Customizing Admiral Cain - action figure transplant surgery

Okay, this will be my biggest, nerdiest confession ever, but you can't hide from who you are - I have customized my first action figure.

Being a huge Battlestar Galactica fan - and let's face it - toy enthusiast, I was an avid collector of Diamond Select's terrific 7" series of figures. The show was nearing its end, yet there were still several key characters that DS had yet to get around to producing - Laura Roslin, Gaius Baltar and Admiral Helena Cain.

Cain was a must - as portrayed by Michelle Forbes, Cain instantly became one of BSG's greatest characters - an I'm-right-even-though-I'm-crazy officer from the Ronald Tracy school, Cain was a standout - hers would be the coolest of figures - until Diamond Select canceled the toy line. Not only would key characters like President Roslin and Gaius Baltar be left unmade, they were robbing us of Cain! Thus, the seeds of my toy-crafting obsession were sown.

Unproduced: Admiral Adama, Laura Roslin amd President Apollo

Unproduced Admiral Cain, Gaius Baltar and Adama

So - I began to think about what preexisting figure might resemble Cain. I looked at the prototype and I looked at Michelle Forbes in character. I'm just an amateur and not ready to start messing with Sculpy or other molding ingredients - I was looking to be a cannibal...

Then it occurred to me - Diamond Select had produced a figure of the main character from the Battlestar movie, Razor, Kendra Shaw...

Basically, the same female body type in a Pegasus officer's uniform. Hmmm....

Then I stumbled across some shots of the new Twilight figures from NECA - namely a character named Alice...

Now I'm not much of a Twilight fan, but the combination of dark-haired patrician brooding and barely suppressed madness behind those eyes got me thinking...if I could just somehow switch heads...

Which is exactly what I did. I picked up both figures for a song on eBay, then learned about the venerable "boil and pop" method of removing a figure's head or limbs - submerge the head in some very warm, not quite boiling water for a couple of minutes to soften the plastic, then carefully twist the head ball-joint from the neck - thankfully NECA and Diamond Select used nearly identical ball joints...

DO NOT do this when your wife is home...and behold: the finished product...

"Regulations give me broad authority in this matter."

"Well, I see that you got it to eat. That's progress I suppose."

"You just sat there, listening to us, pretending to be our friend, didn't you?" 

What do you guys think? I may have found my calling! Next up, we'll take a stab at customizing Baltar and Laura Roslin - then by my count, there are at least 7 characters from Firefly they never made...