“Cheaper than robots. Easier to program. Welcome to war.”
Things have been rather quiet on the 3A Action Portable front lately, but thankfully some new 6-inch scale figures have been touching down these past couple weeks. The World War Robot Portable (WWRp) Grunt was offered as a 3-pack on Bambaland on July 3 of last year, but it wasn’t an “army builder” set in the conventional sense. The set consisted of a Deep Powder Grunt, a Desert Grunt, and a Stealth Grunt, as well as a DIY Grunt tossed in for customization purposes. It was an inconvenient method of offering these Grunt figures because unless you collect those four exact colorways, you were stuck with a figure or two (or three) you didn’t need/want. And given the price of the set ($153 after the 3AA club discount), if you were interested in army-building just one of the colorways offered, you were essentially out of luck, which was the case with me.
I split this set with fellow Fwoosher TheFallen because the Deep Powder colorway is the only one of the WWRp colorways offered in this set that I collect. I would have loved to have been able to snag two or three of these guys, but it would have been way too much trouble for me to arrange that (via trades and whatnot), so it looks as though I’ll be adding just this one Grunt to my WWRp ranks. Fortunately it’s a pretty cool figure and one I’m happy to have on my shelf.
The first thing you notice about the Grunts is the sheer amount of gear they’re saddled with. There are so many bags and pouches all over this guy that a lot of what makes him an “action figure” is compromised. All of that stuff is removable — some of it is attached with Velcro, but some of it is on there with a more elaborate strap system that is more difficult to remove given the tiny size of the clips. All of it can be removed with a little bit of work, however.
The next thing you notice about this guy is just how yellow he is. The Deep Powder troops are the ones that patrol the snow, basically, so for this guy’s gear to be as yellow as it is, he must have been out on the battlefield for a long, long time.
The yellow didn’t come as that much of a surprise to me, however, because at one point a couple years ago I owned the 12-inch version of this guy, which is also pretty yellow, so I was prepared for it a bit, but I was still taken aback when I first opened the box, especially because there was a stark white DIY figure there that served to highlight just how yellow this guy really is.
Weathering is 3A’s signature deco, ans while it is certainly to achieve a convincing level of weathering in the smaller 6-inch scale, they did a decent job of it here.
The helmet and mask came out really well, and I like how the Deep Powder snowflake and the “[77]” decals came out after the weathering effect had been applied. The mask looks dirty, old, and grimy, as though this isn’t the first soldier to wear it and he probably won’t be the last. The one bummer here with regards to the mask and helmet is that they aren’t removable. One the 12-inch figure, they do come off and reveal a soldier’s head underneath, a head that sort of resembles the kid from the cover of The Smiths’ “Meat is Murder” LP.
Here, however, the mask and helmet are permanently affixed, so I like to think this soldier is the result of some weird military experiments that resulted in his being permanently dependent on the mask in order to survive — sort of like Darth Vader. It puts the figure in a similar context with the robots he shares the battlefield with.
The Grunt comes packing a few weapons, and fortunately he’s able to hold or store them all and nothing has to sit in the box. He’s got a machine gun, what looks like a shotgun, and a pistol (sorry I can’t offer more detail than that; I just don’t know squat about guns).
Because of the gear limiting his articulation, he’s not able to hold and of the guns with a two-handed grip unless he sheds a good amount of his gear, which I think would defeat the purpose of the character in general, so I’ve opted to keep him wielding his weapons one in each hand.
The majority of the Deep Powder robots are a white and grey color with some yellowing added to the deco as an accent, but here the yellow is the primary color. You can see how his color stands in contrast with the Deep Powder Dropcloth, which is of a pretty typical coloring for the Deep Powder squad. There’s some slight yellowing there, but it’s nowhere close to the degree the Grunt has been yellowed.
The figure is a pretty solid 6 inches in height, as evidenced by the comparison pic with the Black Series Stormtrooper. I love that 3A continues to preoduce figures in this scale, and even though I may have nits and certain things may bug me, I love adding new 6-inch 3A figures to my shelves.
In addition to the Grunts, the set also came with a rather random assortment of Squares. The one I snagged from the set is this guy — the F-Album Square. He bears the Rothchild logo, so I’m assuming he plays some role on the moon, perhaps assisting Rothchild himself. The “I KNOW THINGS” emblazoned on the top of the Square indicated he may serve an information-gathering purpose perhaps? Maybe he’s the WWRp version of the NSA? I like the sound of that, so that’s the role this little guy is going to serve in my own personal WWRp world.
If you find yourself interested in picking up either one of these guys, the 3A secondary market and eBay are pretty much your only bets since the actual sale was nearly a year ago. They’re both cool figures, and if you’re a WWRp fan, then you need at least one Grunt for your squad.