G.I. Joe vs. Cobra - Sure Fire

While a lot of people have taken immediate disdain to the Sure Fire character based almost solely on his file name, I found an immediate affinity for the character and the figure.  His 2001 Edition was a great figure, taking a cool, underrated mold sculpting a new head and gave him a whole new character.  Hasbro is well known for reusing molds into entirely new characters, and this was no exception.

Where the original Sure Fire was so successful, though, this version falls short in some places.  Where the first version had some great muted “policelike” molds, this one has some odd bright hues that don’t really seem to match any kind of camo scheme.  The first version had a new head and brought a whole new character to the figure, but this new version uses the same mold that the D.E.F. Shockwave was given, which takes away a little bit from the originality of the character.  Not only that, but the head looks completely different from the ’01 Sure Fire, making the two only remotely similar.

As with the 2001 version, this figure has an excellent mold.  The padded vest, grenades and kneepads add some cool elements to the figure, and some of the colors here DO work.  The subdued green of the pants look really nice and I still love the placement of the G.I. Joe logo.  However, once you get above the waist, the colors just go a little funky.  His shirt is an odd bright green, which really doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, given the face that he should be used in mostly an urban environment.  The hair color is also too bright to be Sure Fire, and his trimmings are another odd hue.

This could have been a very cool figure.  Had they made this a new version of Shockwave, with some cool gray/blue camouflage and some kind of helmet, this could have been the definitive version of the character.  As it is, it is merely a new version of an already new character, which will probably not see much use in my universe.