The worst 3d printer fail I've ever had

 So this is worst printer fail I've ever had:

It looks like I was printing grapes or corn smut (the fungus use of the word smut that's a google images search). The print must failed fairly early in the job and enveloped the entire print head and heat block.  Luckily it didn't block the cooling fan.   

Initially I tried heating the nozzle to see if it might pull of somehow but it was wrapped around too tightly.  it got loose and I could wiggle it but not much more.  Next I tried my heat gun.  That was effective on softening the blobs but it was also softening the 3d printed parts of the print head carriage.  Yikes! 

The thing that ended up working is putting a blade shaped tip on my soldering iron and essentially cutting my into the blobs and hacking it off piece by piece.  I was able to get the majority of the large pieces off that way.  After quite a bit of work I got it down to this:

It took a little bit more work but eventually I got all the chunks off and out.  At this stage you can see the next problem.  The heater block should be shiny metal instead of goopy plastic.  Because it was so enveloped in the plastic the interior of the blob was quite liquid as the heat couldn't dissipate quickly. The interior plastic was able to seep inside the slot for the heat cartridge (and maybe the thermistor).   The end result is the print head can't reach operating temperature now.  It maxes out at around 170 degrees.  So either there's an insulating layer preventing the block heating up all the way or a layer preventing the thermistor reading correctly.  Either way it doesn't work anymore.   So I've bought a new set of parts direct from Prusa and will be replacing the head end and what ever brackets have to be swapped out as well.