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Charlie Clone
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Welcome
to Charlie
Clone's All Action Figure Revue
at SWAFT.info!
I'm your host, Charlie
Clone! |
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Things have gotten a little
backlogged here at the CCAAFR,
but I’m hoping to pick up the slack a little starting with an
Action Figure
Military Set that was acquired in the Target Dollar Spot aisle.
As with other Target dollar
toys, this too was made in China
and distributed by
Ankyo Development Ltd.
T.S.T. Kowloon. H.K.
If you are really impressed
with the item, you can try to
hunt it down using its DCPI#234020974.
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CONCEPT:
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It’s hard to imagine army toys ever
really going out of
style. At the very least, a society has a certain necessity to
perpetuate a
militaristic ideology among its youth if it hopes to maintain a willing
force
of armed volunteers in the future. Plus, weapons and armor have always
and will
always simply look cool.
Especially when it involves masks.
Of the several varieties of Action Figure
Military Sets that
were available, I chose this particular unit precisely because of its
gas mask.
Granted, a gas mask can make a soldier look like some kind of dopey,
cyber-mutant racoon, but the gas mask still retains some of the
mystique of the
ancient warmask.
There is something attractive about the
lifeless, stoic,
dehumanizing warmask – unless, of course, the person wearing it
is charging at
your with a battlespear.
Perhaps the mask captures a certain iconic
quality that at
once obliterates the wearer’s features while also paradoxically
inviting the
viewer to imagine himself in the wearer’s position. Before the
mask is
revealed, anyone can be under there...even you.
Plus, its always an advantage to have a
couple of figures
with gas masks at your disposal in case the other guy starts to engage
in
chemical warfare.
All
that being said, this toy might well appear in the
least toy-appropriate package art of any toy I have so far reviewed.
The generic bright
yellow, blow backing, with the goofy handprinted-style lettering
altogether evokes an
80’s kids’ magazine more than it suggests a tough, rugged,
warrior trained in
the arts of battle.
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ACCESSORIES:
You get two different machine guns with this
guy.
This means he can be a crazy, rampaging,
double-fisting
gas-masked berserker.
This might be helpful, considering he has
limited time
before his filter eventually clogs up with particulate matter and
renders his
gasmask useless.
Except, of course, for the fact that the toy
can’t actually
hold either weapon by the handle. At best he can grip the muzzle of the
gun and
use it as a bludgeoning tool for close combat.
Disturbingly, a significant amount of paint
dust rubbed off
on the weapons after my repeated attempts to arm him.
I tried not to breathe too deeply at that
point.
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FEATURES:
This figure weighs in a little scant on the
articulation
side, with only five moveable parts (neck, shoulders, legs). It does
have a
fair amount of detail for an eight-inch figure. Someone took the time
to sculpt
laces on his boots, ridges of body armor over his fatigues, an open
collar, and
even some of the mechanisms on the machine guns. It also feature six
different
paint colors applied to the green plastic, and the color scheme itself
provides
perhaps the most fertile soil for commentary.
The paint job on this figure is more of the
Monet variety
than the Da Vinci. Quick brush strokes convey the impression of what
are meant
to be differently colored articles of clothing or accessories, rather
than
relying on a more mimetic approach. Some of the paint actually has
bubbles in
it. Other bits have chipped off. (I’m pretty sure I’m
throwing this figure in
the trash shortly after this review...I don’t own a real gas
mask.)
The painters put enough care into the toy to
apply an olive
green paint to the various pockets and belts while also including brass
colored
highlights to clasps and buckles.
They might have gotten a bit carried away, however, when they opted to
use the
same brass color scheme on the three hand grenades this trooper has
strapped to
his left thigh.
Those most be some pretty fancy hand
grenades.
Maybe he just wants his opponent to be able
to see them
glaring in the distance long before they reach their target. It’s
rather thoughtful
of him, really.
Silver paint has been applied to the gas mask
apparatus, but
also to the eye goggles, giving the figure an unsettling appearance of
have
silver eyes.
It doesn’t help that he appears to lack
eyelids, giving him
a look of terrified surprise.
Maybe he’s no man at all under that gas
mask. Maybe he is
only wearing it to conceal his true, robotic identity. Dirty clanker.
A stark spot of red on the helmet indicates
some ambiguous
feature on the gas mask...that, or our soldier has just been shot in
the face,
which might explain his surprised expression.
Gas masks don’t do much good against
headshots, I imagine.
Perhaps the starkest paint application,
however, are his
white gloves. It could be that gas mask donning troopers in Kowloon run
about
in white gloves, but this seems out of place to me. Of course, it might
be that
our trooper is part of some kind of bio-hazard sanitation force.
I can imagine him wiping up some
still-glowing radioactive
goo on the white tip of his index finger, waving it to some new recruit
and
saying, “You call this clean?”
Cue voice-over narrator: “With Kowloon
Bio-hazard
Sanitatizers...you get the white glove treatment!”
Could he be based on quality control officers
at the Chinese toy factory where he was made?
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PLAY
VALUE:
It is my opinion that parents should be leery
of letting
their child play with a gas-masked soldier. Such accoutrements as gas
masks can
only encourage their children to imagine the most heinous, deadly,
horrifying,
and gruesome of scenarios.
What is going on that this soldier needs to
take such
extreme measures to protect himself?
Has the enemy unleashed some horrible toxin, shattering the nervous
systems of
all of the bare-faced figures, leaving them tortured, twitching shells
of the
men they were? Do his opponents hold such little value for human life
that they
could release airborne poisons for mass extermination, as if their
enemies were
nothing more than soulless insects?
Or does he need to protect himself not from
chemical
weapons, but some other health threat?
Is he fighting disease-based zombies, or does
he live in
some nigh-apocalyptic world where man has so devastated his environment
that he
can no longer breath fresh air?
Oh, what horrors have this man’s
silvery eyes beheld?!?
Because the white-gloved uniform especially
evokes some sort
of Asian military force to me, I feel as though this toy screams to
take part
in some kind of Godzilla attack. I could imagine a child stomping into
a room
littered with these figures, demonically impersonating the mutated
respawn of
some ancient saurian lizard king, smashing these guys to pieces. (Given
the
loose texture of the paint, I can also imagine the child consuming
several
ounces of questionable paint chips in the process.)
Whatever scenario your child will imagine, it
will be grim,
foreboding, and possibly traumatizing.
Thus, as cool as gas-mask soldiers might seem
on the shelf,
one must consider their lasting effects on a child’s imaginative
play.
Until
next time...
--Charlie
Clone
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