G.I. Joe vs. Cobra - Zartan v.2

Like his pack-in partner, I kind of find this Zartan rehash a little unnecessary. I do not like the practice of constantly repainting existing figures and working them into wave after wave of new figures. It's kind of hard to justify this opinion, though, when the repaints are better than the originals...

I thought the Wave 2 Zartan was a cool enough figure, but really did not seem to represent Zartan as he should be. The odd color choices and open shirt really did not work for the Swamp-living shape changer, and the techno-arms seemed kind of out of place. Well, with the Wave 3 repaint, a lot of this stuff was actually fixed! Granted, he still has the techno arms...and his arms are actually lime green! Huh??? But after that odd choice, the rest of the figure really comes together well. He no longer has an open shirt, it's a brown vest over black shirt, which works wonders. His pants are no longer red, they're now almost black and a much nicer tone. His shin pads are also a strange color shade, almost matching the lime green color of his arms.

Still, overall, this figure is a drastic improvement over the Wave 2 version. These colors work much better, and Hasbro even included the way-cool Devil's Due Dreadnok logo on his belt! A very nice touch, I think.

There are other similarities between Zartan and his 2-Pack partner Stalker as well...I have found that the combination of Wave 2 and Wave 3 are actually better than either version alone. I took the darker metallic arms of the Wave 2 Zartan and put them on the Wave 3 version, making a very cool amalgamation of the two...check out the bottom picture for my custom Zartan, which seems to make a much cooler version of the classic character.

I cannot say that I will honestly use this figure as Zartan in my Joe universe, but the figure itself is pretty cool. I do hope, though, that this is the last repaint of Zartan that we see...personally, I would love to see Hasbro do a version more akin to the Devil's Due characterization...that is a cool looking Zartan!