G.I. Joe vs. Cobra - Blowtorch

The first and most famous G.I. Joe Flamethrower has returned...no longer sporting his gaudy orange and red armor, this is a Blowtorch for the next generation...

I was never a big Blowtorch fan as a kid...I had little desire to engulf Cobra vehicles in flame or to char hapless Cobra Troopers beyond recognition. Blowtorch's limited use in the cartoon and the comic made him pretty much a faceless character to me...normally that's attractive to me, as I can add my own twists and backstory, but with Blowtorch I never had the desire to. To be honest, this figure doesn't really give me much more desire to, either.

The mold seems to work pretty well...a normal army uniform with just the right amount of armor plating. His chest, legs, and arms are nicely adorned with metallic flame-proof armor and he is reminiscent of what a fire-trooper should look like.

His colors are head and shoulders above what he was back in '84 as well. The muted green and gold works far better than the orange and yellow did...I like this new helmet/hose design far better than the last as well and hope this is an indication of how Hasbro is going to pursue the removable armor thing in Wave 5. His head mold is pretty cool as well, and even though they got the hair color somewhat wrong, I think the head is nicely detailed and he looks like a pretty cool soldier.

So why am I not thrilled? Well, there are some problems with the figure. First of all, his legs seem posed a little oddly. I'm not sure if the rubbery plastic got misformed inside the packaging, but his lower legs point at a weird angle which makes him hard to stand, and makes him look kind of silly in a running pose. His arms are also jointed weirdly. His palms are facing up in such a way that almost no pose looks "normal"...his arms consistently look awkward. Add that to the fact that he comes with a very oddly shaped Flamethrower, and it's pretty tough to make him look like he's firing it normally.

Blowtorch has never been one of my favorites...this figure fixes a lot of problems I had with the original...his uniform is a LOT cooler looking...the colors are far better. His helmet/hose combination is very, VERY cool, but the body construction and limb-positioning combined with the flame pistol's design just don't work 100% for me. If Hasbro had given him swivel wrists and a rifle-based Flamethrower, I probably would have been much happier. As it is, the figure is okay, but not one of the highlights of Wave 3 in my book.