The Cobra Island Target Exclusive wave of the G.I. Joe Classified line has been a bit of a rollercoaster for me. At first I was excited and surprised by the out-of-the-blue announcement, but then disappointed when they sold out online instantaneously. I was happy to see stores had the figures already, but then frustrated by the street date confusion. I did manage to find Roadblock on the pegs this week, so let’s take a look!
The box is a bit different from the wave one boxes in that it has the Cobra Island logo on the front and a map of the island on the back in place of the poster. I like the illustrations and find it interesting that his weapon is depicted as a red laser in this when it was blue on his other box. The symbols on the side are translated on the G.I. Joe website as Vanguard, Heavy Weapons, Strength and Artillery. I wonder if these have something to do with the upcoming game and I still find myself wishing for file cards.
Roadblock comes with his railgun with removeable clip, removeable shades, an elbow pad, and a removeable grenade strap for his leg.
The sunglasses are translucent plastic with painted details for the rims and a light overspray of translucent blue and orange to simulate the reflection of the sun on mirrored lenses. They are super tiny and can pop off easy, so I’d advise extreme caution with them. There is a pretty significant groove in the left side of his face to align the glasses, so he looks better with them on.
Roadblock has a couple of extra equipment pieces this time around with a leg strap full of grenades and an elbow pad. I like the detail these both add to the figure, but they are easily removeable if you don’t care for them. The leg strap is a little loose, but stays on, but you have to pop Roadblock’s hand off to get the elbow pad off. It’s easy to pop the hands, so I wonder if they had planned on alternate hands for Roadblock at some point. Man, I wish he had fists.
Since the parts are easy to remove, you can add them to your wave one Roadblock if so inclined. The heads also swap easily between figures and I kind of like the original head on this Cobra Island body more than I do on the original body.
The gun is the same as the wave one gun, just repainted, though it doesn’t have a translucent element on the barrel any longer. I do like the wear and tear on the little name sticker they added. Feels very Roadblock that he would name his gun.
I do wish he had a belt or some web gear, kind of like his V1 3.75 inch figure had, with additional weapons because as is, his upper torso feels a little plain compared to the rest of the figure.
The figure is mostly re-use from his first Classified figure without the vest. His shirt is just paint and there’s no sculpting detail to indicate it’s a shirt, so it has the effect of a super-hero costume or maybe a rash guard, but I do like that we get a better look at the overall sculpting of this figure and the camo pattern on the shirt is pretty neat.
I really like the new portrait with the fuller beard, high-tech earpiece and head covering. When you compare the portraits side by side, it’s easy to see this is the same guy, but I feel like the head seems slightly bigger here and the proportions benefit from that. The paint finish doesn’t give the chubby cheek illusion that I sometimes see with the first Roadblock.
Articulation is excellent since it’s all re-use of the excellent first figure. Roadblock has:
- Swivel/hinge shoulders, wrists, hips, and ankles
- Butterfly hinge pecs
- Double hinged knees and elbows
- Ball and socket waist, neck and head
- Hinged neck and mid-torso
- Drop-down hips
- Swivel thighs and boots
The articulation on these figures is probably my favorite from a mass-market line currently. I especially love how the ball and socket waist and the ball at the base of the neck and inside the head allows for really nice side-to-side tilting. The only point where articulation isn’t excellent is the butterfly hinges don’t really allow for much range of motion.
Paint is really stripped down compared to wave one, so much so that it’s hard to tell that the boots and knee pad are the same between figures as they look quite a bit different as one color. I do think the face printing on this figure is an improvement on the wave one figure too.
Since I already had wave 1 Roadblock, this was probably my least anticipated figure of this Cobra Island wave, but I’m glad I got him. Roadblock is a bit more fun to play with without the restrictive vest, the new head is an improvement on the first, and I like the more subdued paint work and color scheme. I am a little surprised they went with a Roadblock variant so early in the line, but between this, the arctic Stormshadow and Cobra Commander variants, I’m getting the impression this line will revisit characters often.
