Swag 3/12/12

Oh yeah. Mint in box 1985 original found in the wild here in Singapore. Whattasay bitches? Here be treasurrrrrrrrr. Other fun things just to fill up space. But honestly, I've never been so excited about the Devilfish. Oh the joy of original A Real American Hero shizz. I tell you, I did a backflip in the mall when I found it. But to quote (some other very funny article you should Googlesearch), assuming the boat is symmetrical, what the fuck is the dude on the back sitting on?

There is a one-eyed grey dog in my room

So this drought is hitting us hard, right? Last article I wrote was almost two full months ago. It was about some goofy aqua Volkswagen by a brand called Dickie Toys. It's still not funny The Podcast is suffering too. No new Joes is hurting our hobby. But my toy horizons have not darkened. They've just altered course. And these pastures are emerald.

I write this from a hotel room in Singapore, my home for the next three months. And let me tell you, here be treasure. The big ticket I wanted to track down in my time here was the fairly recent release of the Imperial AT-AT.

Found that on day 2.

At Toys R Us.

Piss.

My parents deposit money in my account with the instruction to 'buy something nice - not a giant toy'. Fools, I say. But I love them so. And I love my AT-AT.

Not that it matters much, but this is the Return Of The Jedi release, with sexy old-skool packaging and a case of shit-foot. That is, the feet have brown imitation mud paint apps. Hey, it doesn't bug me, and it's never gonna be traipsing around Hoth anyway. No snow in sunny South Africa where it's going.

Which brings me to a dilemma. How the hell am I gonna transport this? I bought my Millenium Falcon in Shanghai back in '09 and stopped myself from snapping it together completely as the instructions proclaimed 'Warning! Parts are a once-off fit'. Meaning once you marry those parts, none may tear them asunder.

No such warning this time.

I put it together on my big day with reckless abandon. And now there is no going back. I guess I'll be boarding the return flight with a AT-AT hat-hat. Or Bak-Pak. Quarantine period on plastic dogs? I say thee, nay.

Fuck practicalities. I only have to worry about them when I blow town in three months anyway. And I wasn't gonna just marvel at unassembled parts on my birthday.  Lets talk film. If you read my post on the Cobra WOLF you may know that one of my favourite cinematic sequences of all time is the battle of Hoth within the first half hour of The Empire Strikes Back. The buildup. The payoff. The neat set pieces and clever action. And thanks in most part to these ominous lumbering giants. What a fantastic device. As a child, if I didn't have time to watch the film in its entirety (like if I was just having a ham sandwich and Nik Naks lunch), I would fast forward the tape to the first appearance of the walkers and watch until the Falcon blasts off. Needless to say, that section of the tape fuuucked out from overwatching. If I had this toy as a child it would have ousted the Cobra Hammerhead and BUGG as my ultimate favourite vehicles. Now I know it existed. There were a number of releases between 1981 and now, but as far as I can tell, this is approximately twice the size. It's obscenely huge. Not scale accurate, but certainly a decent compromise. Lets be fair, a true 1/18 scale AT-AT would be the size of an adult bicycle.

Yeah. The adult kind.

Okay, so what does it do? It doesn't walk. I can't  say how many times I've had to tell people that it doesn't walk. It's an Imperial Walker, right? And while it would be neat to have it remote controlled, us long time toy lovers know better. If the damn thing walks itself, it's no longer a toy. I'm fingering a remote; while my grey dog plays with itself. Boring. Besides, if the internals of this beast were cluttered up with mechanicals, there would be no room for all of this goodness.

The cockpit, while cramped, can accommodate six, the real thing couldn't do better. A little cramped, but 'A' for effort, Hasbro.

The sexy red screen is see-thru. Much better than a lame sticker. Siiick.

Mandatory spring-firing missiles are my favourite flavour- unobtrusive.

The cannons simulate recoil and are piped to allow light up feature.

And a sneaky handle allows you to manipulate the head.

That's just the head.

The internal space of this behemoth is adequate for a troop compliment of ten I'd say. You can deploy them using two anchor-style winches and these badboys can be winched back in and tucked away quite handsomely.

The internals are nicely detailed with these mystery bits. Handholds? Binoculars? Jackhammers?

But my favourite feature?

You know you got the baddie craft when it comes with a self-destruct feature. Simulate Luke blowing the shit out of the AT-AT! Great success...

And check what it craps out. 100% awesomeness.

About the speeder bike, I'll say this much, it's gonna stand up to a few botched ejections- the plastic is the bendy kind. That said, the bike locks in place nicely so won't likely go flying. And it retains the function of the earlier releases - pull up the footrests and the engine exhausts close. Always a little counter intuitive that feature. Surely it would be smarter for the default position to be closed, and as the pedals are depressed, the exhausts open and the speeder accelerates? They got it backwards. And it's brown and not grey, so these are the way more famouser bikes from Jedi, unlike the ones that we NEVER SAW in Empire.

It also boasst the full dialogue and SFX track from Empire via sneaky buttons scattered about. And there is an interior light or two that coincide with the sounds but come on, I buy this stuff so I can go 'Pew Pew Pew... KABOOOM' on my own.

So the verdict?

If you like Star Wars, buy it.

If you like the '80's, buy it.

If you like big toys, buy it.

If you can't afford it, ask Santa.

If you don't want this, thank you for your time, but this blog ain't for you.

Next article, a GI Joe toy or bust.

'Off the furniture, boy'

Surf Wagon

Manufactured by a company called 'Dickie Toys' (yup), this is one sweet bus. Rubber tyres, pivoting front wheels, friction-powered back ones, detachable surfboards, accurately opening doors and hatches, and a solid level of detail, without breaking bank as much as a Hotwheels or Maisto. Plus this puppy is amply large enough for modern-era joes.

The Find

So the story goes I was visiting a buddy who was serving time in the Goodwood Correctional Institute. Yes, I do that sort of thing all the time. But the powers that be needed to conduct some kind of roll call that day and none of the prisoners were available for visitation. With Goodwood a stone's throw away from Parow (not really, but any excuse will do), I decided to make a pilgrimage to the main branch of Factory Toy Shop.

Back in the day, but definitely post '94, Factory Toy Shop was the last place surviving GI Joe stashes could be found. Celebrated items like the Thunderclap and Sky Raven, and not so celebrated items such as the Radar Rat and the entire Battle Corps line from '92 could be found there, typically at dirt cheap prices. I only wished as a 13 year old I had the financial clout I now have as I would have bought up everything that bore the letters 'GI JOE'. Hindsight=20/20. But on this fine Saturday morning on the 20th of March 2010, I went into the store knowing full well that even Factory Toy Shop's backlog of old stock had been depleted over a decade prior. I was just going in for old time's sake really, not expecting to buy anything at all.

In the boys' action toys isle, on the floor beneath baskets of old Mighty Max stock lay a dusty old box. Emblazoned on the black top flap was the word: Tomahawk. I wished I could have had an out-of-body experience at that point to note my reaction, and the overt double-take as the realization dawned. At first I thought 'empty box'. And then I picked it up. At second I thought 'repackaged box, filled with broken bits of junk'. And then I saw the once-familiar factory tape intact. At third I thought this is too good to be true while noting that they were asking for a paltry R230 for it. Needless to say I did not let it out of my grasp until she was paid for and resting on the passenger seat beside me. On the way home I kept fondling the box in disbelief. Sure, she had seen some sunlight in her 22 years of shelf-life, but the box was in an acceptable condition with no bumps or dings or scratches or scars. With any luck, that held true for the contents as well.

I think long before I reached home that day, I had decided not to open it. Not only was it a killer find, it is also my favourite GI Joe vehicle ever produced. I obtained a loose one in my early 20's and, love it as I do, I still have no desire to troop build the vehicle.And yet, they were typically featured in pairs... This just brings me to the conundrum: To open or not to open?

I do not collect Mint in Box toys. I can think of nothing worse than owning these fantastic toys, but at the same time not. Owning the potential of toys, if you will, but in reality only owning a collection of colourful boxes. Crushed under the weight of not being able to open them for fear of ruining the commodity. I suppose it's different if you have loose specimens to enjoy and play with, and hell, if you have the means, why not? Curate your own museum of boxed items, celebrating exactly how lucky we were as children to have this stuff in the kind of abundance we did. It's not within my financial reality to do this however, and so the one Mint in Sealed Box Tomahawk in my collection begs a whole host of questions: Do I open it? If so, under what condition?  My unconceived  son's thirteenth birthday, assuming he digs Joe? My deathbed? Am I being a little too dramatic? Should I even care? Would the maximum joy to be had from the damn thing be for me to do it now, while I live for my hobby, before my life gets swept up in real world concerns? Should I just forget about it, push it to the back of the cupboard and forget it ever happened? Should I make a Youtube video of me backing a car over it?

Chap Mei, you biscuit.

Hasbro make the best figures. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, even their less celebrated entries into the GI Joe toyline are more commendable than the figures produced by their rivals, or even the figures produced by Hasbro for their Marvel and other properties. The new vein of vehicles have been pretty jazzy too, with some new concepts mixing in with re-decos of old molds and some great new blood too. The new VAMP and HISS are solid vehicles. The Ghost Hawk II, not so much. But gone are the days of the big vehicles. The kind of largess we were accustomed to in the 80's and early 90's is long gone. And even then, every large vehicle was some kind of event. What I mean is, plastic and molding would go into a very specialized large item. A General, a Rolling Thunder, an MCC. Each year had them and they were always hi-lights the more spoiled kids among us got hands on. There was never anything as pedestrian as a large transport plane or chopper. And while we can't argue with the economics of making your big ticket items really pop, it always left big holes in GI Joe and Cobra's operation.

The comics were first to fill these holes by including non-toy vehicles into the Joe and Cobra arsenal. Planes (typically the C-130 Hercules), ships (the 'Jane'), choppers (that fantastic purple Cobra re-imagining of the Sikorsky Skycrane) filled the necessary logistical demands of the forces. But we were fated to never be able to work these into our gametime. We had no tangible versions to cram with Joes on their way to their missions in the far-flung corners of the globe. The door was wide open for one of the competitors to fill this gap. It only took 18 years.

In the early 2000's a Hong Kong based company called Chap Mei produced this.

And this.

And most recently this.

And I was sated. They are not without fault. They are of course 'generic' toys (it seems I use that term to encompass toys that give you more for less, as such it's not meant as a dirty word). The cockpits are vast and lacking controls and glass. The proportions can seem a little dumpy and downscaled. But I am overjoyed to have them. These toys see more action that a great deal of legit Joe vehicles in my possession. They fill a vital role and fill it well. So how do they each break down?

The 'Chinook' is vast. Possessing the biggest interior space, you can drive a VAMP up the gate and into the belly, and still have room for a pair of paratroopers. Functioning side door and winch that ingeniously winds itself back in. The Tomahawk begins to pale in comparison as a transport chopper.

The Chinook has some easily ignored sound and light features. And for offense a port side-mounted cannon. Boom. Boom. Boom.

Why did I paint it black? Because I missed the initial military camo iteration of this toy. I missed the dark blue police version. The red rescue version. I only jumped on the Chap Mei train when this was released in their 'Wild Quest' series. It came with a gorilla in a cage. The gorilla has a chest-beating feature. So much of fun. But the chopper was rendered in a lumo green a la the Badger. It had to go. I think I used enamel wall paint that was lying around so don't scrutinize the job too much. But hey, I was a young teen and didn't give no fuck.

Moving right along then to the Osprey. To date, released only once by Chap Mei in about 2004 if memory serves. It's pretty sought after. I should have bought them up and scalped. Not!

Once again it has mandatory arb sound and light features. I think the one button unleashed a flurry of machine gun fire, the other button a police siren. Odd. So I gutted them and maximized on interior space, because them batteries have got to go somewhere. Since it has no side door, the battery door must of necessity be made functional.

 The sculpting suggests it to get out your damn screwdriver and make it so!

 Easy conversion to dorsal gunner port if you want to risk your Osprey in a close air support role. Hey, the Joes have to be ready for anything right? It is a little shorter than the true V-22 dimensions and will hold fewer troops or equipment. A pair of ATVs are the best I can do, or the equivalent number of troops. The interior is also unsculpted, which is a sad departure from the great texturing they gave the Chinook interior. It mounted a cannon in much the same way the Chinook does, but I chucked that in favour of keeping her sleek.

 As a carrier-based plane, it really functions well. And fits (un) surprisingly well with GI Joe's dumpiest and disproportionate playset, the USS Flagg. It's why I sprayed the Osprey grey. But look how compact it can get with its realistic folding wing. Tiffany Valentine wants to get in on the action...

As for the transport plane? I never can remember the designation they gave it and I threw away the box the second I had taken all the bits out. This happened at a MacDonalds as curious children surrounded me. So it's called 'transport plane' as far as I care. It surprisingly has the smallest capacity. It does however have the best proportions so it is clearly just a victim of simply not being big enough. You can't drive anything up the ramp, even if it does have the hull space enough to hold a VAMP. But it is a meaty toy and one that I have had more fun than I initially expected simulating take-offs and landings. Its nice to play with a non-jet I realise. There's just something about a big rugged turboprop plane that makes it more adaptable to landing on less than perfect runways and there are plenty of those surrounding where I live.

The plane does mark a shift in Chap Mei's vehicle design however. There are more bells and whistles allowing for better interior play. With the Chinook and Osprey, the interior is a cavern with no access. With the plane, the flip of a lever allows the wings and roof to be detached from the belly of the craft to reveal seating and a removable navigator/radioman station. Curiously the panel has no way of attaching so it will tumble if you put the plane through some acrobatics. There are even rifle racks, something I always praise. Bombs and additional guns can be mounted on the wings and even a row of dorsal guns to poke out of the portholes! And a table. With a map decal. A welcome inclusion, but I think more fitting back at base than on board. If I cared to play with the included Chap Mei action figures, I would laud the new knee and elbow joints. But I don't and I don't.

 There is an opening side door and back gate and the standard sound and light B.S. It's a bit more invasive on the plane as there are two light up cannons on either side of the fuselage. In opaque orange. Begging to be painted.

And the lever allows one to do this! Fun!

Bells and whistles abound, you get decals so you can match the one side with the other. Common practice with the window type packaging, Chap Mei would decal the side that faced the buyer and leave the hidden side blank. With nary additional stickers to be found.  They did the same here, but at least they gave you the stickers so you could balance your plane's deco yourself. I'm holding off on doing the starboard side, I have yet to decide whether the stickers benefit the plane or not. Any suggestions?

These vehicles throw me into a bit of a quandary. Okay, because it's carrier-friendly, the Osprey defaults to being a Joe plane. But the chopper and plane? I can hardly decide. I guess they are too standard military to be Cobra... but maybe I like my Cobra operatives to use more conventional military equipment than the flashy, freaky, fang fiascoes? Perhaps because their faction is not printed on the box means both can use them ad infinitum. And that just means I get to play with them twice as much. Awesome. 

Something strange strikes me about the plane. It is clearly too small for four engines. The propeller arcs mesh, and paratroopers deploying from the side door would most certainly receive a close shave. But I do like that with four engines, it emulates the configuration of the Herky Bird. 

I fit a tree in the Chinook. Now you know it's beeeeg, Very beeeeeg. And you can see the original colour peeking out. Great job, Steve.

The Mobile Command Center will fuck your shit up.

With the current wave of Retaliation movie toys not exactly blowing my hair back, I decided this would be the perfect time to add another large vintage item to my motor pool. Presenting the largest beige sowing-box the GI Joe line ever produced, I give to you the Jawa Sandcrawler.

Take note how that bumper almost scrapes the ground? Criticism forthcoming!

It was 1987, I imagine the already scarce Flagg playsets from two years prior were slipping into mythical status. Hasbro decided it was time for another crowd pleaser. They provided in the form of the massive Defiant Launch Complex. But what's better than one enormous rolling Joe playset in a year? Two of course! So sneaking out of the Defiant's shadow, we have the MCC.

It's a big 'un. 70cm in length, 25cm in width and a massive 40cm tall. But what the hell is a Mobile Command Center anyway?

In terms of continuity at the time of it's release, GI Joe had ditched their original PIT location on Staten Island after numerous security leaks and attacks at the hands of Cobra. Relocating to the expanse of desert in rural Utah, the Joes began construction on an extensive underground location, the PIT III. I can only imagine during this period, the need had arisen for a mobile fortress crammed with sophisticated electronic monitoring gear to maintain security on the surface. It would be the base of operations for scout patrols, act as air and ground traffic control for incoming aircraft and a staging area for missions carried out in this interim.


How does the toy 'stack' up to the task? Well in spite of its size, it is a little on the small side as a mobile base. Nowhere is this more glaring than with its first floor repair bay.












The box art displays a Triple T in that bay, which makes sense since it shared the same year of release as the MCC. But the bay really shines when you put an AWE Striker in there, as the MCC includes a spare engine one can replace the Striker's with. Or so I've heard. To date, I have yet to get an AWE Striker. Getting the MCC is probably the large, beige straw that broke the camel's back for me on that score. The point is, the bay is small. Put anything larger than an Armadillo in there and you battle to place figures around it. A Desert Fox or even VAMP is too large to fit all the way in... Optimally I'd say this vehicle would have crushed my criticism if a Rolling Thunder could snugly fit in. But then this would be as large as a Flagg. Cramped as it is, it boasts plenty of features with a very nice crane that feels sturdy and moves smoothly with great range. There are two lube points with flexible hoses and a fuel nozzle who's hose winds nicely into its retainer.









The front wall has very spacious storage slots, a feature I am always fond of as I constantly need plausible places to keep weapons, packs and gear. The sculpt is busy, with plenty of unpainted pop. A custom paint job begs, but I love the mintiness of this specimen too much.









Next level! A sticker proclaims that this is level number '2'. This is the Command Center portion of the MCC. With that said, the mandatory brig-in-the-most-sensitive-location is present, as it was in the 1983 HQ. This time it is a cramped steel box for our captured baddy. No cushy beds, just a ledge seat in the one corner. He has slitted vents on side, and above his head. Water torture, anyone?






Couldn't resist. With Dark Knight Rises opening here next week, it's Batman season again.

There is some old-school techno-detail in the front end, with screens and a reel-to-reel computer of absurd dimensions. The bank of monitors on either side have some ill-fitting decals that clearly ignore the ridge lines on the mold that separate the two screens. Perhaps I will peel and cut the decals to fit if I feel up to it.









Need a guy like Mainframe to tend to that vintage computer. I mean, his included hardware had two floppy drives.


The sweetest detail has got to be the clear display board. Now this is tech that is not yet dated and redeems the command center with some touch screen, multi-function display shit. Some criticize there being only one chair back there, there is of course a simple solution, short of picking up another chair from a scrap lot. See the picture above? Lady Jaye's chair courtesy of Playmates Star Trek line.






Aw naff! I just discovered that the decal should be applied to the frame and not the bunk! The cost of buying loose 2nd hand stuff. It's gonna be a bitch to correct.


There are a pair of fold out bunks, and I have not yet decided how I feel about them. It seems odd for a pair of Joes to be napping in the nerve center of the vehicle. Then again, with a round the clock vigil, a nearby area for an off-duty techie to rack out might be very apt. I propose they also help to vary the kind of functions level 2 can have. For instance, remove the screen and put in a table from a complimentary line, re-imagine the brig as an ablution area/shower and you have a handsome living quarters. Throw in some extra bunks and you have an enlisted quarters.










Creating a medical bay is also childsplay - it would go some way to explaining the technical detail on the decals applied to the sides of the fold out bunks. Very sci-fi. And if the MCC was indeed large enough to accommodate a Rolling Thunder in level one, this is exactly the type of variation we would expect to see with all the additional space on level 2. The sculpt is less busy, but this only helps in making the space convertible, and not really a criticism.




Level 3 serves two functions: an anti-aircraft missile battery complete with additional missiles and a landing pad, which is barely large enough for a Sky Hawk.






In my imaginary upsize, you could land a Tomahawk on that pad. Don't hate on my imagination. But the pad is not really supported well, so it is ill-advised to try and put anything too hefty on there. The SAM launcher is fun, it flips out from concealment, encloses the operator, has a full range of motion and even slides forward or backwards on a rail system. The top level also boasts a sneaky escape chute that allows Joes a quick egress to the desert floor if the evacuation is called for.


















The final play area is the cab which holds three Joes on rather reclined seats. I'm never much of a fan of driver positions that aren't upright, and it's not like the MCC's cab isn't spacious enough for proper seats, but what the hell. Can't have it all right?





To help the crew fight off their drowsiness, a Head-Up Display is provided in the form of a very sexy decal, and I really do love the large glass panels that the MCC boasts. This is not a front line vehicle by any stretch of the imagination so I won't begrudge the glass as I usually do. The cab has a large dish/missile launcher adorning it and two dual .50 caliber coaxial guns. The missiles pivot up and down and 360 degrees around and, rather surprisingly, the guns have some limited side to side motion. I did not expect that.



Fending off attacks from the rear there is an automated missile launcher which boasts the same type of missile that the front launcher and the Snowcat from '85 do. There are a handful of machine guns and spotlights which mount on the walls when the MCC is splayed out in base mode for you to largely ignore.




And when in vehicle mode you can take the lift! Gets you from the bottom to the top easily enough, and I do like how the gate swings open when it reaches the bottom floor.




So what criticisms can I level at the MCC in one fell-swoop? It gets a bad rap for being frail. Setting my expectations to egg-shell, I was pleasantly surprised when I opened the air-mail box (originally used for a vacuum cleaner) and found it intact. Well, reasonably. One of the side glass panels from the cab was snapped, but the seller wasn't too pedantic in how he packed it. The panel had loosed itself and was crushed under the vehicle. I don't suppose he consulted his magic 8-ball, so I gave him a perfect score on the 'bay anyway. But everything else was in good nick, clean, and the transformation to fold-out base mode is not jarring. I don't think anything is likely to break. It's sturdy, just don't stress it by say, rolling it upside-down when converted and you should be okay.


Wasn't I trying to crit the toy? Here you are. The conversion does have a few bogus side effects. 1) The elevator has to be removed and placed on an alternate location. Why? If it were on the other side of the MCC this would a)be unnecessary and b) not get in the way of the service bay door. It could even have replaced one of the support pillars; 2) the machine guns and searchlights can only be implemented plausibly in base mode. Clearly the intention by the designers is that it actually rolls into the desert and unfolds, it's not merely a mechanism to allow access; 3) There are two gaping holes in the starboard side of the vehicle when it is folded up. Practical hatches would have cured this famously. Like the ones in the Flagg's tower perhaps?

The front end has a cow catcher that rides really low. Sure, you don't want to attempt rolling up a mountainside in this beast, but this bumper barely clears the ground and is a bit of a hindrance. On smooth surfaces and shallow carpeting the MCC rolls nicely. This surprised me most, especially after learning that the huge hunk of plastic rides on only four teeny rollers. Forget about cruising on grass, brick, concrete or asphalt. The nose, or something else will snag.

So yay or nay on the MCC? Yay. A base is so fundamental in my typical Joe adventure. One that is mobile is a huge plus. It is a smaller representation of the real thing in my mind, so landing Tomahawks on the roof and parking the Rolling Thunder down below is all part and parcel of this monstrosity's many functions. It can fight the good fight if Cobra mount an attack on it and has a goodly amount of internal play value. AWE Striker, here I come at long last. And the MCC is tougher than most let on, so don't let the hype get you down. I must add though, that I bought the Spy Troops re-release, so it doesn't have quite as many years on it as the original and that might help the overall sturdiness. But the $75 I paid couldn't be argued with. An original would have easily been upward of $120. I thought I had really scored, until the $90 shipping quote arrived. Whatever. It's a big toy. I live in Africa. Fun purchase. Happy boy.

Cobra HISS II

Cobra HISS. Two words that should have no logical connection to an armored fighting vehicle. But to a fan of GI Joe, these words should spark images of an angular, black, tracked vehicle. The HI-Speed Sentry was Cobra's first entry into the ground vehicle category. It had a solid helping of armor, firepower, mobility, versatility and capacity. It also had an iconic look that entrenched Cobra's flair for the unconventional. As a solid workhorse of the Cobra arsenal, it served with distinction in every major medium. But there was of course room for improvement and six years after the first HISS tank saw combat, the second generation of HISS tanks arrived.


The HISS II is beefed up in every regard. Where the original was piloted by a single operator, it's successor seated two. The cannons were enlarged and a third barrel added. Additional weapons such as coaxial machine guns and missiles were added, as was a rear hatch with capacity for four troops. All welcome changes that continue the legacy and adding to the versatility and capabilities of the HISS. All changes for the good. But here's the rub. The colour. Opting to ditch the original black in favor of a blue-grey, we have red accents in the form of the canopy and weapons. Basically we see the seeds of the poor toy coloring choices that dominated the nineties. Toxic Crusaders anyone?


Colors aside, other oddities to this design are the fact that the pilot egress is via a lowering 'jaw', for lack of a better word. It's a bit finicky in toy form. In reality I can only imagine it's a maintenance nightmare. The pilot seats are pretty spartan, but then again, Track Vipers look more like robots than humans. How a human head fits into that helmet I will never know.

 The tank has teeny tiny (red: why?) roller wheels and not the functioning treads reserved only for the zenith of Joe armor - the MOBAT, Mauler and Patriot Grizzy. Okay, not the last one. But bizarrely if you take the rollers away the universal joint between the treads doesn't clear the ground!

Silliness! And if you are cruising thru moderately long grass, forget about the missiles. They ride so low that they snag everything. With two crew up front, the tank has a tendency to be front-heavy and can flop forward. The barrels of the gun are quizzical in a number of ways. How are they loaded, where is the ammunition stored? The gun mold is hollow and as you tilt the guns up, you get a big ugly eyeful.

But the guns do have a pretty solid range of movement and look like they could do some damage. In addition to the standard armament, the crew portion has slits side and read to poke rifles through if the opportunity should arise to ward off infantry. The rollers move well, while I do always prefer functioning treads, they never give as good a roll as the lil' wheel approach, so the compromise brings advantages. The tailgate mechanism can be a little finickity as it drops and slides out, but I praise it for allowing one to access the troop section simply without, say, something as phony as the roof splitting for instance. And it is vital that you access the troop section. Placing figures in their cramped seats would be nigh-impossible otherwise. In a nod to the original there are footpegs on the tailgate, but it would be in those troops' best interests to disembark before the gate drops on their shins.

 So in closing, what are my thoughts on the HISS II? In every respect an improvement on the original. It retains the Cobra eccentricity, adds new capabilities and yet is not dramatically larger. Aside from the red, I'm fond of the colouring, as I say, my only criticism is it being out of place next to the other Cobra vehicles. But then again, for every HISS, Stun or Ferret, there's a Maggot or Rage. You are not spoiled for choice when it comes to Conra armor, but you can do no better than the HISS II.