer" planed with an X-Acto knife and 600 grit sandpaper. Sanding faces was at the time my customizing "thing".

The waist piece was the tough part. I had to completely destroy the Star Wars figure to get the piece that I needed.

Many of the Star Wars Figures come with some sort of overhanging piece to cover the lame crotch construction. This piece can be a skirt, low hanging coat, or cover piece. These pieces are not complete, and usually have a slit up the side in order to allow leg movement or the hanging of a weapon. I cut the two sides of the waist piece, and then glued them together with crazy glue. I then painted it, and simply connected a CORPS elastic through the hole, and he was well... whole.

The use of a CORPS elastic is important because they are shorter than the Joe ones. Using a Joe elastic will give you a figure that separates from its waist piece.

I really liked this figure. At the time I'd never seen anything like it, so I think that it was pretty original for its day. Note that I was using corps parts at the time, as I was really new to the hobby, and didn't have access to the parts stash that I do today.

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