Darth Vader Bronze Statue

Great Review on those figs Joe!!

Congrats Joe!! And yep you made Spirit look much better!! I may have to do that too when I find one.

Draven

Yeah, thanks for the detailed description. I'm glad they're finally getting to the Vipers...it took long enough, didn't it? I hope we get a good array of the various vipers too (Alley Viper and the original Viper being among my favorites as well) Although I'm a bit surprised at your opinion of Snake Eyes. I think the wave 7 version is probably the best SE variant in the line...though I don't actually have any of the Wave 7s yet (hell, I still can't even find an armored CC from Wave 6...) but I hope to grab all of these figures.

with the way the stores in my area deal with GI Joe.We won't see these until December.The 2 lines that Walmart has huge difficulty getting in is GI Joe and Star Wars(most of the pegs are about empty).Everything else from Hasbro(any Marvel line,Transfomer)they seem to get a lot in.

Thanks Joe!

Spirit Ironknife... At first, I didn't want him, I saw the prototypes, thought.. wow, he has good weapons, but that's about it.. then I saw some in package pics and his head just looked bad.. one person said it looked like a wooden cigar statue "Indian", and I agreed... but still had that, I hope it's just the pictures, or a bad mold in the back of my head, but sadly, I got mine today and yes.. it's that bad.. BUT.. it can be fixed, and after 20 mins... I think I made him look far better, and with the fixed head, he's near the top of my fav 25th Joes.. I'd say about #5-6, though, I'd still have to go over them all to be sure.

Basically, all I did was disconnect the hair braid(the one going over the shoulder onto the chest) from the cheek, yeah, it was molded to the cheek and it looked horrible, so I cut it away(away, not completely off ).. then I trimmed down the cheeks a little, got rid of that square jaw look. Now, I know they sculpted that like that on purpose to give him a Native American look, but to me it made him look silly, so I cut down the jaw a tad then sanded to so it didn't look all cut up.. and there ya go.

I wish I took a before picture, but I'm sure over the next week or so, we'll get a million pictures/reviews, so you can compare it then if you want.. I honestly wasn't going to take any pics, but thought, people are most likely going to ask anyway, so I might as well get it out of the way.

Cobra Viper... The Viper has always been one of my fav troopers.. The Alley Viper the fav, and I'd say the regular Viper the second.. I think it was the simplistic look, but with a little oomph than a regular trooper he had, that I like soo much, he wasn't just a plain ol' blue shirt, he was a blue shirt with a vest and some sweet padded gloves.. and lets not forget the ribbed red look that brought the whole character together... Like Wild Bill, The viper too was thrown through design team hell in the past, yeah, there were the repaints of the V1 fig.. but green and purple? Then we finally got the sweet Viper pack, but they screwed with us on the boots.. and don't even get me started on that piece of crap that was the VvV Viper... first he was purple.. then he was close to his V1 colors, but his tiny head, short torso and weird arms, just made him look like a circus attraction, not one of Cobras finest Infantrymen, the backbone to the Cobra Army... like he should have been... UNTIL NOW!

This figure has it's flaws, the goggles can get lost, and the horrible placement of the hands, if it weren't for the hands alone, this would have been a perfect figure.. luckily, they swivel at the pads, so there's hope that possibly the big H can go back and retool the hands and give us some good ones in the future in a multipack or something.. but other than that, this figure is awesome, I love the way they're doing the body armor/vests and pads and such, taking his vest off and he has a regular normal button up shirt, this could be prefect for customizing and what not.

Although I didn't mention it above, the gun could use some work, I'm gonna order some of MI's guns, or possible just cut off the "handle" on this rifle, it's too fat and he has a hard time holding onto it... also, if you're gonna give us some detailed rifles, give us some detailed fingers that are separated from their other fingers that can hold the rifle right., it's not that hard, you've been getting it close, but the finger needs to be completely separate, to go in the little trigger guard area..

One thing I'd like to say about all the figures in general, overall with the 25th figures, I think Hasbro is doing an awesome job thinking ahead on certain figures on what they can be used for... from the little things like making generic looking shirts and then giving that character a vest or straps to make them look more like their character, to the even cooler things like the Cobra HISS Driver belt and Flash Belt, or the tiny little nubs on Ace's thighs, and then how they used that area to put WB's holsters in, same with the Viper, if you look at his pockets on his thighs, they're like WB's holsters, so my bet is they'll reuse them for other characters in the future, and just add different thigh holsters, pockets or what not(we already see this to be true with the Tele-Viper coming out soon).. I'm stoked for the rest of the figures, I've been on a somewhat 25th low, not sure if I was gonna continue collecting them or not, and I think these really brought me back into the fold.. I'm still not going to get them all, I'm only gonna get what I want... it has me even more excited to see what they'll have for us at SDCC and the Joe-con...

Hope you enjoyed my little "review" it was fun putting it together...

-Joe

Thursday's here.. and I got my figures from a homie in TX.. so here are my thoughts...

Duke.. I didn't get Duke, I figure.. it's Duke, he'll be everywhere, and Do I really need another Duke?

Snake Eyes.. I haven't opened him, I'm not sure if I'll keep him or not, like Duke, Do I really need another SE? But, from what I can see, he looks like a solid character, nice and BLACK, like he should be, the silver really helps bring out some of the details in him.. the knives while cool, are a little too big and bulky for me, but I like the updated sword and night vision goggles, kudos to Hasbro for that... Other than that, I'm still on the fence on opening him.. I told myself I'm not going to get every figure, and I don't need all the versions of SE... so I'll stick him on the extra shelf where I put my figs for custom fodder for now, lol.

Wild Bill.. When I first saw pics, I wasn't sure, I think with all the JvC and VvV attempts at Wild Bill, I've kinda grown a little numb towards the character, they never represented the old Wild Bill that I had as a kid, until now. As I sit back and look at him, how could such a simple big headed plain looking cowboy be turned into this awesome, sweet figure... and how could this awesome sweet figure, be a REPAINT... I mean, for what he is, Ace is an okay figure, a semi-representation of his original figure.. but to be honest... to me at least, he's kinda crappy and is hidden in the back on my little shelf, but Wild Bill... Man, he's getting center stage on the shelf. From the head sculpt, to the vest, to the sweet long horn belt buckle.. he's one of my fav 25th Joes to date... If I had to find something wrong with him, to be a typical Joe fan and complain about something... I guess I'd pick the huge holsters and the generic looking guns.. but other than that, I love this guy, and can't wait to move into the new house and sit him in the BBI copter I have with his name on it(not physically his name on the copter, but you know what I mean)...

I may try to modify his hands and holsters to fit these better guns I have from I think the VvV Wild Bill, if I can, and it works, I think I'll have the perfect Wild Bill ever made, lol.

Cobra HISS Driver.. Not much really to say about this guy, he's a vehicle driver, so for me, he'll be stuck in a cockpit, lol.. but maybe I'll have him off to the side and standing next to the HISS tank... Basically he's a repainted Flash, with new legs, and a head.. though, to me, the "helmet" should be a tad bigger, but it's not too bad. I wish they would have gone with different upper arms, so he didn't look too much like a repaint, but again, he'll probably spend most of his time in a vehicle on a shelf, so I'm not too worried. I originally wasn't planning on even opening him cause of some paint that was messed up on his thighs.. but cause of the whole vehicle thing, I'm not too worried.. I'd say out of the bunch, he's my least fav(that's out of the ones I got/opened, Duke is at the bottom and SE is right above Duke, so I guess he's my 4th fav, lol)

my wave 7 thoughts are.. SURE WISH IT WAS THURSDAY ALREADY, lol. mine should be here tomorrow.

Gonna do a mini-search on the way home today. Here's hopin'.

I don't like the weird angle of the wrist on the Viper, but otherwise it's a nice figure.