Listen up, Maggots! Sgt. Slaughter shipped from Big Bad Toy Store this week, so we’re gonna review him! I’m so sorry, I’ve been talking like Sarge ever since the G.I. Joe Classified Sgt. Slaughter arrived. I can’t help myself. At ease, disease! Tighten up and click through for a review! That’s the last one, I swear.
The box art is absolutely gorgeous and features Sarge in a variety of styles including Sunbow animation and the old Marvel comics. Sarge comes tied to a little tray and the accessories are all packed into a long thin cardboard box that’s printed with Sarge’s name and figure number.
The figure is deluxe priced and comes with a bit more stuff than the average figure including four sets of hands (pointing, fist, grip, and grapple), his hat, glasses, and whistle, a swagger stick, a rifle, and a miniature Slaughter action figure.
The mini-figure is carded and the card can be slipped out of the tray so you can pull the figure out and put him back in. This is a fun reference to Slaughter’s days as a toy pitch-man, though the scale of it seems closer to a Classified scale than vintage ARAH. The figure is super tiny and I did drop it on my carpet. It took a bit to find and I thought the carpet monster had claimed it, so I’ll keep it on the card!
The glasses, hat, and whistle are all separate pieces that Slaughter wears, but I’m glad you can take them off as you like. I specifically recall seeing Sarge without the whistle often enough and prefer that it’s removeable. The glasses loop over his ears and the hat pops onto his head, but they stay on there well once applied. The hat keeps the glasses wedged in there, so I don’t have the fear of losing them as I did with Cobra Island Roadblock’s shades. I do think I would have preferred them all silver rather than brown with silver painted lenses. I also like the scale and functionality of the hat. It looks the right size and not overlarge like some removeable hats can.
The rifle looks like the rifle that came with the Cobra officer and has a removeable sight and magazine. It’s a little tiny in his hands, but looks good cradled. The gun has a port in the barrel, so you can attach the blast effects from the Viper three pack if you want.
The stick came with previous Sarge figure and you would often see the real Sgt. Slaughter carrying one, so it makes a ton of sense to have here. It’s a little thin for his grip hands, especially after they hold guns, but he can hold it under his arm or cradled as it is on the cover art.
The highlight for me in this set is the multiple hands. Sarge is depicted in the show and the comic as a two-fisted fighter, so I love that he comes with fists and grappling hands. I wish more Joes had fists. If they could release some Duke body based figures with fists, I would be so happy. They were a little tough to swap at first, but work perfectly now that they are broken in. Even though the arms look the same as Gung Ho’s, the pegs on Sarge’s hands are a little thinner, so they are loose on Gung Ho.
Sarge re-uses the Heavy artillery Roadblock upper body and it looks like the lower body is new so the the legs are pinless, but the arms are not. The overall look with the exaggerated musculature feels like an idealized version of Sarge, closer to his depiction in the toys, comics, and cartoon than the real life man. The legs are a little thinner than the Roadblock legs, so I feel like it heightens the impression of his triangular build even more.
Articulation is typical for this series with:
- Swivel hinge shoulders, wrists, hips, and ankles
- Swivel biceps, thighs, and boots
- Drop down hips
- Butterfly hinged pecs
- Hinged neck and mid-torso
- Ball and socket waist, lower neck, and head
The articulation all moves smoothly, including the sometimes troublesome hip joints. The ball joint in the waist gets some very nice tilt and the advantage of the older body re-use is that he still has the hinge in the neck that they seem to be phasing out of newer figures so he can look up really well.
Paint is good with a solid face print and mostly clean lines. I do have some white slop on the waist which makes the belt look a bit like it’s riding up and I would like some knee-pad detail.
Overall I’m very very happy with this figure. He’s a great representation of the character and the accessories are smart and add a lot of fun to posing and play. He’s a character I had been contemplating customizing for a while, so I’m glad I waited and saved myself the trouble and cost of securing a Mattel Sarge. The deluxe price is still a little painful, but I do feel like this figure comes a lot closer to justifying the extra cost than Kamakura did. The only thing I would have liked to see would be a yelling head. I think that would be great for the Joes’ drill instructor.
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Source: The Fwoosh
