Lifeline

Do you remember your first G.I. Joe? Frequenting Joe boards as I do, I realise a great deal of fans do remember. For me, it’s between three figures. Iceberg. Monkeywrench. Lifeline.

That old-skool Lifeline was easily my least favourite figure. And being one of the oldest, he was pretty beat up. No thumbs, O-ring hanging by a thread, screws rusted beyond recognition. He had the distinction of being the only figure I had for a very long time that included a pistol. And I did love that pistol intensely. Some irony there, of course. I remember clearly hiding it in his Rescue case and closing it up. Even more irony. It was not to last though, the pistol was the first to go. Then the gas mask. At the time, I never knew that it was meant to plug into the hole on the side of the case. I guess the ‘administer oxygen’ playpattern was not a popular one. The aerial on the backpack snapped off while it and the case spent a few weeks lost in the garden mulch heap. Maybe that’s where the pistol came to rest? That part of the garden has since been dug out and bricked. So I’ll never know...

By complete accident (read: seller fuckups) I came into possession of the pistol and gas mask again. The pistol was included with a Mint, Complete Hawk (1986), and the gas mask with a similarly Mint, Complete Ripcord (1984). So I had a complete Lifeline again!

Not really.

In the interim, I decided that Lifeline needed to be sacrificed so that a Sky Creeper figure of my friend’s could have a back screw. You may remember me saying that Lifeline’s screws were rusted beyond recognition? Well, a combination of that and my 8-year old total lack of mechanical skills meant that the most efficient way to get the screw out would be to completely smash the figure that enclosed it. So one afternoon, Lifeline succumbed to a combination of being hurled at the concrete and caved in by a brick.

Writing those words was a little painful. While he certainly met his end as an action figure that day and went into the bin, he fought bravely to the end and did not surrender his rusty screw. So Sky Creeper got the Presstick treatment.

Several years later Rob located a Funskool India Tiger Force Lifeline, so we had a medic on the team again. As I recall though, in spite of his newness, he was just a necessary figure to have riding in the back of the Warthog, and was never featured or spotlighted in our games. Lifeline was still not the cool figure everyone wanted to be.

Not any more.

I can’t be more enthusiastic about the 30^th Anniversary figure of Lifeline if I tried. The more I look at him, play with him, marvel at what Hasbro have done with him, the more his importance is elevated in my Joe-verse. Just look at that coolly-sculpted face. The T-1000-esque glasses mask the eyes of a man who has seen the worst conflict has to offer. This is not the face of a preachy pacifist. He’s out to save lives. 

The card art is also phenomenal at capturing this character, adding so nicely in ways that the sculpt leaves open to our imagination. By that I mean his five o’clock shadow. This man doesn’t soldier for show. He’s not on parade. If you are in the shit, he will get you out and keep you breathing. Contrast this with the goofy grin of the original. Subliminally this must have knocked the medic character down a few pegs in my child-opinion. But with his newly stern expression, I’m thinking of elevating this figure to a more leadership role. I mean, back in ’83, the next highest rank down from Hawk and Ace was in fact Doc. I think this makes perfect sense, as the ultimate aim of an anti-terrorist unit is to save lives right?! Since I have no Doc figure, and have no intention of getting one I think I might hybridise Edwin Steen’s dossier, opting to make him a corpsman instead of a former fire department member, and elevating his rank to Lieutenant. And what the hell, a pistol marksman.

Enter the controversy. Both Doc and Lifeline were quite famously penned as pacifists who would under no circumstances use weapons or even offensive hand-to-hand. I read somewhere on the net that this is not entirely accurate, as US armed forces require their corpsmen to carry a sidearm. How does that affect the Hippocratic Oath? Well, I guess it would break down like this: if you can shoot to incapacitate, do so. But if it comes down to the terrorist’s life or the lives of say, a busload of innocents, that terrorist made his decision. He’s going in the bag. Ironically, it was the old skool Lifeline cardart that depicted him wielding that enormous silver pistol. The new cardart leaves to your discretion. My Lifeline is a marksman who regularly competes with his buddies Lowlight and Wetsuit on the pistol range.   

'I can help you or hurt you, your choice...'

I do however prefer Lifeline to be a ‘righty’ so he holsters his pistol across the chest; the hypo goes in the left leg holster. Doubt my correctness? Then feast your eyes on this. The pistol was always intended to go in the chest holster, the holster just was inactive and empty on the original, as it was with 1986 Hawk. The two holsters on nu skool Lifeline really are interchangeable, the holsters are simply the reverse of one another. And with the added wrist articulation, Lifeline can pretty convincingly grasp the pistol butt across his chest. I do have one criticism of the new articulation – it does leave Lifeline’s palms pretty swollen. He doesn't hold the pistol fantastically well, but a sight better than 30^th Snake-Eyes weird grip issue. On that, I find few if any fans share my dislike for those hands. They have seen reuse on the Cobra Troopers and Stalker, and in each case I’ve swapped them out for appropriate fodder hands. Why do I hate them so? After all, they have superior articulation. I hate them because they don’t fully encompass the weapon grips. Contact is made between the forefinger and thumb and nowhere else, particularly with those included silenced pistols. It really bugs me, and seems to be apparent on all reuses of those hands, so they had to go. Snakes got the hands off of a ROC Paris Pursuit Snake-Eyes, and Stalker got his hands from the Ultimate Battle Pack Stalker.

Ham hand. And the knife is on the opposite boot to the original, but who cares? I love that the straps have a paint app. I had to do the honours on 30th Stalker. Even his belt was unpainted. Laziness!

What more can be said about the Lifeline figure? Paint apps are crisp, spot on, and frighteningly faithful to the original. Tooling reuse with a few new touches accurately reproduce the busy sculpt of the original with flourishes like the pouches on his chest, thigh, that silver instrument also mounted on his thigh, the (now active) chest holster and knife sheath, the ‘RESCUE’ paint app. Glorious when so much effort is made to recreate something as opposed to assembling parts that could pass and selling off a frankenjoe. Yes Hit & Run, Shockwave. I’m looking at you.

Accessories. Some pretty inspired work here Hasbro, I salute you. Newly sculpted pieces all, save for the pistol and knife. Starting from the top, the helmet is a perfect reproduction with the bonus of it being fully removable. It fits snugly, yet not so tight that it’ll give Lifeline a bald spot any time soon (by that I mean rubbing off the painted hair). The chinstraps dangle realistically- on the original they ran under his chin, the sculptors could have omitted them. But instead they went one better. Great Job.

Gun and knife we’ve seen before, but they are great inclusions that increase your Lifeline options further, something I wish we had on a figure like Airtight, whose ultra vintage-accurate approach misses some opportunities to improve on said vintage.

Defibs and IV totally removable. But the case doesn't look quite as jazzy without them.

The case opens and is fully sculpted and painted with details like vials, a hypodermic needle, aneroid blood pressure monitor, sculpted slots for the removable IV bag and defibrillators. The dainty, but very accurately scaled defibrillators have sculpted cables running to the charger; the IV bag has simulated print on it and a hole for a clear tube to connect. A pony bottle of O2 attached to a face mask via clear tube is included an everything can be wound up and stored in the case. Magnificent. So you can do everything and more than the original, and that’s before the stretcher!

A picture is worth 1000 words, and since this article is getting very word-heavy, I give you:

THIS! 'cos I'm lazy, my stretcher is 1500 kilometers out of reach (no joke), and I want to get this article out. So thanks, Planned Banter!

Do I miss the vintage backpack? Not really. Lifeline’s MO was never communication specialist, and while it made some sense for him to carry the radio, please bear in mind he was released in the same year and Mainframe AND Dial-Tone. Overkill on the radiomen! The old case was a bit more filled in, there was clearly a non-functioning first-aid box within it, whereas the new case has a lot more empty space, allowing you to cram it with the loose goods. Or whatever you will. I still have love for the old one, but I love the new one too. I just hope the clasps and spine have the same longevity as the vintage. My vintage is still unbroken, I shit you not.

High praise for a job well done, Hasbro. This is the classic case of a truly bang up job elevating a character I had no love for and making him the star of the show. Lifeline is now a primary character for me, all thanks to this fantastic presentation.