Burnout

If you had told me six months ago that Hasbro would release a 7-pack that included a random Dreadnok character from the 2003 Spy Troops line, I would have thought you were absolutely nuts. Sure it makes a certain measure of sense for Hasbro to dip into the Dreadnok waters for these 7-packs, but Burnout? Really?

Yeah, really.

By and large Burnout simply uses the same parts as the Pursuit of Cobra Recondo, which works fairly well, with the exception of that dreaded neck slope that creates an almost eternal downward gaze. It's not quite as pronounced as it was on the Recondo figure, but it is certainly still there, and is still obnoxious.

Crafting a new head sculpt for a third tier and mostly forgotten Dreadnok isn't something I would have pictured Hasbro doing, but here we are. The head is phenomenal, I have to say. The hint of a little sneer, the awesome pulled back hair. This is one awesome looking character, and I love the fact that the Hasbro designers took a mostly forgotten character and injected a lot of great life into him.

Now the original Burnout seemed like he was supposed to have a torn shirt, but it ended up looking more like a shirt with muddy splotches all over it, and we get the same effect here. Now it's way too much to think that Hasbro would tool up a new torn-shirt torso just for Burnout, so the effect does not surprise me. The colors do seem a little bit off, however. He's not nearly as blue as the older version, but considering how non-iconic Burnout is, exact color matching seems like an unnecessary luxury. I can see why they used so much Recondo, as it adds some nice bulk to the figure, and the arm wraps are at least somewhat of an homage to what the original version wore.

Unlike some of his pack-mates, Burnout does not come with any new accessories. Even though the previous version of Burnout was much more of an explosions expert, this one carries around Torch's flamethrower. He also has a rehash of Flint's shotgun, as a throwback to the shotgun the original came with. Personally, I love the old school full-sized shotgun the Spy Troops version came with, and I'm not especially impressed with this throwback.

I'll admit, the weapons seem a bit uninspired, and don't do much for me, but again for a mostly overlooked character like Burnout, I wouldn't have expected any different. The designers here most likely saved the real accessory coolness for some of the more established characters.

The end result is a surprising addition to the Dreadnok 7-Pack, and an okay one, but not spectacular. I absolutely love the new head sculpt, but the limitations of the base tooling from Recondo are unfortunate and I'm not wild about the chosen color scheme. Not a terrible figure, but compared to some of the stellar offerings in this set, he is clearly not at their level.

GRADE:

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