Army building action figures seems to have became more popular
in the last ten years. As a kid, I was always torn
between, should I get Bespin Luke or another Snowtrooper?
Hmmmm, Bespin Luke it is.
The vintage Indiana Jones line suffered from a worse problem.
There was no army to build. There was figure of Indy in a
German Uniform Disguise. This figure normally was a a
generic bad guy for me, beard and all.
This time around, Hasbro recognized the fact that you need
some whip fodder in a figure line. To help, they produced
both a single carded figure and an army building two pack.
In order to save some manufacturing costs, both of the
figures, as far as I can tell, are from the same mold.
That is something we've seen a considerable amount of in this
line. Considering this pack is two generic soldiers, I was
okay with that.
These figures are pretty much what you would expect.
Two plain neutrally posed German soldiers. I have to
give Hasbro thanks for not trying to make these guys in an
action pose.
There is one tiny issue with the pose, but it's pretty minor.
In order to make these guys really generic, both hands were
sculpted with trigger fingers. In the package, one
of them is posed in a less obvious pointing position. How
many time do you pose your figures so they are pointing?
The
overall articulation on these two is what we've seen on the rest
of the line, very much akin to what you would see on a Super
Articulated Stormtrooper (Abbreviated SA for the newbies
out there). The articulation does a pretty good job of
flowing with the sculpt and there really no joints that stand
out to my eye.
The one cool thing about the ball jointed head is that you
can switch the heads on these fellows. For you army
builders, some creative head switching can change out your ranks
even farther. For the customizers, swap heads with an Indy
figure and you've got Indy from the end of Raiders of the Lost
Ark (See bottom picture). Note, the Indy head I used
is made for a bigger ball, it's just sitting on there for the
picture.
There's one thing that would have made these guys a little
cooler. That is if the belt ammo packs were movable.
A couple of little pegs and you could have pulled them off and
switched them around for different looks. They are
kind of bulky and limit some poses, but are an accurate part of
the uniform, so I guess that's cool.
Paint
and color are the main differences between these two. One has
green shirt and the other has a tan one. The paint on the
straps, belt, buttons is the same for both. The hair color
is the other difference between these two.
For the most part the paint work is fine. The only area
that I have issue with is on the green shirt. Where the
flesh is painted for his neck There are a couple of
issues. The first is a bit of slop up on the collar.
It's minor, but can see it in some of these pics. The
second issue is that the paint on the right side of his neck is
too thin. This allows the green to show through like he's
about to turn into the Hulk only on his neck. It's
mostly on the back and side of his neck and not very noticeable
from the front. Both of these issues are fairly small, and
I don't mind overlooking them on a generic soldier figure.
Appearance:
The
weapons that come with this duo are not bad. They are a
typical WWII era German submachine gun. The only
difference between the two is one has a stock and one doesn't.
I'd be surprised if this weapon hasn't been or will be part of
the GI Joe line at some point.
