Slaughter's Marauders Red Dog

While Hasbro was certainly updating the vintage looks to many of the figures in this set, but for the most part they stuck pretty true to the original. Not really the case with Red Dog.

I'm a huge football fan, but for whatever reason the old school Red Dog didn't generate much excitement for me. He was fine, I suppose, but even less military than his two teammates. This modern update completely changes the look of the figure, but doesn't manage to make him any more military themed.

Using a new head sculpt that is strangely different than the original (yet still a nice one) Red Dog also uses Bazooka parts to retain the sports aesthetic, and then uses Shadow Tracker's legs as a weird sort of windpant look that looks all right, but not necessarily reminiscent of the vintage version.

Where the figure is considerably different is with the paint scheme. Where Red Dog has mostly red in the jersey, this modern update goes more with white...perhaps an "Away Jersey" look? The pants are also quite a bit different than the original color-wise. When you stand back and look at the head and look at the overall figure, it's obviously a pretty different look, which really is fine with me, but somewhat odd considering Hasbro's devotion to retaining the old school aesthetic.

Accessories? Red Dog don't need no stinkin' accessories!

Well, I don't know if I agree with that... Red Dog comes with a pretty neat removable headband and necklace as well as a great looking pistol. But by far the best accessory here is the football! How about that? As many Joes who have football designs or football backgrounds, we have never had an actual football in action figure form before. Not only do we have the football here, there's a nice slot in the ball so Red Dog can actually hold it. Pretty cool.

But that's it. No rifle, no heavy weapons...just essentially a football and pistol.

This figure isn't bad...it's fine. But the whole overblown sports metaphor thing sometimes rings a bit hollow for me, and I'll trade off super-military action for sports themes any day. I do kind of dig the whole casual bad ass look that the Renegades had back in the day, but I do wish Red Dog had gotten perhaps a more hard edged upgrade.

GRADE:

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