Time for some new GI Joe figure reviews! The third shipment of FSS 6.0 has arrived and I figured that I would get this dumb blog rolling again with my thoughts on these two figures.
This shipment brings us Rampart and the Night Stalker Commander. Initial appearances from the card art and the figures in package looks like some good solid work by the Club. Time for a closer look.
Rampart first appeared back in 1990 alongside quite a few other brand new characters to the ARAH line-up. Quite a few have already been recreated in modern form by the Club. I believe that Grid Iron, Stretcher, and Rapid Fire are the only ones left to be made. Rapid Fire? Yeah... we'll see... I suppose Super Trooper would have to come out first. Yikes... those two would be interesting to see in modern form!
Overall, I'm very pleased with how Rampart turned out. He's got a decent set of weapons included with him. The parts choices work out well, mostly. There always seems to be at least one issue with Club figures. The Club often hits solid home runs with figures like Cross Country, but usually, there's at least a minor issue. With Rampart, it has to do with his neck. The head choice works just fine; it's a reuse of the head used for Blocker from the BF2000 Convention set from last year. And like Blocker's head, Rampart doesn't have any eyebrows! No worries, the goggles cover up his eyes nicely. So the combination of the head and the torso is a nice fit, but the head rests just a little too high on the neck post. Rampart suffers a bit from the giraffe neck syndrome. Easy fix though, a gentle twist of a drill bit in the head will carve out a little extra room to allow the head to rest lower on the neck. Alters the original figure a bit,but so what, it's mine to do with as I please. Besides, I've already glued some of the loose bits to one of the weapons that he comes with!
Next up is the Night Stalker Commander. The Night Stalkers are an original creation by the Club. They were a set of female Cobra operatives that first appeared in the Tanks fro the Memories convention set from way back in 2007 in Atlanta. I actually went to that convention, but only as a one day guest.
The original figures were, of course, made from o-ring molds. This new version is naturally all modern construction.
What's cool about this figure is that she is a unique character. She's got a real name, Rebecca Bristow. She's pretty much the same base figure that the Club created for the female Cobra troopers from just a couple years ago. The main difference is the arm construction. The troopers used Helix arms, while the commander uses... uh... some other female arms. Baroness arms? I think so.
Bristow is just as... well endowed as the Cobra troopers, which is okay, I guess, but still impractical for the personal protection of the soldier. Overall, the Club has done great work with these female troopers. I believe that the plan is to release a set of Night Stalkers like they did with the Cobra troopers. They'll all be geared up in black uniforms and I believe that they'll be ethnically diverse as well. Hopefully, they'll be out this year and also hopefully available at the convention in Chattanooga in June.
Next up? Who knows? We'll see next month. Maybe I'll have some other new posts on this silly ass blog before then.
Pretty cool to see Rampart finally make it into the line as a modern figure. I'm also loving the Night Stalker commander. I just admire these from afar now but both of these look pretty solid.
ReplyDeleteFrom Rampart's accessories I recognize the missile launcher that came with the pursuit of Cobra Duke and the machine gun with the drum magazine. What is the other accessory mounted on the tripod?