Pursuit of Cobra Iron Grenadier

By far the prevailing thought among Joe fans was that the Pursuit of Cobra Destro was pretty cool, though it might work better as an army builder. I've heard SAW Viper and Alley-Viper as the most likely candidates. Well Hasbro went ahead with it, but created an army builder that really makes sense. Obviously, if Destro is using this souped up body armor it stands to reason his troops would have access to it, too.

I loved this look for Destro, and surprise, surprise, I absolutely love it for the Iron Grenadiers, too. Like Destro, they use the Arctic Destro tooling underneath the big and bulky armor, and it works flawlessly. Even without the gear on, the base trooper is large and imposing. He looks a little odd with the spotty camouflage, but none of that is an issue once you put the vest on.

Yes, the uniform was initially slated to be arctic based, but with all of this beefy equipment it looks fantastic as an oversized, bulky, padded protective suit of armor. Much of the figure is very reminiscent of Destro for obvious reasons, but instead of the red and gray camouflage, the Iron Grenadier is all rocked out with very intricate urban camouflage. Grays, blacks, and whites all tie this guy back to the Iron Grenadier group, but with a much more urban color scheme. And come on... try and tell me this guy wasn't at least a little inspired by by the Sigma 6 version!

Even with all of the bulky armor, he still retains great range of motion and the articulation is fantastic. What a great trooper.

For accessories, we have the familiar armor for the torso and legs. Iron Grenadier comes with a pair of backpacks, Para-Viper's rifle and the absolutely bad ass smart gun. We initially saw this huge weapon last year at JoeCon, slated to come with Destro. Destro's final release ommitted this terrific weapon, but now his troopers have it, and I LOVE it. It really is a terrific weapon and yet another homage to the 80's action movie Aliens. Who can argue with that?

However, things aren't perfect here. While Destro came with a great stabilizer arm to connect his mini-gun to the armor, the Iron Grenadier does not. He can hold the weapon fine at his hip, but it does seem like there's a missing piece here. I borrowed Destro's, and it works okay, but it definitely doesn't fit the same way. You have to swing it around and hook the plugs in the opposite way.

As you can see, contorting the stabilizer arm caused some stress mark issues

Even with the problems with the stabilizer arm, and the weirdness of the two different backpacks (an extra included, I would imagine, to make up for Destro not having one at all) the weapons included here are great ones. I'm not sure if the design has been altered somewhat, too, but the oversized metal-plated shoulder armor stays a LOT more securely on the Iron Grenadier than it did on Destro previously. This is a great fix.

I love Destro. The huge, bulky armor and futuristic weaponry were a great tie-in to the Cobra inventor and arms manufacturer. His troopers are no exception. The excellent paint mask on the helmet and the awesome camouflage all play off the tooling perfectly, and you have some high quality troopers for MARS Industries and great support troops for Destro. These are a must buy, especially for Iron Grenadier fans.

GRADE:

Buy this figure NOW at BigBadToyStore.com!