As far as the original run of G.I. Joe A Real American Hero, I was paying close attention through ’87 and after that, my Joe knowledge kind of drops off to the figures my best friend’s little brother had. So like the Frag-Viper, I missed Darklon. My main impression of the character comes from his brief appearances in the Hama comics, so I am pretty open to whatever they decided to do with his Classified figure. Let’s take a look at Destro’s cousin, the enigmatic Darklon!
The box is pretty standard stuff for the line, but he does get an Iron Grenadiers logo on the front. I do really like the art on the sides of this wave and wonder who the artist is.
Darklon comes with his big-ass rifle from the vintage figure, pistol, sword, sheathe, and extra head. The pistol is interesting to me because it reminds me of a Saturday night special or the kind of gun a cop in a TV show would have hidden in an ankle holster. It fits in the hand well and takes a little finessing to get into the tight belt holster.
The knife has a bit of a Medieval design aesthetic that matches the broadsword and fits snugly into the boot sheathe. The sword gets it’s own sheathe that attaches to the back peg so you can swivel it to whichever side you like. I enjoy the juxtaposition of the Medieval weapons with the modern military meets sci-fi feel of G.I. Joe.
The big-ass rifle from the original makes a pretty faithful transition from the vintage line with it’s over-sized barrel. I’m not a gun guy, but I’m not sure what this thing is supposed to be firing. It sort of resembles the barrel grouping of a gatling gun with a gun in the center. There doesn’t seem to be a magazine or ammo, so I don’t know what the hell is going on. There’s a little cannister and tube attached to the stock, so it could be a gas-powered something or a laser gun, who knows? He’s got some ammo on his boots, so I suppose it could also be a grenade launcher. The barrel has has four blast effect ports on the sort of gatling gun barrel outside ring and a center port for the central barrel.
The gun doesn’t quite fit the hand perfectly and can be knocked askew fairly easily.
Darklon also gets an extra head with a bit of a heavy metal feel. The big canine teeth, tongue, and black eye sections really feel more Dreadnok-y to me, somewhat close to their Classified logo. I saw somebody online painted the tongue and I kinda liked a bit more than just the plain metal. It doesn’t fit on Zartan, but the hood will fit on Darklon with a bit of stretching.
The sculpting is nice on this figure, he has some pretty minimal parts re-use with the torso and shoulders from Bazooka. The helmets have pretty sharp details as do the armor parts on the shoulder pads and gloves. The design is fairly close to the original figure’s asymmetry, but that figure had a lot of texture on the shirt that’s not present here. The texture on the original looks a lot like a sweater, but the character’s green skin under the mask makes me think it could also be a lizard skin texture. This figure makes it clear that it’s a shirt.
I like how both masks have the half-mask design from the original figure, with a sort of gray quilted hood underneath. As a guy familiar with comic Darklon as a relative of Destro, I was surprised to see his lizard eyes under the mask, but it was in that original figure too. It does make me wonder what’s going on there. Some mutant or Mindbender experimenting?
Articulation is decent with good range of motion in the double elbows and knees, but the ball and socket waist and mid-torso gets pretty limited crunch but decent arch-back and wobble. I feel like Hasbro needs to go back to formula on their mid-torso wobble as a replacement for a hinge because the range is pathetic, especially when you compare to something like a Jada Streetfighter figure. The neck is also a ball and socket joint that fails to cut enough room for the barbell to move in the socket so the looking up motion is not great.
Paint is good, but could improve. I love the glossy black on the armor and mask and the metallic silver. The paint scheme in general is pretty vibrant even though they knocked the brightness down a bit compared to the original. I would like a wash or something on the quilted sections of the pants to bring out that detail a bit and knock down a bit of the plastic-y look of that orange. I do like the eye print under his black mask a lot, it’s super creepy!
I’ve got some nitpicks with this figure that I’ve started to see in a lot of G.I. Joe Classified figures, mostly related to articulation. What’s especially frustrating about the neck and mid-torso ball joints is they used to have much better range of motion with hinges in earlier waves. I otherwise really enjoy the character design aesthetic and accessories and I still had a ton of fun with this guy.
