He's back from Vietnam!
Though I only bought the set to get Dr. Venom, I certainly don’t mind owning … “Adventure Team Commander.” He’s a 3 3/4″-scale version of the main 1960s 12-inch G.I. Joe dude, which was reintroduced into the later Marvel comic book issues as Joe Colton. And then he stayed around for the Devil’s Due stories as the grizzled G.I. Joe team leader. Oh, hey, and he was in that last Joe/Transformers crossover. So, yeah. Wouldn’t turn him down. I like the idea of celebrating the early history of the line.
Like Dr. Venom, he’s a mix of recycled parts with a new head. I think he’s got… Ace’s arms? Duke or Flint’s torso with Snow Job’s coat bottoms? And I think those’re Shipwreck’s legs again… The head looks like they took one of the 12-inch noggins and shrunk it. It’s pretty faithful. I have an earlier Joe Colton figure up in storage and it didn’t look half as faithful as this.
(He looks like Bob Vila.)
There are three accessories. He’s got a long-ass rifle, a handgun, and a backpack. I had some trouble getting the backpack attached. The vest is very tight on the torso, and it was positioned so that the backpack peghole was half-obscured. Meanwhile, the backpack’s peg was kinda soft. It took a while and some care, but I did eventually manage to get that peg into the hole without breaking anything.
Man, that reads dirtily.
Damn, first Venom, now this guy. I may have to see if I can get that set somehow.
Man, it would be easy to redo this figure as the Joe Colton figure they gave away back in `94. But I guess that’s to be expected since the AT Commander’s outfit was based on the `60s GI Joe Green Beret uniform that Colton wore.
The parts list is actually Ace arms, Viper/Mutt torso, Arctic Snake-Eyes coat bottom. Lower legs appear to be Shipwreck’s, but the upper legs might come from elsewhere as Shipwreck had a holster on his hip.
Pretty clever parts use, IMO.
The nice thing about the Adventure Team commander is that he IS different from the two other AT 3.75 figures – they aren’t just straight repaints. There are slight differences in the construction, which surprised me – even when I saw them at JoeCon, I thought for sure they were straight-up repaints – those darn glass containers really prevent you from looking at them closely.