Springs in figures.

[kup]

I would say leave them relaxed as well because for some funny reason my Sky Shadow keeps shooting out his missile itself all of a sudden one day and I'm guessing because the spring has been coiled too long and it's just "dying" to uncoil. So I can't put the missile back anymore because a minute later, the missile will just shoot out by itself. The first few times it happened I thought my TFs had come alive and were fighting each other.

P.S: The Activators look better in robot mode anyway.

My Tarantulas does that. He could be there for days or weeks and suddenly BANG! the missile fires and scares the crap out of me.

I have had to replace the spring of several of my G1 figures and added springs to figures which springs were removed for safety reasons. The best springs you can use are those from those multi color pens. I buy them from the reject shop, remove the springs and cut them to the appropriate size if necessary.

[Sam]

I usually leave the springs relaxed, because I have this illogical and quirky belief that the springs get "tired" if they are loaded, and that overtime they will refuse to work properly.

I kinda see them like muscles, they can't be overused and need to be relaxed. But I make this comment without any proper knowledge of human biology and anatomy... just a thought.

[FFN]

Relaxed is better, so don't load missiles for too long.

Look at japanese toy packaging - they typically pack toys with the spring-loaded gimmicks deployed even though it takes up more room in their (usually) compact, space-saving packaging.

[griffin]

To be honest, I had never even thought about this before reading this topic. It has really made me think about what is happening to my collection (they are all in robot mode, with missiles in their launchers). But since I don't play with them anymore, and not planning to sell them any time soon, I guess it doesn't really matter if the springs don't work as well as they used to.

[Saintly]

relaxed springs for me, missiles are stored away

[i_amtrunks]

I keep the springs relaxed, and weapons unloaded for a few reasons:
1: to stop accidental firing, so as not to lose the missile
2: I've found that unloaded firing weapons is less enticing to my younger relatives, so if I keep the doubles with missiles around the kiddies are happy to play with them and leave the rest alone.
3: I too am of the belief that relaxed springs are happier springs, but why I think that I do not know.