Twist Around Heads Made Easier

Q&A with Sergio!

Sergio comments, "I want to swap a Twist Around Head, from its stiff body to a articulated body that had a Twist Around Head too, but I don't know how, the head pops out every time."

These are some of the thrift store Twist Around versions I have. They are all produced by Mattel even though the middle one is a Disney character. If you are using a GI Joe then I cant help you with that. Assuming you are using Mattel, we'll keep going. FYI, Sergio, I know you already know a lot of what I'm about to say, but for those that don't, I'm going to be a bit detailed.

When you pull the head off of a Twist Around you should expect for the neck and shoulder seams to open a little bit. Someone had previously tried to take this guys head off too harshly and cracked his throat in the process. Super glue is the only fix I can think of for this if you want to save the body.

Once you get the head off, you'll find that some neck openings have a single ring or in Ken's case, a double ring.

You'll also see that each head has a plastic prong inserted into its base. That plastic prong is the reason why your head keeps popping off. The plastic actually sits below the rings of the neck. If you don't angle it right and apply enough pressure when putting the head back in, you wont make it past the ring(s). The good news though, is that you don't need the plastic prongs at all, because the protruding vinyl at the base of the head fits snuggly into the neck and will actually stay in place until you tug it out.

You can remove the prongs by putting the plastic section between your teeth and twisting the dolls head in a circle while pulling it at the same time. But now my teeth are sore, so if you don't want to do that, then use pliers, lol. The Disney guy's prong was glued inside his head so I had to use pliers on him and just broke off the outer ring of plastic.

If for some reason you want to leave the prong in there, you can always use an Xacto to whittle it down some, but taking it out is so much easier in the long run.

Now you can quickly swap Twist heads as much as you want. Just make sure you angle the head into the opening and then twist the head backwards as you push it in and you'll be good to go.

In case you have High School Musical heads, they are a different story:

Their necks are much smaller than an adult and when I pulled off this guys head, the prong stayed inside the neck.

Needle nose pliers got it out with some tugging.

However, the prong on the black HSM kid was glued inside his head. I pulled his head out as far as it would come and then just gently angled his head back and forth until the base of the prong broke inside the neck hole and fell into his body. If you have a blow dryer, it might be easier to get it out, but my way worked regardless.

You can now put the HSM kids onto adult bodies, however, again, they are smaller so they are going to look funny at the neck and vice versa if you put an adult head on a HSM body, like so:

Happy body swapping!

Older related posts:

Put a Twist Around Head on an Articulated Neck
Pump Up Your Ken Tutorial
We Can Rebuild Him