In a follow-up to his insider’s perspective on the King Hsss-shoulder issue, Jazwares Director of Product Development and all-around toy fan Joe Amaro sent these images from the Jazwares factory in China. It provides an interesting look into how action figures are assembled, and why fixing an error like the shoulders can be so expensive.

Writes Joe:

Attached are pictures of some insert molded parts. This is how MOTUC shoulders are made.

Basically it is taking the joint part, putting it into the tool (mold) and injecting the plastic around it. So when the worker pulls them out of the tool the joints are already assembled.

You can see the different parts in the pictures by color, the lighter parts are the joints.

The parts come out of the tools just like models cars come from the box. They are all attached together and have to be cut out. So you can’t just flip a part, they are all attached.

This is why you can’t interchange joints and why it requires a retool.

And to the issue of mixing parts, again, we [collectors] only think of one figure. They look at thousands and thousands of individual parts.

Look at the pictures of bags and bags of pieces. If they are not careful, it is easy to mix up parts.