What happened? Many years ago Santa Claus died in an accident. His little helpers wanted to conserve him and mummified his body before they buried him. All children of the world were sad, because Santa was dead, so a good willing daddy tried some mystic magic to get him back to life... It worked, well, not really, Santa waked up on halloween to terrify the world....

Last year I wanted to join the Santa Pede Challenge from Hackaday, but I never had the time to modify a dancing and singing santa to something walking. So I had this "Dancing Santa" still lying around. Today I came up with the idea to modify it to a scaring halloween mummy. I did some simple circuit bending mods and moved the LEDs from down to the top, covered the whole Santa with gauze bandage and thats it! Follow the instructable to make your own!

This is how it looks in the dark (see the flashing eyes and heard):

Step 1: Material and Tools

So here is what you need:

Dancing Santa Figure.(I got mine on Ebay, it dances and "sings" "Jingle Bells", If you use another version, the electronic might differ, but you should be able to adopt the mods)
wire (two different colors)
solder, soldering iron
some handy tools
a rotary tool (DREMEL)
gauze bandage
water color and brush
some resistors: 3x 1M, 1x 470k
electrical tape

Step 2: Before Halloween

So this is what Santa looked like before Halloween:

He was singing "Jingle Bells" and swinging his hips. Lets modify it!

Step 3: Modify the Sound

I liked Santa to sing more scary, so I did some simple circuit bending to modify the sound. Open the case. First find the clock resistor. If you have the same Santa model refer to the image. There was only one resistor, so it was not too hard to find it. If there are more, and you dont know what to do, refer to the great "Simple ways to circuit bend a toy"-Instructable of nknouf.

I recognised some unused solder points on the little pcb, so I shortcutted the resistor with those points and got some scary sounds. Here is what I came off:

I soldered a 470 K resistor in row to the clock resistor to make the sound go slower. Then I connected the clock resistor double via tree 1 M resistors in a row with the solder point marked on the image. Follow the instructions on the images!

This is what it sounds like after the mod:

Step 4: Remove the Head

My santa has some flashing LEDs at the bottom, so I came up with the idea to put those LEDs into the head, to get some flashing eyes. First you have to remove the head from the body. It is fixed two staples. Simply remove them with a small screwdriver.

Step 5: Modify the LEDs

The LEDs are hot glued to the case so you can remove them with a little use of force. Start with an LED of your choice. Desolder it and extend the existing wire by soldering a longer wire to it. Use different colors to not to confound it. Drill a small hole to the leg of Santa. Run the wire through the hole and under the clothes of Santa to the neck. Drill another hole to the neck and run the wire through it. Then resolder the LED in the right direction (you remember your color code?).

IMPORTANT: Do this one by one with every LED to not confound the wires!

Put the LEDs into the head and stick it to the body. Close the case. Now Santas guts are modified and Santa is ready to get dressed like a mummy!

Step 6:

First, bend the ams in mummy style. Cover the head with electrical tape, leave only the eyes free. This makes the eyes flash! Cover the whole body with gauze bandage. Use some water color to make it look a little more dirty. Turn it on to test if its still moving. If not, the bandage is too tight.

I hope you had fun with my Instructable. Please leave a comment if you like it or not, and share your ideas! Be sure to have a look at my other halloween instructables:

and have a creepy Halloween!