# Gemmy Dancing Skeleton Pirate



## CraigInPA (Sep 28, 2007)

Bought one leftover last year, new in box, from Wal-Mart for $14. Thought I did great, and didn't bother to open the box until this week. 

Apparently, they made two versions of this animatronic. Both boxes say "moves his mouth to the music when connected to a stereo". But, only one version, the later production one, has the jack to actually connect to a stereo.

The call to Gemmy went like this:
"I got this and I want to connect it to my stereo, but there is no jack."
"The jack is on the base, next to the volume control."
"The volume control on mine is on the ankle."
"Oh, you got the early version. There's no jack on that one."
"The box says it has this feature..."
"The label on the box is wrong. You should probably return it to where you bought it. It's a discontinued prop now. We don't sell them any more."
"I bought it leftover last year. I can't return it."
"That's too bad."
"Can you send me the schematic, so I can hack in my own plug?"
"No, we don't have those to send out."
"So, I have a useless prop..."
"Is there anything else I can help you with?"

I've had it apart. It looks like there's a neck motor, a body motor, a speaker, and the head itself. The head has only a coax plug, so I wonder if I just put audio into it if it would work? The eyes seem to flash in unison with the mouth movement.

Has anyone hacked this thing?


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## Great White (Jan 18, 2006)

Too bad it was labeled incorrectly but at this point, what do you want them to say a year later? $14.. Could be worse.


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## Sickie Ickie (Jun 20, 2006)

I imagine it would be similar to a santa hack.


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## CraigInPA (Sep 28, 2007)

Great White said:


> Too bad it was labeled incorrectly but at this point, what do you want them to say a year later? $14.. Could be worse.


I expected them to say that it was their error and they'd make it right, not give me attitude like it was my fault for not checking the thing to make sure it actually did everything the box said it did when I bought it on closeout. It's not the $14. It's the principal that they created and labelled the product with a set of specs that were incorrect and misleading, that I relied upon those incorrect and misleading specs when I purchased the product, and that they should, at the very least, make some attempt to apologize or make it right.

Craig


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## tonguesandwich (Oct 13, 2006)

Could it have been repacked by the store in a current box....


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## CraigInPA (Sep 28, 2007)

This prop was definitely new, never opened, in its original box when I bought it. Gemmy confessed that they mis-labelled all the early production props, and used the same box art and description on the revised version with the input jack. I read somewhere that some of the early production units had an orange sticker covering the claim of stereo input, but most did not, including mine.

Tomorrow I'm putting out about 90% of my props, holding back on a few that need repairs or completion. I'm psyched. My wife is psyched. My dog is still freaked out every time he sees the pirate in my workshop, which is where it'll stay until I have some time to play with hacking it.


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