G.I. Joe: Retaliation - Lady Jaye

Like Joe Colton, Lady Jaye is reused parts with a new movie-accurate head sculpt, and like Colton, I've been reading several complaints regarding her face paint. I think I got relatively lucky with this one as well, as her face paint looks fine and the figure altogether is a successful one.

It's interesting, because early rumor from the G.I. Joe Collectors Club was that Lady Jaye was supposed to be a NYCC Exclusive. While that's a little strange, since there's never been Joe exclusives at NYCC before, I can't argue with the fact that this figure was produced very much like you might expect a convention exclusive to be. First and foremost, rather than an oversized spring-loaded launcher or zipline mechanism, Lady Jaye comes with a veritable arsenal of weaponry. Some of the weapons are even painted in realistic colors, which is a fantastic touch, but admittedly not one you generally see in retail release.

Speaking of intricate paint jobs, the multicam style uniform is amazingly well painted, especially considering the sparse camouflage we've seen on many other recently released figures. The colors are great, the patterns work very well, and she looks like a terrific modern soldier. While there is a newly sculpted Adrianne Palicki style head on the figure, from the neck down she is just a G.I. Joe: Renegades Scarlett, and I'm pleasently surprised at how effective that tactic is. One wouldn't think that a Renegades style figure would work very well for a real world modern soldier, but Lady Jaye looks pretty sharp.

The best part of Renegades Scarlett is the articulation, where she has very good range of motion in pretty much all of her joints and can maintain very effective firing positions with almost every single weapon she comes with. I'm a sucker for figures who can hold their weapons well, so this is pretty close to nirvana for me. She only has swivel wrists, but she does have the rocker ankles.

As I mentioned, though, the shining point of this figure is with the paint scheme. I continue to be amazed at just how well the camouflage pattern is executed. Almost to the point where you think it should be a high-end exclusive figure, but it's just a retail release. Very nice. Heck, I should just be glad that she's there, considering female figures are notoriously tough sellers to the marketing teams, and getting Lady Jaye here (not to mention Jinx later) should be considered a victory.

ACCESSORIES

Look at all those weapons. Not just a large number of weapons, but the two assault rifles specifically actually have painted details and look extremly realistic. I really like the backpack as well, and I'm kind of struggling to remember if it's been released previously.

The smaller weapons, the bazooka, the two knives and the ammo backpack are all in a single color, but I like their additions as well, though they would be even cooler if there were places to put them all on the figure somewhere. Lastly, Hasbro included Lady Jaye's trademark javelin launcher. I suspect it won't appear in the film, but it's a neat homage just the same.

Amazing paint job (even on the face), a terrific base figure, and loads of really fantastic accessories. Yeah, this figure is the winner of Wave 2.5 for sure. She would earn higher marks if there were more original parts, but even as she stands, I love the figure enough to warrant the highest score of this wave. She's not really movie accurate, but she works well enough and I'm glad to add her to my G.I. Joe: Retaliation roster.

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