Fully Restored and Modified 2007 Gemmy Graves the Fat Butler

This is probably my favorite butler from the retail Halloween space of all time. There are close seconds, but this one definitely takes the cake. The fact that this is such a departure from the classic trope of a Halloween prop butler is what makes this so great- the likeness to Alfred Hitchcock is such an added bonus to horror fans and enthusiasts. The dry/crass phrases give this prop so much character in a subtle way that is really lost on today's modern animatronics. The outfit is unbelievably high quality, and it's a higher end gemmy- he's got wired mic mode. Bought this off a friend of mine as part of a deal, and it arrived technically fully working- but as some of you know that wasn't good enough for me. There are 2 factory errors that this guy has- and one of them is completely correctible! The first is the programming error that all of these have on the last phrase, and that is unfortunately not fixable without reprogramming this guy from the ground up. The second is the mouth- all of the inner mouthpieces that these guys have were glued in incorrectly from factory, and can be easily fixed while working on the head. There is an insert for the inner mouth piece that was completely missed when these were assembled initially. ‪@TheHauntedWolf12‬ did an excellent job explaining how to glue the mouth in correctly, make sure to check out his channel!! If you want to see how the inner mouth is supposed to be glued, check out my community post:    • Post   The first step was to address existing issues- the eye gear was split and the volume pot was extremely messed up, and would cut the volume out if you so much as tapped the base. After replacing that and the eye gear, the mouth was the only problem left. I replaced the motor shaft gear and put fresh grease in the mouth, and of course fixed the mouth positioning. The inner mouth was deformed some, so I stuffed it with paper towel and used a heat gun to reform it a little. Lastly, I reversed the eye wires so that he looks in the direction that he turns his head, instead of how it came from factory. As far as I know, the head turn mech has yet to be worked on, which is crazy. This guy still has the original motor in for the head turn, and it isn't the poor quality one that most 2007 gemmys have- it's a much different looking one with a resistor attached to it. I'm hoping that one holds out, but we'll see! The mouth movement on older gemmys is really affected by 2 things- the sculpt of the face and the mask tension. Sometimes, the mask is so tight on the plastic head shell that it prevents the mouth from moving properly. The most notorious case of this is Count Vigor. The mask is so tight on those that the mouth rarely moves correctly, if not much at all. Graves has this same issue, but to a lesser degree. Un-gluing the mask from the bottom of the head plate and pulling up on the bottom lip will do wonders. The head shell also does prohibit some mouth movement on Graves, which does suck. This prop as far as I know is the only one from gemmy that has a separately sculpted mouth- which when done right makes a character look so much more realistic. Unfortunately, it was not done right on Graves- and while it can be corrected on the released model, the prototype is the ultimate example of how cool the effect can look. Enjoy! Hopefully, if you have one or are looking to buy one, this helps you correct the mouth on yours. #gemmy #gemmyhalloween #spirithalloween #halloween #halloweenprop