The memos I've seen about changes during sculpting have been along the lines of "we tried this and there's a problem" or "based on previous sculpts, we've noticed a problematic trend and we think this is the way to go."
There have been vague memos that say "we are changing this so take note." Those memos aren't very helpful. HAHAHAHHA.

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Gary, as always, thanks for sharing this great information! It's amazing how much we continue to learn about a toy line now over 30 years old.

Seeing that standard sculpting buck just blows my mind. Everything started from that???

- R

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Whoa...I never noticed that! I'm usually pretty observant when it comes to recognizing re-used parts, but somehow that totally slipped past me, and I've never seen it mentioned before (I'm sure it's on Yojoe, but I never had a reason to look at either Mindbender or Mutt on there). That's really interesting.

I had never heard of Sureshot before, either; that's an interesting color scheme. The sculpt itself looks kind of crappy when seen at that scale: I had never gotten a close look at that piece before, but the face in particular is surprisingly lacking in detail. Still, it's cool to get a look at something new. Space Shot's head sculpt, on the other hand, looks really good on that 2-up.

Very cool. I've never seen any of this stuff before, and I find that basic G.I. Joe buck interesting. Imagine the fun customizers could have with some of those!

Yup. The buck pictured is urethane. It is a hardcopy of a dynacast buck. With other parts that are probably copies of copies. In the beginning (early 80's) there were white bucks (only like 2 small white buck parts have been found), even metal bucks (which haven't been found), green bucks (which are the dynacast), and the grey bucks (which are urethane). Basically sculptors would just make copies of dynacast bucks so they didn't have to rely on waiting for bucks to be shipped to Hasbro or in case of emergency or for experimenting. Pretty much any reason you can think to hardcopy an armature. As long as the sculpt was perfect, the condition of the buck was pretty moot. You can see some scratches on the one pictured which means it has been sculpted upon. As I mentioned before sometimes an original sculpt was broken down after molds were made. And the buck would go back to being 'un-used.' There is a sculpting "bible" for 2ups which describes how every part is to be sculpted upon. What tools to use. What can and cannot be the end result. It's crazy specific. And it had to be. An error meant the sculptor had to redo things. Sometimes having to redo one thing meant redoing the entire sculpt. For Zarana it meant just doing the head again. But there were 2ups that were done poorly that had to be completely re-sculpted. And Hasbro wasn't going to pay a sculptor thousands of dollars to fix that sculptor's own mistakes.

And no sculptor wants to do that kind of work for free. Hence, the sculpting "bible." There was also a VHS tape Hasbro would send out to new sculptors which showed how things had to be done. It's the most boring but interesting video ever. It's a tedious watch but it's really interesting. It's like someone reading stereo instructions outloud. But some pretty cool 2ups like Incinerator and Robo-Cat make an appearance so for that its cool.

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Ok, you just got me to think if more questions... You're going to regret your well crafted and thorough responses - they give me more to ask!

Was all of the figure's internal 'engineering' included inside the buck already, or was that added later in the process? I mean the post for the back screw and o ring, that internal stuff.

And what was the actual problem with Zarana that required the alternate head? I'm not even sure which came first anymore.

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Oh yea, also: "Robo Cat?"

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Wow, this is interesting. That standard buck is amazing. Guys like gyre-viper and notpicard really do a great job odff tracking the history of the toys we love. Amazing.
Aslo, "Robo Cat?"

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Sculpting bucks have holes in their back. So that's there.
The only other engineering that is really there is on original hand sculpted patterns, any play feature is present. So Manimal and Ninja figures with play features.... their 2up sculptures have those features.
Springs, etc. And are "functional."

With Zarana the story goes that a marketer was walking through a toy aisle and saw Zarana and despised the head sculpt so much that he contacted Hasbro and they changed the sculpt.

Robo-Cat is on yojoe. He was originally slated for Eco-Warriors but was rejected. Later he was basically snuck into Battle Corp Rangers but alas that didn't pan out.

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Where is Robo-Cat?

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Here is the yojoe link
http://www.yojoe.com/archive/unproduced/animals.shtml

We have had the original wax 2up sculpt for Robo-Cat in the past few
Declassified Booths. So a sample is in the hands of collectors.

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Cool. That's kinda neat that the 2-ups have the play features, especially since a lot of collectors hate them.

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Thanks for this post, Gyre -- it's really interesting & a fun read!

And thanks to Chris Murray, nova, Kevin Watts, 'Anonymous' & yourself for sharing the photos!

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http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=221469871649

I just listed on of these bucks for sale if anyone is interested in owning one. I got this years ago as an assistant to a toy sculptor who used to do work for Hasbro. It's real and it is spectacular.