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Club
Exclusive Aged Adventurer
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The
Figure
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For the 2004 Convention, the GI Joe Club produced the Aged Adventurer. This Joe was based on a Joe created by Dave Pisani, Doug Fakkel, John Ellingwood and Tod Pleasant for their excellent 30th Anniversary of the Adventure Team diorama.
These guys originally took an AT figure, deflocked it, filed down the hair to make it bald and had it reflocked with a bald pate. Using that as inspiration, the GI Joe Collectors' Club made this figure, an Aged Sea Adventurer, to excellent result.
The faded red hair indicates to me he's the Sea Adventurer, (the next Club Exclusive figure). Also, the fact that he has SCUBA gear seals the deal.
This figure comes in a poly bag with all the gear separately bagged and stuffed within, sealed at the top with a bi-fold card similar to the Counter Culture Joe stapled shut.
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The
Headsculpt
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The excellent new head sclupt. A bald AT Joe with balding flocking in faded red.
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The
Gear
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This year's Convention Exclusive comes with far more gear than the previous year's effort. The figure comes dressed in red swim shorts and a white tank top with the 30th Anniversary metallic AT dog tag:
But also with this figure comes a plethora of reproduction AT gear:
In some order:
The scuba top is a nice thick supple rubber, as are the flippers. The arms of Joe go in and out of the tight sleeves with relative ease, without harming the rubber. When I got my face mask the clear plastic lens was rotated slightly off axis. I used hot water to soften the plastic to fix it. This caused the clear lens to warp outward making it look bubble-like, which actually looks quite nice, though it was an accident.
The worst problem with packaging all this gear into one poly bag came with the sunglasses.
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The sunglasses came packaged in a poly bag with the
depth gauge and the knife/sheath. Note that the sunglasses are bent flat.
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Here they are out of the package, pressed flat.
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After dropping them into boiled water for a few seconds
and then in cold water, the shape is completely restored.
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However, even restored to its shape, they don't fit well on the head due to the thickness of the flocking at the sideburns. (Don't knock the flocking, though, it's perfect - it just doesn't suit sunglasses well.)
One of the nicest things about this set is the color scheme. It's all red and yellow with gray and black overtones. (apart from the blue bag and treasure chest.) Gorgeous art direction here. But what's truly amazing is that the red isn't a bright red, but a slightly muted red which looks just beautiful with the yellow accessories.
The treasure chest is a new accessory. I believe I've seen one similar to it before in an Ultracorps set. Also, the blue net bag I seem to recall from a Get Real Girls scuba diving set.
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The
Figure With Gear
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(Click any image for a larger version)
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Ok, time to get down to it. This is not the perfect figure. Why not? I've just gushed glowing praise all over it. Well, true. Its head sculpt is perfect. The outfit very well done. The gear nicely coordinated and copious.
But the figure has two problems. One wrist is very limp. The left hand hangs there with no friction to the joint. I'm willing to accept this as a unique problem to this one figure, and not the whole production run. This happens. No big.
But more seriously is that it's hard to get this Joe to pose standing because it has the same problem the 40th Anniversary Joes have (including the clear 40th Joes) - ball-hip-joints that just do not hold a pose very easily. Try to set its legs into a position and it will just slip out of position into some arbitrary angle that the ball joints force upon it. Very frustrating.
If I could do it easily, I'd take the head off and pop it onto a TC hard hand body or better yet, on a Kung Fu Grip TC body. (The hard hands never were very useful.)
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Assessment
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This figure gets a solid 10. It was a bit pricey. $72.00 plus shipping. ($82 plus shipping for non-members).
With the excellent head sculpt and the beautiful gear, I'm giving this figure a solid 10. But, you may ask, didn't you just complain about the ball-hips and the loose wrist? Why, yes. Yes, I did. The thing is if those two problems didn't exist, this figure would have gotten a solid 11.
Yes. This figure goes to eleven! (Or could have...)
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Overall Rating
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