The Little Differences: Short Fuze, Grunt, and Jan Ors by JACKOFTRADZE

Vincent: It's the little differences. I mean, they got the same $#!t over there that we got here, but it's just – it's just there it's a little different.

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As two of the "Original 13" Joes, Short Fuze and Grunt have a special place in my heart. So when we finally got 25th Anniversary versions, of them, my original team was (nearly) complete. Short Fuze came with the Target Exclusive "Ultimate Battle Pack" and was almost perfect ...except for the lack of a clear visor on the helmet and the head which was a Doc repaint and sat too high on the neck post. While the Doc head is great for Doc, it doesn't quite fit the intense expression I remember in Short Fuze's 1982 original package art.

The head is from the Hawk comic pack which not only had the perfect intense expression, but the blond hair as well. (Then what about Hawk you ask? I'll get to that in another post.) I also took the visor from that comic pack hawk and I used a tiny drill bit in my dremmel to put two holes in the sides of the helmet so the visor would snap into place. To complete the look I gave him a mortar shell from a BBi weapons pack that was on clearance at TRU.

Grunt was released with one of the Toys R Us exclusive Senior Ranking Officers Sets but his unform was a goofy green color that didn't look good with the other more drably dressed Joes. While the original 13 had varying green colors, none had this bright of a green color. So I took the head and gear from the figure and put it on a comic pack Duke body. I still think I need to dremel the head a little bit so it sits a little lower on the neck post but Grunt now fits in with his buddies. (Thanks to JACKOFTRADZE for this one.)

And speaking of JACKOFTRADZE, you can check out more pics and info on his contribution to this week's The Little Differences "Jan Ors" at his blog. He offers up the recipe as well some witty insights into Star Wars comic packs and collecting. Check out the teaser below!

Once again, you can see that with a little parts swapping (and maybe a little drilling this time) you too can make your figures much better. Stay tuned as next week's figures take a little more effort than usual but are also that much cooler...