Butchering a BMO

Tonight, I extracted an MTR Octopus card NFC thingamajig and implanted it in a purchased-for-this-purpose hollow BMO figure from, apparently, a 2014 series of McDonald’s Happy Meal toys. This particular BMO toy was dubbed Channel Changin’ BMO because its screen consists of a lenticular-printed sticker that allows it to display multiple facial expressions depending on the angle of view.

The raw materials for this activity. — The materials that went into this build: BMO (at this angle, showing its very-happy face), the doughnut-shaped NFC disc (antenna side up), and a scavenged plastic whatsit that had the makings of a passable lanyard loop. But calling it a *build* is a wee bit grandiose.

That light green half-circle features two little holes, just large enough to accomodate some mini hex-socket-head stainless steel wood screws I keep on hand. I’ve had a bag of them kicking around here for years, but their original intended purpose has slipped my mind. They’re far too short to be halves of hobby motor shaft couplings, but that’s sure what they resemble. Here’s a closeup of the NFC product:

The Octopus card I sliced open contained a Sony NFC-F product. — The Octopus card I disemboweled contained a Sony RC-S893.

At assembly time, the BMO figure had been press-fit or snapped together so firmly that prying it apart without ruining the edges of the front and back halves seemed well night impossible. Wunderbar from the standpoint of potential liability for children choking on BMO parts, of course.

I’m still a cordless rotary multitool greenhorn (this being only my second time using my just-like-a-dremel GRO 12V-35), so the process of opening up BMO’s back with a little abrasive cut-off disc about the size of my thumbnail ended up more grisly plastic-melty than surgically precise.

After smoothing the edges of the hole with some little hand files, I stuffed the toy’s interior with cut-to-size pieces of closed-cell polyethylene foam from a bag of scraps, glued the NFC disc into a condiment cup lid slightly larger across than the width or height of the hole in BMO’s back, wedged it in there on top of the foam, and siliconed over the hole with some LOCTITE 598.

The operation was a success. — All done. Once the Loctite 598 had set, I removed the excess material that I’d smeared across BMO’s back while hamhandedly trying to smooth the silicone, so the end result looks *slightly* better now.

The shiny, index-finger-sized thing visible in the photo above, just to the lower left of face-down FrankenBMO, is a double-ended hand drill, with a small-orifice collet on one end and a larger-orificed collet on the other. I used it to drill the holes for the screws holding the lanyard hoop onto BMO’s left side, behind its arm.

BMOctopus sure isn’t pretty from the back, but it works!