articulating a head

Well, I don't have the XMC Nightcrawler so I'm not totally sure how the neck joint is made but from the look of it in pictures, it's like a normal socket joint just with a bulb going up through the middle. So I think if you carefully heat popped the head off, you could dremmel the bottom of it a bit to give it a wider range of motion, I might suggest wrapping the wires of the light in some electrical tape to give them a little added protection(I'd even put some plasti dip on top of the tape). That's because I would personally want to retain the light up feature

You could switch out the neck with the ML Nightcrawler, just heat up the XMC one, (don't melt the wires) gently remove the head, I personally would just leave it though, cause if something happens mid transplant, hes an expensive blue man to replace.