1 Genshiken suggests that a short steel rod can be used to fix small, broken plastic posts (like the ball joint of a model hip). Possibly could work for you, though there's relatively more stress on it.

I was a bit worried about the same thing - if the same thing happened to a couple of my figures, there'd be no way to get them to stand up. Now that they're all in the display cabinet, that's less of a concern, though I've kept the original packaging for all of them when the next move comes around.

Lemme know how the Haruhi figure looks in person. I had my eye on the Asakura one, but like you said, 1/4 scale... that size issue is enough to keep me from going for, say, the Nanoha 1/4 scale swimsuit model. ;p

2

When I first saw the figure and the stand, I wondered why they didn't use steel for the peg.

But fixing it now would require coming up with a steel peg of the right diameter, and I have no idea how I'd do that. (Or brass would work, too.) I suppose I could ask my brother and he probably could come up with something, but I'm not sure I want to show him the figure. After the peg broke, I took her dress off because I was curious.

Actually, it works really well in that position -- for a hentai meaning of the word "well". My god, it's even more perverted than when she was standing on her left leg. (In fact, it works better. When she was standing up, her breasts should have been sagging off to the side, and they aren't. It almost makes me think that the sculptor was thinking of this position for her.)

And I broke the dress, so I don't think I can get it back on in any reasonable way.

3 If the seller or the production company do not give dimensions, it's still possible to estimage. Sakaki-san was 178cm tall (to take an extreme case -- I doubt that Haruhi was any taller). A quarter of that is 44.5. Since the figure is sitting, I'd say about 3/5 of that. So, 26cm or smaller. It's lower than the lid of my laptop when open. I used to have a plush penguin that big, sitting on my desk.

4 That's a nice figurine.  And a nice figure on the figurine. 
I hear you on the figurine problem...they've been getting so well-made and so cheap I'm regularly tempted.  But I fear then it'll devolve into a sleigh ride to hell and I'll end up with a cabinet full of the damn things like the pictures I see on the net of otaku bedrooms.  Still, I'm sorry I didn't get the deluxe set of Azumanga Daioh figurines I saw in Tokyo.  They were really well done...although not exactly cheap.  The sculptor really nailed the faces.  And I also saw a stunning Belldandy (with her angel Holy Bell) that is probably the nicest cast figurine I've ever seen.  From the base to the top of Holy Bell's wings it was about 24".  I was told it was assembled from 31 separately cast and painted parts, and had these amazing, delicate, crystal-clear acrylic wings for Holy Bell.  The painting was done in Japan and supposedly took a model painter over a week for each figurine, plus three days for assembly of the parts and finishing.  It was just gorgeous.  It was also $900 and frankly, worth it.  I figured that since I'd worked on OMG for ten years I could sort of justify it, and it would be tax deductible, too.  But it was sold out, and all they had was the display model, which they refused to sell (reasonably enough). 

There's hasn't been much anime I wanted to buy recently, although I made my "obligation" order for the first Clannad box.

5 No, you're not using the metal post to replace the peg, you're actually boring into the currently-broken peg. Thus the metal post needs to be of a smaller diameter than the current peg anyway. (Technically you could use the metal post wherever you wanted - you can bore into the PVC of the figure as easily as the peg - but with her up on one foot like that, you probably are better off using the original brace position.)

The real question is, how sturdy is the base? Since the metal post won't be an integral part of the base, and it will be solidly anchored into the figure by the broken peg, all the stress is going to be on the post-base interface. Again exacerbated by Hakufu being up on one foot like that, though it's not as bad as Signum or Vita, where the support isn't under the center of gravity to start with.

But yeah, this sort of thing can quickly turn into an engineering project, and frankly, it might not be worth doing, especially if you've got to deal with the dress being broken too.

6 I used to be able to sit like that when I was a kid. If I tried it now, I think my hips would break.

Due to an unfortunate encounter with a patch of ice resulting in a farked-up knee, I can't even think about bending my leg into that position.  Just looking at it make my knee ache.

7 Bless anime for keeping the bunny costume alive! Bless Japanese no chair customs for keeping the girls flexible. I wonder if there is going to be enough figurines sold to keep a professional anime figure repairmen alive. "Why haven't you repaired her yet?" "Oh she's been repaired for a week, I just, just, couldn't seem to call you and see her leave."

8

When the Haruhi series was announced for R1 release, there was some fear here that Playboy would cause trouble. That's because the bunny costume that Haruhi wears in the series is a Playboy trademark. (J wrote about that at the time.)

But they didn't do anything, which is a relief. (Kadokawa probably could have claimed that the use of it in the anime was social commentary, and that it didn't dilute the Playboy brand, but legal hassles still could have tied up the series for years.)

9 Hmmmm yes these days it seems you'll be sued withing an inch of your life if you "violate" a trade mark by walking by it. On the other hand if I was Playboy Inc. I'd welcome anything that would keep interest in the company alive. I haven't checked lately but Playboy hasn't doing all that well. If I was king of the world I'd suggest they get with one of the better anime companies and do something like "Bunny space commandoes!" See them spike the aliens with their high heels as the aliens are stunned by the bunnies cleavage.

10 Playboy is in deep trouble right now (dropping to 11 issues this year), but they've sent in the lawyers over use of the bowtie-bunny before, most relevantly with the Dirty Pair comics. When Haruhi first hit the US, they were in the middle of reestablishing their presence in Las Vegas, making prominent use of the bunny suit, so I considered it a very real possibility.

I'm actually surprised they didn't, because of the way trademark law works: failure to actively defend your mark can lead to genericide. They may be worried that the long history of generic use in Japan (3D as well as 2D) would count against them in the US, and they'd lose the trademark completely.

-j

11 Wonderduck made me try it. It hurts a lot, and I cannot be sure how well I approximate Haruhi without a sideways shot. I hope Steven takes one, then we'll know.

12 My problem is that my thigh muscles are too large. My knees just won't bend that far, and even less bent than that they cut off all circulation below the knees.

13 I have no doubt that there are dozens of postures that could be safely assumed by a youthful Haruhi that would cause me extreme pain. ;p

14 Some of that is sexual dimorphism. Women (bless 'em) can do things with their legs that men cannot, because their pelvises aren't the same.

15 j,
Yes, indeed, Playboy sent us a cease-and-desist over the use of bunny girl costumes in one issue of the second series.  They wanted all the profits, and the remaining issues destroyed.  In an unbelievable stroke of luck, about two weeks later I met someone with access to Christine Hefner and we were able to get her to call off the lawyers.  But we still had to go through the entire issue and remove the bunny ears on all the original art so we could publish the collection.
You see generic bunny girls all the time in Japanese pop culture, but not in the US media, so I suspect Playboy still slaps down people who try it on their home turf.
But as long as our access to cute anime/manga/figurine bunny girls is not interfered with, we won't have to storm the Playboy HQ with torches and pitchforks.

16 I wonder whether Playboy gave Kadokawa any trouble about the R1 Haruhi DVD releases? (Maybe they didn't notice.)

17 If they noticed our obscure little comic 20 years ago then by god they must have noticed Haruhi and all the other gazillion bunny girls, the way manga and anime have quasi-mainstreamed since then.  Which I why I think they might have just decided to let it ride in Japan.  I do know they lost the exclusive right to the magazine title "Playboy" in Japan due to their differences in copyright law.  So maybe they just gave up, as odd as that would be for an outfit like them.

18 Maybe you answered the question there. It's easy to send cease-and-desist letters to obscure little comics. Taking on large, faceless Japanese corporations with next to no presence in the US, favorable rulings in their own nation, and revenues several times your own? A different proposition. (Or maybe they did, and nobody at Kadokawa even paid attention? Heh.)

Filing trademark and copyright lawsuits is a lot more expensive than sending letters, as we've noted before. In the face of someone who's too big (and absent-minded) to intimidate, who really isn't interested in your core market anyway? And who you don't have to worry about "generic-izing" your brand, because of the convenient fig leaf of differing national jurisdictions? Yeah, I can see why they might not bother.

19 I can understand why they wouldn't go after Kadokawa for the R2 release (Japan, Singapore etc.). Now about the R1 release?