Gemmy Christmas Pop Culture Series: Bing Crosby

Yeah, this video is badly made. Whatever, I got it done before Christmas and that was the goal. Hehe. See the original and mostly unedited clips of the songs here: https://youtu.be/ZMJfKpoD0Dk
So the songs in the beginning have audio edited over the footage, which is why the audio is so terribly timed. But the thing is, the audio was on point in the editor. I spent what felt like an hour on each song to make sure the audio was perfectly timed lol. I don’t mean to sound desperate for credit, but I did spend time on it. I’m also aware I forgot to add music in the end when I’m reading the box. Whoops. Lastly if you can’t tell, the camera shakes every time Bing’s mouth moves. That’s because this video was literally filmed on a ping pong table. So yeah. Now on to the item itself.

So I was at an event with my grandma, and as we were leaving she told me about this Bing Crosby figure she found at a flea market for $10. She didn’t buy it or anything. Of course I got excited, and I was trying to make my way up there as soon as possible. This flea market is very close to her by the way, and quite far away from where I live. Anyway, she messaged me the following day saying she was going out that day and was willing to pick up Bing for me at the flea market if he was still there. Of course I happily said yes and she gave it to me when I came to her house for Christmas (a few days before Christmas day). Not as a present or anything btw, I still paid if you were wondering lol. It was honestly in junk shape. The box had a tag that said it worked, but their definition of working must be different from mine. To start, the top of the box was ripped off, and I thought it was missing. The mouth was snapped off and sitting in the bottom of the box. The head was super scuffed up and had obviously been through a lot. The hat was dirty, but the rest of his clothes seemed fine. The microphone arm was snapped, and the batteries were super corroded. I could tell all this just by looking at it. I also quickly found out the head was stuck, there was a gear split in the arm movement, and the string was snapped for the mouth. I cleaned the corrosion and tested him. I would’ve thought he wasn’t turning on, except his arm motor would spin every so often. Yeah, literally nothing worked, unless you count the buzzing arm motor. The speaker also made a pop noise at the end of each song, but was totally silent otherwise. After playing it a few more times, the mouth motor started turning, but barely. It made loud squealing noises every time it moved, and it was kinda hilarious. I opened him up and exercised the motor with the help of a ton of WD-40, then replaced the string and pulley on the mouth. I also took out the remaining piece of the mouth and glued that together. I opened the head mech and noticed the motor cap had come off one end somehow. I popped it back in, bent the little prong back, and glued it to be safe. The gear on the end of this motor was also split, but it had so much grease I couldn’t tell until I tested him when I thought I was done. So yeah, I also replaced the 10 tooth in that mech at some point. Then I replaced the 10 tooth in the microphone arm and glued the snapped plastic piece a few times over the course of a week, using zip ties and several brands of glue. Never had trouble with it. I took off his hat and gave it a good wash, then I spent forever getting the marks off the face. I’m not sure how those marks got there, but man they were stubborn. Then I assembled him and stuck the glued mouth back in as far as it would go. It still sticks out, but that’s because of how much glue was on the mouth before I stuck it in. I’ll have to open him up and sand it down or something, but I won’t do that until after Christmas, when I have more time. Now, the sound. He’s fried. As I said earlier, the tag said he was working, which means he was tested, but again the batteries were very corroded and definitely hadn’t been touched in a long time. And obviously he didn’t come with the adapter, so I think you know where I’m going. Somebody probably unknowingly plugged an 18 volt into him or something and fried the sound. I decided to take a quick look in the base just in case it really was a blown speaker or something, and just seconds before I did, the sound actually randomly started working! Well, sorta. It’s hardly audible. It hasn’t gone out since it came in, and I’m not sure why. Anyway, I still tried replacing the speaker, and as I suspected nothing changed. I checked out the board visually for anything obvious, and I found some corrosion that happened to be around the soundchip, that had spread from the battery compartment wire. I cleaned all the corrosion off, but nothing changed. I figured that meant that battery wire was corroded, and sure enough it was.

Once again I’ve run out of room for the rest of the description! Click here to view the rest: https://youtu.be/4ORL4Aq8Sxw