G.I. Joe: ARAHC - General Tomahawk

Well, welcome to the profiles for the 2000 G.I. Joe Two Packs. The way I figured I would do it is to start with my least favorite of the figures and move up to the one I liked the most. So if these first few reviews seem luke warm, that's because I'm just building to the good ones!! 

Now General Tomahawk is a fairly decent figure with a good concept, but a few things went kinda wrong with how it was pulled off. Let me start by saying that I LOVE this mold. Some of the most overlooked quality figures of the line were the four Talking Battle Commanders. Thay gave us a very nice Cobra Commander and Hawk, a cool new BAT model and a Stalker that was pretty decent despite his angry snarl and yellow highlights. So that being said, the mold here was a good choice. Thumbs up to Hasbro for that! The paint scheme overall is not too bad either. The jacket is a subdued dull brown with what looks to be attempted white camouflage highlights. Unfortunately the camouflage is too sparse to really be camouflage and looks instead like some strange discoloration. His pants are a dark, dull green, also subdued and very, very nicely colored. I like his pants quite a bit, and make up for some shaky decisions on the upper part of the figure.

This figure does improve on the original in one way: the figure's skin actually looks normal! He doesn't look like he spent too long in the tanning booth as the original version did. He definitely looks like more the General (Toma)hawk part, and this is a big improvement! He does still have the flat back of the Talking Battle Commander, where the backpack used to go, but there are no screw holes except for the big one.

Overall, upon further consideration, this figure is not a bad one at all. There are just some minor things that hurt it. One major thing was the use of paint wipes on this specific figure. Now, in general I have found that folks have two opinions on paint wipes. They love them, or they think they are the worst things to happen to Joes since the invention of neon paint. For the most part, I have found that paint wipes add a LOT to these new figures. On most of the figures, now that I have them in hand, I think the weathering effect is nicely done. Except for this guy. The paint settles so deep into the crevices of his uniform that it looks like there are small worms crawling all over his body. This wouldn't look quite so bad, but on the white splotches of his jacket, it really stands out in kind of a bad way. Also, the blue highlights, straps, holsters, etc...seems a little out of place, but actually does add some neat nuance to the overall figure.

Once again, plastic quality is great, more on par with the older stuff, and there were no O-ring problems to be found. His weapons are great, although it is tough to tell which ones are his and which ones are Dial Tone's. I went with color scheme, and decided that all the silver guns were (Toma)Hawk's and the black stuff belonged to the Communications Officer.