G.I. Joe: Retaliation - Roadblock

It seems like so long ago that I got my hands on an early sample of the Battle Kata Roadblock and reviewed him, pretty much stating unequivocably that he was the best G.I. Joe: Retaliation figure released thus far. Well, a lot more G.I. Joe: Retaliation figures have been released since then, and I'm happy to say this guy remains pretty close to the top. The amazing thing to me is that Hasbro took an already fantastic figure and managed to make it even better.

The first thing you'll see is that the paint scheme on this version of Roadblock is toned down considerably. No more elaborate camouflage, with stark greens and blacks, but now mostly a drab green uniform, which is actually good, because it remains extremely movie accurate to how Roadblock appeared throughout most of Retaliation. As with Battle Kata, the sculpt is tall, broad, and imposing, as any figure of The Rock should be, with layered muscle, amazingly well contoured fabric and an ever-present stern glare coming from his eyes.

Another really nice touch is the paint applications near his left shoulder depicting his very nicely detailed tattoo work, evocative of what we see on the movie screen. Where that tattoo appears on his shoulder is actually different tooling than we saw in the previous figure, this time with short, tight sleeves rather than the longer bulky uniform. He also has two smaller pouches on his thighs rather than the huge holsters the first figure had, which makes for a much slimmer and more streamlined look. I never realized how much those honking holsters bothered me until I got my hands on the Night Force Repeater (and then this figure) and now I realize that they feel exceptionally out of place and I didn't need a place for his Battle Kata blasters that badly.

Adding to the changes on this figure, he was given a light 5 O'clock shadow, looking more like someone who has been on the run from the government as he appeared throughout the film (especially in the later stages).

ACCESSORIES

As expected with this figure we get an absolute ton of accessories. Many of these were seen before in the Battle Kata version, especially the vest and the modular weapons system, but there are some great new weapons here as well. Well, I should say some great new weapons and a really weird looking seat/grapple/zipline thing that I have no freaking clue what to do with.

Among the new weapons is a SAW heavy machine gun, which looks to be new tooling from what I can tell (with an attached ammo crate) along with the mounted machine gun that closely resembles his old school M2 Ma Deuce from the good old days. Both of these weapons are clearly identified and used within the film and it's great to see them in their plastic form here. The large weapon plugs into the gun mounts on the Tomahawk, too, a neat fact that we discovered at JoeCon this year.

As I mentioned, this weird zipline system is something I cannot quite figure out, but perhaps other folks who have this figure can enlighten me. The two pieces clip together, and there's a great string with attached handles, but I really cannot figure out what the overall purpose of it is. It plugs into someone's back (or the Tomahawk itself) but I don't really see a clear purpose for the mechanism or the way it all fits together. Interesting idea, but I'm really not sure about the execution.

The Battle Kata weapons system is so awesome, it deserves additional mention here, even though I already gushed about it in the previous Roadblock review. Getting a modular weapons system that fits so seamlessly together at this small scale is nothing less than amazing, and kudos to the Hasbro design team for making it all happen.

What we have here is a fantastic final package. A great toy which uses the foundation from a previous great toy, but builds on the right places and makes the right changes to make this great toy even better. It's totally movie accurate, and a fantastic action figure with an armory of great accessories. How can it possibly go wrong?

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