Accessorizing

One thing I've wanted to do ever since I started decorating my study with Christmas figures was to put little Santa hats onto all the regular figures that don't get replaced by Christmas ones. Just because they're not Christmas-themed, doesn't mean they can't participate in the fun, right? I mean, there's way more spots that don't get any Christmas cheer than there are ones that do. Maybe we could change that with a few hats.

I looked on Amazon, hoping that there was a simple solution for my quest, but I can't find hats that are quite small enough. I found this set:

Which I thought might be the way to go, but I couldn't tell if they would fit my action figures. It said it would fit a lollipop in the title, there. Would that work? But when I looked in the reviews, I found this picture attached to someone's comment.

Perfect size for tall action figures they said. I don't know for sure, because I don't recognize those figures, but they look like Mego-style figures judging from their cloth outfits. Those are a good deal larger than what I have on my shelf. They run around eight or nine inches at least, and my figures are mostly six inches. I have a few twelve inch guys, but not thirty of them.

There was a second review with a picture that sealed the deal for me:

If they fit a bottle, then they were too big for a six inch guy. Seemed like I needed to look elsewhere. I watched a few YouTube videos, and saw how to make my own. The first one I did was a little large, and only fit those twelve inch guys.

I tried again, and it was a little better.

It fit better, though not perfectly still, but it was a huge pain in the butt. I got glue everywhere, and it took too long. If I wanted it to do what I was after, I was in for dozens of hours making these hats. So, I pretty much gave up.

Then there was this thing that I got last year at work.

Chick-fil-a sends crap like this into newsrooms all the time. There was a guy last year who had a collection of those Chick-fil-a cows that he would add to each time a new batch came in. Pretty much every time a new restaurant opened in Houston, they would send out some stuff, and last year they sent us some of their special edition Christmas cows that you could get.

Well, I thought I could grab one of those, and use it as a Christmas decoration on my desk at work,  like my coworker did with all his normal cows. When the Christmas season began, I got out my lights and my cow, and set them up on my desk. But that cow just kept drawing my eye.

You see, I don't give a crap for Chick-fil-a. I've almost never eaten there, and the few times that I have, I've done it with free coupons that they'd sent to the station. I didn't like Chick-fil-a enough to have some friggin' special edition cow plushie on my desk. It just felt weird.

On top of that, the thing was wearing this great winter hat. You could almost call it a Santa hat, except that it was in stripes instead of plain red. I kept looking at that cow, and coveting the hat. If I just took it home and performed some surgery, I could probably give that to one of my toys, and add to the Christmas vibe.

At last, I committed. I took the cow home, performed some surgery, and I had a little hat...which would only fit twelve inch figures. Oh well, at least I had some of those. I put it on the Halo guys that I transformed into Christmas warriors by arming them with candy canes and trading their heads out for a Barbie and an unmasked Peter Parker.

I thought it looked pretty good, and those two needed a little something. I had hoped that the fact that one was red and one was green would convey Christmas, but it definitely did not. The candy canes just didn't do enough either. The hat adds a little more, but they're still probably stupid. Oh well.

But I wasn't done. I thought about how important it was that hunters eat the whole animal, and not just kill something for its tusks or its horns or its tail feathers, and I figured I could do more with this cow...okay, I didn't think about that, but I still figured I could do more. Look at the shoes the cow is wearing:

That looks like a Santa hat, doesn't it? Maybe some surgery could yield me a couple more hats I could use. Probably only fit a twelve inch figure, but still...I started cutting, and behold:

Those look great, don't they? You can't tell that it's only a Santa hat on the front half, either. The back side is just the bottom of the shoe, but nobody will see that. They were probably good as is, but I thought they needed a little poof ball at the top, so I glued one on for each, and here we go:

I love them. It makes me wish that these guys weren't up on the top shelf, because nobody will likely notice them up there. Oh well, they're still fun.

I think this was the point where I started getting greedy, though. I looked at the cow, and wondered if I couldn't do something with the shirt.

The front, with the stupid Eet Mor Chikin crap didn't do anything for me, but they had the same design with the lights on the back, but minus the writing. That might look like an ugly Christmas sweater on somebody, right?

So, I went to work, surgically removing it, and I tried it on a figure.

Okay, it didn't fit right, and looked like utter crap. I guess it's time to give up. I got an awful lot out of that free plushie, I didn't need to be greedy.

Funny thing is, while I was writing this post, I found a listing on Amazon for Santa hats that had this comment:

Alicia there is using those for six inch wrestling figures, and the don't look too bad. I could get thirty for $14 or insanely enough, sixty for $16. An extra thirty for $2. Thirty is probably more than enough, but with sixty, I'd never run out, and they look pretty good. I think I might have to invest in a set and just see what comes of it.

Although, the best way to go would be this:

BigBadToyStore has a line of figures called the Naughty or Nice Collection, and they have this accessory set of four Santa Claus hats that are made specifically to fit six inch figures. Unfortunately, they are much more expensive. $12 for four or $16 for sixty? I kind of wish I could go for the former, but I'm pretty sure I'll have to choose the latter.