Red Claw for Vintage Action Man and GI Joe

Summary

In 2018 eBay ran a television commercial in the UK title “The Battle of the Red Claw” where Action Man faces off against a villainous counterpart known as The Red Claw.
 

Because he had a claw.
 

And it was red.
 

And you can view the commercial at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y52RMdQAjDI
 

This year I needed a clawed nemesis for my Bad Boys Brigade and decided that I should replicate the red ripper form some production pictures posted by Tom Astley about his work rigging the figures with a stop motion armature. The post can be found at https://www.tomastley.com/action-man-and-red-claw/
 

I made two versions of the claw: The simplest one is a direct remake of the original stop motion item where the tips move but nothing else does. You will need to print three items:
• Claw Hand Base Fused Vintage.stl
• Claw Hand Right Tip.stl
• Claw Hand Left Tip.stl
 

To add a little more play value, I made a second version where the middle parts move, too. To make that version you will need:

• Claw Hand Base Vintage.stl
• Claw Hand Right Tip.stl
• Claw Hand Left Tip.stl
• Claw Hand Right Middle.stl
• Claw Hand Left Middle.stl

Because there are many different diameters for the wrist peg on this style of body, I used the thinnest version I was aware of for the model. I recommend putting a layer or two of tape over the ribbed section of the peg to have it hold tight to your particular figure.

The joints in both versions need a pin to rotate around. I made the holes 1.8 mm so as to hold most common 1.75mm 3D Printer filament, but you can also drill out the holes and use small bolts and nuts to keep the look closer to the original TV advertisement.
The parts were designed to be printed in ABS like resin on a resin 3D printer, so watch you holes and part orientation when printing on FDM.

11 May, 2025 I circled back around and added a head sculpt with static eyes (my Eagle Eyes model still breaks too easily.)