Removing minifigs arms and legs

[Luke McAwesome]

Big Cam,

I'm gonna be honest, through my life, I've never been exactly afraid to remove the limbs of my minifgures, even though I myself am like you and took good care of my toys(And still do!).

I'm sure people will disagree with what I'm about to tell you, I have removed the limbs from minifigures all my life to accomplish a figure I wanted to make, and I think only one torso has ever cracked. As for the legs, Ralph has a point; they do not stay as stiff as new. But regardless of whether you take them off or not, they won't stay stiff forever! Same with the arms; if you move them around enough over the course of a period of time, they will get either loose or get to the point of cracking if it's a very old torso. I don't play with my toys as much as I used to when I was, say, 7. Thus, I really can't give you any modern examples. But a good older example would be taking a look at this BrickLink page, you'll notice about 99% of them are not in New condition, which of course, is due to age. So, my point is, make the best of minifigures, a portion of great things don't last forever.

It's up to you to decide whether you want to make a cool minifig or pose, such as the kneeling position, or to leave them be all their minifig life. My reccomendation would be to try it out on just a pair of plain black legs, or a pair of legs you don't use, and just see what you think.

Good luck!

[FilmGirl27]

Hi Big Cam,

I'm just like you. I was afraid of trying it for a long time, but tried it recently. Arms are fine to take off, but they're a little difficult to get back on the figure. I wouldn't recommend removing the legs at all, though.

[Eilif]

I remove arms and legs from time to time when necessary to make or repair a certain fig, or when I have multiples of a torso or legs and want to have some variants, but I don't do so frequently. They are quite tight fitting, so it's true that repeated changing can weaken the joints. However, if you're using your minifigs for display, they're probably not going to get much looser from an arm or leg swap now and then.

Remember though, that when switching parts between old and new minifigs the mobility may not be exactly the same. They may not always go together as tightly, and conversely sometimes the limbs may be harder to move due to increased friction.

[Rick]

I'm a bit of a purist and tend to view a torso or leg assembly as one piece that shouldn't be modified. Although I could see my opinion on this evolve in the future.

[not-in-use-anymore]

Other types of arms, like rock monster or cyborg arms, normally get really loose, so I wouldn't suggest doing things with those. Strength of arms changes with the quality, older minifigs often have better arms/legs than the new ones. Arms don't get too loose after a while, but legs can get loose pretty quickly. (also, don't put an arm in a leg connector, it can get stuck in the arm and you can't attach legs to the waist afterwards.)

[Peppermint_M]

Whatever you do, be gentle, be careful. I have only ever damaged one arm when removing it, the hand broke out, cracking the side of the arm. Otherwise, no issues.

I only ever once took legs apart and never wish to try it again. It was a disaster and very inadvisable.

[Destroydacre]

I can assure you that when I was younger, 8 or 9 years old, I used to remove the arms and legs from my minifigures all the time to switch them up. At that age, I was less than careful, but the figs never cracked on me so I think you're good to go. As others have said the legs do get loose fairly quickly, so if you're going to take them apart, I'd just pick out a couple specific leg pieces and use them over and over, maybe even keep them apart when done. In my experience, arms do not get very loose unless the torso is cracked, which unfortunately has happened to a few of my older figs for other reasons.

[sok117]

Only remove legs and arms on older figures, It works fine if you are gentle and don't cause to much ware and tear, and overall, It can make some really unique individual characters.

[prateek]

Just like you BC, I was afraid of popping arms and legs off. Arms are really easy to do, but you have to be careful with the legs. One of my fig's left leg's peg came off with the leg, so it's impossible to put it back

[legolooney]

I very rarely remove legs, it makes them wonky when you re attach

i do remove the arms on all my figs as i store arms and torso separately. It seems to have had no effect on my figures and it gives so many more possibilities to the torso!

hope this helps

[Darth Legolas]

You're all too cautious! I do it all the time. Have the minifig hands in the arms, it gives you more to pull on. Just pop em' off. Usually, I twist them to the back.

For legs, you just twist back and forth while slowly pulling the leg off. Easy as pie!

[FinalFeature]

Ive only removed a leg off a minifigure once an nothing happened. Arms i will remove if i am choosing a special arm coloring for a custom. As someone else said try it on a regular minifigure leg and then see if you want to continue doing this to any minifigure.

[ILikePi]

Removing legs on newer minifigs isn't as bad as most people say in the first page of posts. All you do is just wiggle the leg on its joint while pulling outward (do not pull downwards at all), and the leg comes off without bending the peg inside.

Easy as pie!

I'm easy? Edited March 13, 2010 by ILikePi

[not-in-use-anymore]

Removing legs on newer minifigs isn't as bad as most people say in the first page of posts.

It isn't too hard, but it can become very loose(though some new minifig limbs are already loose, like the golden knight, or Brickbeard ).

[Shadows]

Like a few have said, firm but gentle, that's the way to do it. Never had a problem and I've restored a few hundred minifigs to their original configurations this way (I don't tend to go the other way much).

On the legs, I mostly just switch them around if I need a weird colour combination or to replace a damaged part with an undamaged one. If I get a minifig lot on eBay, I'm bound to find the occasional tooth-marked leg, but instead of tossing the whole thing, I just remove the bad part and replace it with a spare if I have one. If I don't, I put the good parts in a bin and in the future, I'll have spares for such use. I've never had a problem with them being loose afterwards (unless they were loose to begin with) and I've done a lot of switching.

[Fenghuang0296]

(Sorry for necroposting.)

So, I tried switching some grey arms from an old LotR torso with sand blue arms from the Ninjago Movie, for a custom, using the old tips on this thread. Thing is, the left arm's fine, but the right is a bit loose. Is this age, or just shifts in the production process? And is there any way I can make it just a little stiffer?

[MAB]

You can make it stiffer by coating the "shoulder" joint with a little varnish or paint, or wrap a little tape around the joint (although this isn't so good if you tend to change poses a lot).