Body builder
KENNERDELL, Venango County — Justin Manny, 30, of Kennerdell pops heads off and boils down bodies in his spare time. The utilities of his craft: a Dremel tool, screwdriver, hammer, and paintbrushes. The body parts he grabs from a number of 50 quart plastic bins laying around his bedroom.
Manny makes custom action figures from spare toy parts he has laying around his home, and sells his hybrid creations online.
Formerly of Harrisville, Manny works at the Grove City Outlets when he's not building his minions.
Many of these figures are Manny's takes on classic toys like Transformers and Marvel comic superheroes.
Manny is a member of an online group called procustomizers.com which features creators from around the world. Pro rated members of the group, like Manny, sell many of their creations online, generally on eBay.
Every few months the 100 pro members pick a charity to to which they donate. They determine a theme for their creations and post them on eBay for a weeklong auction.
April is Autism Awareness Month, and Manny and other group members are still ironing out which autism charity they'd like to support, though he hopes it will be one that supports children.
eBay has more than 17,000 charities to choose from and does most of the legwork as far as payment goes.
"Other than us getting the fun out of making the figures, once it sells, it's all eBay," Manny said.
Manny gets orders from around the world, and has made figures for clients from Australia, the U.K. and United Arab Emirates. Customers will send him specifications and Manny will fashion each figure to that customer's exact needs. Some jobs are simple, and require only a few touch ups with a paintbrush. Others are more complicated, and Manny can spend weeks boring holes in figures to add new attachments, boiling figures to loosen up stubborn parts. and making molds of his own, if he can't find a particular piece he needs.
Finding parts for Manny is sometimes more onerous than actually building the things. They can come from anywhere really. Happy meal toys, action figure conventions, garage sales, bargain stores and flea markets.
"Home Depot, flea markets, Dollar Trees all become your best friends," he said.
Other parts are a little more abstract and require a bit of "Macgyver-ing", Manny said. For one of his creations, Manny used electrical tape to fashion a skirt.
At the end of the day, Manny can earn up to $250 a pop for some of the figures he makes. His work list changes from time to time and it is important for him to remain on top of the trends. Manny saw a surge in Transformers orders with the release of the sequel last summer and expects a similar trend when the follow-up to Iron Man comes out this May.
Some figures like the original Transformers from the 1980s are always in vogue.
"Fans are still pretty hard-core on those," he said.
Manny says that customizing action figures is starting to become more mainstream. In the future he hopes to work on some more ambitious models called "combiners,"Transformers which, naturally, combine elements from many different figures and are able to transform into unique modes. These gems can earn their creators anywhere from $500 to $5,000.
Aside from pulling apart G.I. Joe dolls as a child, Manny got the idea for his unusual hobby in the late 1990s, when he noticed certain characters from a popular video game series called Resident Evil weren't being sold by toy companies.
Manny decided to create the missing characters himself.
His interests in action figures became more constructive as he grew up.
"I think everyone blew up G.I. Joes as a kid," he said.
