Gemmy 2005 High Steppin’ Skeleton - “Hello My Baby”

Sorry this video is two hours late, apparently I forgot to schedule it and now I’m posting it in the middle of a Sam’s Club 👍

Here’s a Gemmy classic I feel like I should’ve owned for years now, but just got around to buying off eBay on September 5th for $35. It came in great shape, basically brand new, except 3 of the 4 gold buttons on the cuffs on his legs were missing somehow- and the one that was left was barely there, it looked like it had been held against a grinder. How exactly that happened is up to your imagination. Anyway, by pure luck the buttons in question are the exact same ones they used on the cuffs of old hip swinging Santa’s, and I’ve had enough of those to easily find 4 to steal. Besides that, there was only one other real repair I did to him. Both of his eyes lit up, but one was significantly dimmer than the other. I replaced it, but then the new LED was way brighter than the original, so I just ended up replacing both lol. It wasn’t a difficult repair, but more complicated than I expected. It turns out the eyes are actually separate pieces that are glued into the skull, and need to be pushed out to access the LEDs. I also noticed something else while I was inside the head. There’s a small piece of foam that the mouth hits when it moves down, I guess to prevent it from making a clicking sound when it opens. These are famous for having mouths that BARELY open at all to begin with, and they put a piece of foam in there to further restrict its movement just so it would be quieter??? Especially when the feet are already SO loud and clanky?! I obviously took that out lol, that’s a straight up design flaw as far as I’m concerned. The mouth moves so much better now.

Really, the way this whole thing is built is totally bizarre. To begin with, the only thing holding him up are the two metal rods that run through the coattails. I had heard that the legs were string controlled, but I expected some kind of 2 direction gear controlled mechanism that pulled down on the strings. I opened the base out of curiosity, and nope, there’s literally just 2 motors stuck directly under the coattails that are attached to strings with pulleys, just like a pop culture mouth mech. So yeah, this guy has 3 mechanisms yet not one single gear. These strings run (bare, with no conduit or protection) up through the coattails and directly to the legs. The moving arm is connected to one of these strings via a long spring… it’s so ridiculous lol. And apparently during manufacturing, they put his clothes on after everything else was already assembled- because the coattails are all velcro, one side of his jacket is velcro, and one of his sleeves is entirely velcro too 😂.

This is one of Gemmy’s most unique and bizarre Halloween pieces from the early 2000s. It was a one-off thing, and though it seemed to sell well they never made anything like it again. I mean, the audio is… weird and definitely could’ve been done better. It’s very well built though, I rarely see them broken. It looks amazing too, I especially love all of the flashing lights shining up on him from the base. All around it’s just a good item, and showcases exactly what I miss about Gemmy. I’m glad to add him to the collection.

Thanks for checking out the video! Hope you enjoyed! Let me know what you think in the comments, and I hope to see you again soon!