I just acquired a second copy of the batb and am looking to mod it so that adam and billy are removable for when playing the solo dials

any advice on how to best pull this off (literally and figuratively)?

Warming it up with a hairdryer and a combination of knife-prying and jiggling got adam out with his notch intact. Looks like he can rest pretty easily in or out. Now to get billy free

Whelp, billy is proving much more difficult to extract. His attach point is smaller and I'm unsure if the peg slides in horizontally or down vertically.

I'm sure I'm not the only one to do this, any knowledge to impart?

A good Exacto can cut just about any figure, given enough care. You might also try softening them by a quick dip in some boiled water (watch your fingertips!).

Looking at the sculpt, it appears that the obvious thing to do is to improvise a peg on the bottom of each figure's foot and then drill an appropriately-sized hole for them to stick into the base. Other ways to reset them could include using a rod (i.e. cut paperclip) driven into or glued onto their backs and then sticking the rod into a pre-made hole or you could rebase them on something like one of Toyman's toy bases and then slot those little discs into the sculpt at the far ends.

Even if you don't use these ideas maybe they'll give you a good idea of your own.

Thanks for the tip. The paperclip rod method might be my go to for billy. Adam just came out so cleanly and so easily stays in place without any help that I'm crossing my fingers on pulling billy out too if i can figure out how to get him out