Couldn’t quite get them all finished up last week, but I managed to wrap up the last three reviews among packing and moving this weekend, and you can check them all out on my G.I. Joe: Retaliation Review Page.
Of course you could also just click the various links below:
- G.I. Joe: Retaliation G.I. Joe Trooper
- G.I. Joe: Retaliation Storm Shadow
- G.I. Joe: Retaliation Zartan
And, of course, do not forget that awesome review sponsor Big Bad Toy Store is loaded up with pre-orders for these figures and future ones as well! Wave 2 looks especially awesome with movie accurate Roadblock, Snake Eyes, Flint, and Firefly! Check out the links below.
I’m glad I added one of Zartan to my three-pack of Troopers – he looks like a lot of fun.
I think there’s going to be some very interesting deals on these figures when clearance season hits around Thanksgiving. BBTS has to be ordering tons of cases for the Joe Trooper, and they’re going to be stuck with a bunch of unwanted Wave 1 Roadblocks as a result.
Do want a trooper and a Zartan…but just one of each. That trooper seems more of a specialist to me than a troop-builder. One-man-army type, maybe an anti-Cobra merc. Zartan is really slick, but I feel like my Resolute Zartan is my go-to “field” Zartan. (When he’s not slumming with the ‘noks.) This guy might replace him…we’ll see if I can get him in-hand.
The trooper is a beautiful figure. I love those hi-tech looking revolvers. Zartan looks so cool but the lack of ankle articulation just torques me off.
I guess that Trooper might qualify as a 5 star figure, relative to the Retaliation line, but stand him next to a PoC/30th and it’s obvious that he is in dire need of extra paint apps. I also don’t get the choice to use blue on that figure or the orange shovel.
Yeah, learning some drybrushing skills would really make some of these guys top-notch.
Then again, they’ve been cutting back on paint apps for a while now – recall what happened to the Iron Grenadier between the PoC and 30th version.
The Trooper makes me even more sad that I even bothered with the RoC Pit Tooper. The Pit Trooper is a sad and sorry thing compared to this. Of course…buying a few of these will put me in the friggin’ HOLE at 10.99 a figure. Sooo…I don’t know what to say about that. At the very least it looks like he’s got enough in there to warrant it…sorta. Oh hell, they were shoving that many accessories in with PoC and they didn’t cost that much. I just cannot see what is bringing these up three whole dollars (depending on where you were buying).
*sigh* That aside: Storm Shadow is cool, but the Renegades version is making him less cool. The Renegades version is making a LOT of my Storm Shadow’s less cool.
Zartan is awesome! I like ’em! Looks like he has all the articulation I’ll need; it’ll just come down to how it all works with his accessories.
It’s a combination of rising costs for materials, rising costs for labor as well as the movie licensing fees. Prices went up for RoC too.
Yeah, but they didn’t go up that much. Seems like a dollar or so, yet for some reason everything comes together so that they raise these to over ten bucks in one skip? The part that really gets me is that they are removing articulation and simplifying paint apps to cut costs…but that just keeps them at OVER ten bucks? I would have expected these cuts to keep them back around where they were, not allow them to be more expensive.
If the costs are rising SO MUCH that cost cutting measures are there just to keep things above ten (meaning they would be even MORE expensive otherwise?) then I guess they gotta stop wasting all that oil on plastic for toys and just give up. I don’t think toys are gona survive at this rate.
Thanks Justin. Up to this point, I was considering picking up most of this wave. Your reviews have shown me that I might at most pick up a red ninja or two to see how they fit wit the existing 25th anniversary red ninjas. I bought a lot of ROC stuff and then ended up giving it to my nephews. I don’t have the financial reserves to do that again, so I won’t be competing to get the most of these Joe troopers or Snake Eyes.
Those black Cobra Officers at Dollar General are another matter though!
“I find it somewhat surprising, with G.I. Joe being such a heavy character-based brand, that they would make a conscious effort to take a nameless trooper and give him all of the bells and whistles. And when I say all the bells and whistles, I mean all the bells and whistles. The G.I. Joe Trooper has the full articulation compliment, from the wrists to the rocker ankles, the double joint knees and everything in between.”
That’s because it’s quite obvious there are some Modern Warfare 2 & 3 players at Hasbro, and they have kindly given us the first “Soap” MacTavish figure.
Really liking the Joe Trooper – thank goodness the weapons were cast in silver/grey and not bright orange like some other figures we could mention. Have a couple preordered but if we are getting the change to non-blue cape and collar I wonder if I should change that to just one until we get confirmation of the deco change. Is that blue collar piece removable?
Does Zartan have wrist articulation? It is hard to tell from the pics.