Madelman Special Forces Helicopter

America,  get your s***  together.

In addition to Madelman’s long-running 6 1/2″ action figures, they have also turned out some incredible vehicles over the years.  Starting in the 1970s with a two-seater helicopter and a Jeep, and encompassing everything from firetrucks to lunar landing modules, they are a huge part of the reason that Madelman can own the tagline “lo pueden todo!” (“can do anything!”)

The more recent line, Popular de Juguetes, has some of the most impressive of them, and among those is the Special Operations Helicopter.

There are actually two versions of this vehicle, this one and a red tricycle landing-geared rescue variant, and they are both faithfully based on the Aérospatiale Dauphin. The Dauphin is an appropriately multi-roled helicopter used by various municipality and military throughout the world.  Starting service in the early 1980s, it is one of the most successful helicopter families in the industry, and easily the most prolific outside the big American and Soviet/Russian types that have dominated the field for decades.  One of the variants, the HH-65 Dolphin, is the US Coast Guards’ frontline rescue chopper, so it can definitely hang with the big boys.  It’s lightweight, high-speed and use of composite parts have earned it the nickname “Tupperwolf”- as in “Tupperware airwolf”- as a term of endearment from it’s crews. It’s high profile fenstron “captive” tail rotor and long-glass canopy give it an unique and futuristic look, despite being a type that’s been around for over 3 decades.

The Madelman version is a sleek black beauty that is loaded with features and a huge cabin, and yet somehow maintains this slim, almost small-looking outer profile.  Inside, there’s room for 4 figures, and they all fit a lot better than I would have thought. Pilot and co-pilots of a little smaller stature fit a little better, since the front of the cabin isn’t very wide.  The interior is excellently detailed, with instrument panels and flight controls, and the seats can be moved or folded to accommodate different payloads. The front doors open outward, and the cabin doors slide to the rear, giving lots of room to access the cabin, and looking freaking awesome with dudes riding on the skids.

But make no mistake, this thing is a toy first and foremost, and so the play features are equally impressive- and best of all, hidden.  It takes batteries for a pivoting searchlight and some sound effects, and even the way the battery panel is hidden is clever. There is a working winch above the left cabin door that runs on gears, so you just give it a tug to bring it down.

Then comes the fun part. On the underside of the fuselage, there is a spring loaded panel. once you open it up, a handgrip drops down. Working the trigger on this turns the main rotor, very cool, but if you push the button above the winch, it locks in place, so working the trigger also retracts the winch!  Holy crap kids, that’s the best action feature I’ve ever seen.

The scale of this helo is really well done. Like I said, it actually feels a little small in-hand, but the interior is so spacious it kinda messes with me. But, if we use another great vehicle like the HMAF Apache for scale, they line up pretty well. At over 40ft long, some nice cheating work has been done to bring it in at about 2ft.  But where the Apache is a little chubby (I know, I’m gonna give it a complex), the Dauphin preserves it’s steel shark lines.

So, here we are again, with another excellent import vehicle that’s going to be damn hard for folks to trap down.  All I can tell you, even if it costs you some serious fundage, this is one of the best vehicles you will ever come across in anything close to 1/12 scale.