Slaughter's Marauders Falcon

Falcon is one of those characters that I just love, but I'm not entirely sure why. He was cool enough in the comics, though somewhat under-utilized, but was a complete and total buffoon in the animated series. In G.I. Joe: The Movie, he was an undisciplined slacker and pretty much the total opposite of what I considered Falcon to be, even as a young fan. Then once DiC took over, he became a drug addict...really!

All I can think is that the original figure release in 1987 was such a good one that it carried over his questionable history and became a big time fan favorite that I love to this day. He's just a great basic military figure, and I really love it.

This just makes it even more of a tragedy with what they did to the character in the 25th Anniversary. An awful head sculpt, those dreaded Duke arms, and a questionably bright paint scheme took one of my favorite figures and relegated him to uselessness, which was extremely disappointing.

Well, with the Slaughter's Marauders set, Hasbro attempts to fix past mixgivings, and they do succeed, by and large, though they don't quite hit the home run that I was hoping they might. This is a very cool figure, but just not quite cool enough.

Using Pursuit of Cobra Dusty parts with a more generic dress-shirt torso, this is a somewhat updated Falcon who comes across looking a little bit plain. I love the Dusty tooling with the great shoulder pads, good range of motion in the arms, and those awesome, bulky legs. For the most part it has the signs of a great 30th Anniversary update.

But the paint apps don't do it very many favors. I love the green base color of the uniform and the camouflage pattern on his pants is great (as with the others) but the torso just looks too bland. It seems like it needs webgear or a flak vest or something. Anything to blend it in better with the lower half of the figure. I have to think Falcon not having a vest was budget related, because he looks like he desperately needs one, and kind of stands out without it.

The blue beret is great, and I love that it's a subtle tie-in to the rest of the Marauders without going overboard. Good figure, overall, I just feel like a vest could have topped it off perfectly. Cool thing about these modern era figures is you can generally track one down pretty easily and slap it on!

For Falcon's accessories I almost feel like I need to subtract points merely for the terrible grenade launcher that he comes with. Good grief that thing is awful. I love that it pivots up and down and has that little flip-up site, but man, you look at the thing crooked and it falls apart, plus it can't be held in a realistic firing position.

Lucky for Falcon he also has his great removable beret and the bad ass shotgun that originally came with Paris Pursuit Baroness and Pursuit of Cobra Beachhead back in the day. That redeems the accessory compliment somewhat.

Falcon is not a bad figure, not by a long shot, but it feels like there is some lost potential. I would have loved a more direct focus on the vintage style, or a full-blown 30th Anniversary heavy-duty update, instead it seems like we got something that was a little bit of both, but not enough of either. He mixes nicely with the other Marauders, and I love that Hasbro tied him into this set, using his connection with the Renegades. I just think it could have been even better.

GRADE:

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