The Gemmy Toy company came out with some amazing animatronic (moving like a robot) toys for Christmas and Halloween use.
We will look inside of a few of these things and talk about what makes them tick.
Some of them stood up great to the test of time in 30 years but like anything made of plastic things erode and snap at some point.
So this dancing Santat that we have here works great even though its shoulders are broken and maybe its hip is not so great and maybe its speaker is wonky….but who is perfect!
The parts that often go on the dancing Santas are:
- – the rubber belts that are under some of the motors
- – the gears can break or split
- – the plastic parts especially the vertical poles that get pressure when popping up the full size doll
- – the motors
- – the speaker can get a loose wire or break
- – some wires can come loose in the base or throughout the doll
- – the head can have motor problems or wiring issues so eyes don’t move or mouth not move or head not turn
- The belts can be replaced with belts that you get at a Home Depot type store or with rubber bands.
- The gears are usually of 3 types and can be found at Amazon or you could 3d print them
- Use a multimeter to test for breaks in wiring.
- Check the plastic frame for stress cracks or actual breaks caused by the excessive stress of compressing and popping up the doll to its full height.
- A burned out motor can be obtained on Amazon or at some RC toy shops. One replacement is the Uxcell 7100RPM DC 9volt 1.5 amp 61.2g cm micro motor. I believe this information came from one of the many excellent Youtube videos by Gemmy Master Animatronics or one of the members JoJobean.
- (under construction Aug 13, 2021)