Couple of Classified Joes I’ve had in recently.
Raptor
Raptor is one of those wonderfully silly characters that Larry Hama somehow made work. He’s an accountant that works for Cobra but who dresses as a big bird of prey. This is to help train actual hawks and stuff he has and uses for… Cobra stuff. It works in context. The original figure is one I had from a load of second hand Joes as a kid and I always liked for how goofy it was. A bare-chested guy with a bird helmet.
The new version has kept that but also tried to make him cool. His eye mask now has a Robin/Nightwing vibe. He’s still got the bird hat, but it’s removeable and he’s got a cool hair cut underneath and he looks vaguely like Cillian Murphy. He’s still mostly bare-chested, with a high-cut waistcoat thing giving him feathers on the shoulders, but he’s now got tattoos that look a bit like henna braces going down his chest.
The big change is that instead of fake bird wings, he’s got a mechanical wing jetpack thing, like MCU Falcon. It’s really big, with a few points of articulation that mean it can fold around as a shield, Bat-Fink style. It’s kinda cool, but going to be a bit of a bitch to fit into the my main Joe shelf when he progresses there and it’s hard to get the backpack level.
He comes with a pistol and knife, which I think are standard for accountants, and a bird of prey that can plug into his wrist. Oh and some ninja style Wolverine claw things, which are a new idea for him and supposed to go with the wings for like a slicing divebomb attack concept. Overall, he’s a nice update of the character, showing that Classified can make even the ridiculous parts of the original Joe line work in its style without feeling out of place. But I do kinda miss him having just bird wings/feather cloak.
Retro Cobra Commander
Weird to think I’ve got so many Classifieds without a Cobra Commander until now. He was in wave 1, but it was a very fussy, updated “regal” design that I wasn’t wild about and wave 1 wasn’t easily available over here. So I’ve held out and now here he is accurate to his original 80s design. This is his classic slimline blue suit with minimal fuss. It’s very elegant and the colours are lovely (mostly). It’s the battle mask version (the hood is a no-go now, for some reason) but that’s fine, as I always preferred it. The faceplate is proper vacu-metal reflective chrome, which really pops. The only problem with his design is the colour of his shirt collar. It reminds me of when I was at secondary school and someone managed to get the wrong shade of blue for their school shirt. Instead of the same pale blue the rest of us had, theirs was much more saturated bright blue, which stood out by a mile. CC’s clearly gone to the same shop that guy had and got a really bright, almost fluoro blue for his shirt, which stands out too much.
Accessories are limited. He’s got a stand (still no idea why only retro releases have one, but I make my own now, so no bother), a backpack holster, a small pistol, a knife and then just six hand options. Feels a little miserly, but it does give a pointing hand and a maniacal laugh hand, so I guess they beat another gun or whatever.
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