I don't mean to rain on your parade, because your thought to fix the neck issue was valid. However, I am an accomplished sculptor and customizer- and there is a major flaw with this mod. The problem is not that the neck is too short. The problem is that the helmet and shoulder gear rides up too high on Dallas' body. That's because the materials are solid plastic instead of a soft padded cloth like they should be. Yes, you have managed to frame Dallas' head better in the helmet, but it means his neck is now streched like a Ubangi warrior from Eastern Africa. I received my Dallas a few days ago, and I've come up with what I believe to be the best fix for this problem: Don't raise the head, LOWER the costume. First, you remove the helmet and detatch the shoulder armor from the collar. Peel back the little 'mounts' that connect each shoulder guard to the circular neck collar, and remove them completely from both the collar and the shoulder guards. (Don't worry, the shoulder guards will stay in place, and will acually have a bit more mobility when posing the arms later.) Once that is done, use your trusty Dremel tool with a suitable sanding head. Sand down the thickness of the under side of the collar pad. You will see two small depressions on the under side of the collar left and right, where the shoulder guard mounts used to be- you can use these as depth guides when sanding the collar, so the depth of material you remove matches the depth of these depressions. You can easily take off about 1/8th inch from the under side of the collar pad. Be careful at the egdes; after you've sanded some thickness off of it, you'll need to sand around the under-outside edge of the collar pad where it is visible to the eye, so the bottom of it is slightly rounded and not a sharp edge- you should do this manually with sand paper. Next, go to the back of the helmet, and inside the larger of the two hoses you will find a very stiff metal wire, which serves absolutle NO useful perpose- Pull back the rubber hose a little to expose the wire, and remove it with needle-nose pliers. It is not attached in any way- it will pull right out. The hose will now be flexible, and allow the helmet to rest downward. This whole opperation will create more room below the helmet, and thus the collar and helmet will sit lower and frame the figure's head higher. This proceedure has an added bonus effect: If you study photos of the space suits in the film, you will see that the top of the shoulder armor sits very close to the rim of the helmet. The white collar pad is soft, so the shoulder armor just pushes in close. But, because the HT plastic collar pad is rigid and it's connected to the edge of the shoulder guards with the mounts, this holds the shoulder armor out and makes Dallas / Kane look too broad-shouldered. SO: After you have removed the connectors and sanded down the under side of the collar pad, the collar pad will sit a bit lower on the shoulders, and allow the top of the shoulder guards to sit just above the edge of the pad- and come in closer towards the helmet. This will fix the 'broad shoulder' problem AND the high-helmet issue at the same time, and give a more realistic and movie-accurate 'slouch' to the character. AND- if this doesn't lower the helmet enough, there's one more step that can help do that: You can super-glue the neck area of the rubber space suit directly onto the neck area of the body, so the space suit itself doesn't rise up too much above the shoulders. That might lower the helmet another 1/8th inch or so.. Lemme hear that feedback!
