For me, in a way, the G.I. Joe Collectors Club Figure Subscription Service has felt like my home away from home and a place that dovetailed really nicely with my own little view on the G.I. Joe universe.  Over the past two runs of the FSS we’ve gotten Hit & Run, Vypra, and now Interrogator, three characters who play huge roles in my own G.I. Joe universe, and characters who I’m thrilled to see modern updates of.

Interrogator was such a minor character in the Marvel Comics, practically a non-entity until Devils’ Due made him part of the Plague, and in a way really put him on the map.  I also featured the character pretty heavily in my dio-stories, mostly due to his striking design, awesome helmet, and really cool specialty of being COBRA’s chief torture master.  Interrogator has been revisited a couple of times now, and probably my favorite update to him is the Direct to Consumer rendition that we saw in the early 2000’s, which really modernized him nicely and made him look a little more official.

The G.I. Joe Con exclusive in 2011 was a pretty great take, too, with a neat removable helmet.

That brings us to this particular FSS update, which I will admit, I struggle to get my head around.  The torso and arms appear to be from the G.I. Joe: Retaliation COBRA Commander, a pretty neat figure, and those parts look pretty neat here, too.  His legs are from Arctic Destro in the Pursuit of Cobra era, and I have zero issues with those parts either.  They give him a great bulk and some really awesome design aesthetics that are somewhat evocative of his vintage look, but also nicely updated.

His head, however, leaves a little to be desired.  The Club chooses to reutilize the removable helmet, which was okay back in 2010 but looks a little dated these days.  It’s covering the head from Rise of COBRA Sgt. Flash, which also doesn’t provide a heck of a lot of excitement.  Considering the Club used the torso and arms from Retaliation COBRA Commander, I’m almost shocked that they didn’t just use that head as well, since they should know it would fit, and I’d think it would be in the same tooling library.  If they’d used that head with red paint on the faceplate, this figure would look 100% better.

Looking at the colors, the Club sticks with what works, a gray shirt with dark blue pants and lots of black and silver trim to spice things up a bit.  On each thigh we also see the familiar red stripes as another tribute to the old school version.  From a pure aesthetic perspective, the figure looks like an update to Interrogator, and works moderately well from that regard, but could definitely use some fine tuning.

Accessories

As mentioned above, the Interrogator comes with a removable helmet (though it stays pretty firmly on that more modern larger head.  He also has a snake-handled knife, pistol with silencer and twin nunchuk type things that actually look more like some kind of electronic cattle prod.  Law’s handcuffs are included, too.

Along with this, he also comes with the same tactical vest that the MARS Trooper came with back in the Rise of Cobra days, and unfortunately I think that’s the biggest hang up I have with this figure.  I’m not a huge fan of that overly flat and bland looking webgear as it is, but especially on top of a relatively cool modern figure it looks especially underwhelming.

The good news is, of course, that webgear can be easily swapped out, but as it stands, the figure does not look especially good with it on him.

Interrogator is a character that is pretty near and dear to me, and I desperately wanted a modern update to knock my socks off.  Unfortunately the FSS version does not quite hit that milestone.  I think with a few minor adjustments, like the Retaliation COBRA Commander head and fresh web gear, the figure could be drastically improved.  I’ll take steps to do that, but it would have been really awesome for him to come out of the package that way in the first place.  Not bad, but not the Club’s best.

Check out the video review here:

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