G.I. Joe: Resolute - Flint

Ever since I first scooped up the original figure at my local Rich's Department Store in 1985, Flint was simply the man. Forget Duke, forget Snake Eyes...it was all about Flint. I'm not sure if it was the filecard, the smirk on his face, or just his overall look and attitude, Flint immediately rocketed to my favorites list. The way he was portrayed in the Sunbow cartoon only further carried that along.

I will admit I was a bit disappointed at how he came across in the comic, even in the Marvel days, mostly because he was somewhat under-utilized. He had his high points, for sure (like single handedly taking out a whole fireteam of Eels) but for the most part he and Lady Jaye seemed to mostly serve as sidekicks to Snake Eyes and Scarlett, and rarely struck out on his own. Still, he remained a big favorite of mine, to the point where in my original fanfic The Price of Peace, I sacrificed Lady Jaye in order to build Flint's character and make him more focused and give him a new twist to his personality...something that also happened in the Devils' Due comics about seven years later. In my not so humble opinion, I think I handled it a lot better. ;)

Regardless of all of this, I was thrilled when early indications showed that Flint was going to make appearences in the Resolute cartoon, and sure enough, he was used fairly heavily throughout. He was even one of the few characters aside from Duke and Snake Eyes who appeared in the final battle with Cobra. Because of this, I felt he was an absolutely critical component of the Resolute toy assortment, and I was hoping they'd find a way to include him...but with so many individualized parts and pieces, I wasn't convinced they could do it financially. Thankfully, the Hasbro designers behind these sets proved me wrong and found unique ways to retain the Resolute look but not break the tooling bank.

The bulk of the Flint figure uses the existing Duke tooling from the initial Resolute mold. This gives him a fairly unified look with the other Resolute teammmembers, but thanks to some creative painting, he has short sleeves and elbow pads. One unique choice the design team made was to give him a totally new head sculpt, which was not something that many fans would have expected. The result is very nice, in my opinion, even though I think perhaps money could have been better spent on The Baroness or Scarlett, who (even though they got newly tooled heads) suffer a bit more from their oddly formed sculpts.

Flint's got a pretty straight forward black shirt and green pants paint scheme, as he did in the animation, so it all fits together and retains the Resolute style nicely.

Of course the good stuff here comes with the accessories...and the accessories are really good. Obviously, to truly mimick the Resolute look, Flint had to come with new webgear, and he does. Large, very nicely sculpted pouches adorn his torso, with twin straps over the shoulders, complete with shotgun shells along the left strap. I am honestly in awe at just how far Hasbro has come in the past two years when it comes to sculpting the secondaries on the figures. I can remember when the Anniversary figures first started coming out, and there were certainly some issues with look and design of that first run of webgear sculpts. Not any more. Between the insane Pursuit of Cobra figures, and these incredible looking Resolute accessories, I am seriously impressed.

One of Flint's most unique attributes in Resolute was the sleeve of shotgun shells on his arm...Hasbro probably could have spent some tooling dollars to sculpt a new forearm for this, but instead they produced an additional "weapon" so to speak which clips onto the arm that simulates the look. Does the job well, saves money, and looks good.

Flint has been a mainstay in the G.I. Joe universe for a long time, but for whatever reason, he seems to often get pushed to second fiddle status by Duke. I'm extremely happy that he got some face time during G.I. Joe: Resolute, and I'm especially pleased that we got such a nice figure out of the deal. This figure is the epitome of how I view the G.I. Joe Warrant Officer now and is a near flawless update to the Flint character. Fantastic all the way around.

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