The 2014 Zombie Initiative Convention set is an interesting dichotomy; it is as much an homage to the current zombie craze in popular fiction as it is an unadulterated love letter to the 90’s era Real American Hero figures.  It is a set that fully embraces both the horror of the walking dead and the garish world of neon hues.  (Not to mention a jumbled mess of sub-teams that looked like the Club threw everything at the wall, and everything stuck.)  Yet, the set manages to be more than just a pure homage to the past as it introduces new characters and concepts to the mythos.  Case in point-- Repulsor.  This security director for Cobra Industries wears the uniform of a vintage 1991 Sludge Viper and yet is a brand new named character-- something that the Joe Con sets have been introducing for the past few years.  Does Repulsor and his loyal but infected canine companion Dawg live up to the anticipation that only a new character can generate?  Is he a worth addition to the cast of Collector’s Club created figures?  Well, considering his name is stupid as hell, that’s not an encouraging start.  And what exactly is he “repulsing”?   Read on and find out the opinions of two long-time Joe fans!

Repulsor’s body construction, like many GIJCC figures, is much like a good stew.  Dinty Moore beef stew.  The best beef stew in the world!  Even better than homemade.  But I digress…The individual parts are solid on their own but they’re far more interesting when mixed together to form a brand new creation.  (You can tell I’m getting hungry right now.)  This security chief is constructed entire out of existing parts and yet the resulting amalgamation is one of the more interesting figures in the entire set.  The recipe appears to be thus:

• Torso and waist - Snake Eyes v40 (from the second 25th Anniversary G.I. Joe five pack)
• Lower arms -  PoC Jungle Viper
• Upper arms, lower legs, feet, torso overlay  - 30th Anniversary Techno-Viper 

I’m not a customizer and I’ll admit it-- I don’t have the ability to look at a pile of disparate parts and see them combined as other figures.  And that will be your downfall.  Fortunately for me and Joe fans everywhere, the GIJCC has access to individuals who possess such a talent and can produce figures like this.  Don’t get too gushy buddy, these fine folks also gave us junk like FSS surprise 13 th figure “Bland Scam” and the craptastic Outback, so they ain’t exactly batting above 300 when we average things out.    When compared to a vintage Sludge Viper the resemblance is almost uncanny.  The Techno-Viper torso armor functions incredibly well in simulating the look of the vintage figure and the use of the neon color palette completes the look.  Okay, personally I don’t understand the notion of wearing what appears to be aqua, yellow, purple and red simultaneously but for some reason this color combination works far better than I ever would have thought possible.  That was actually the color of the unitard, legwarmers, and headband he wore to all those Jazzercise classes trying to impress the ladies.   Maybe it’s a head trauma or something but these 90’s aesthetics aren’t nearly as garish as I once imagined. 

They are to me, but to be fair, I don’t necessarily mind the bad guys in loud colors.  That is simply the way it is with super villainy.  It bothers me more when the ‘Joes are in DayGlo or soft pastels.  I never want to see new, modern characters of any persuasion colored like this, but since there is an existing precedence with the Sludge Viper, the colors are not unexpected, and years of habituation have gotten me used to it.  But that still doesn’t change the fact he looks like he’s wearing dive suit instead of a HAZMAT one.   

As for part choices, they work, but they aren’t as accurate to the vintage one as they could have been if Boss Fight had tooled new chest padding that included the Sludge Viper’s computerized chest pack.  I was pleasantly surprised the helmet works better than I thought.  While dissimilar to the original, it works in a pinch.

One puzzling aspect of the figure’s design is found in the use of paint applications.  The yellow knees pads are molded in the appropriate color plastic as are the figure’s hands.  However, the hands are then treated to a fairly thick yellow paint application.  Now this seems completely unnecessary to my eyes as the hands were already molded in the correct color.  This paint is almost prone to flaking when the wrist joint is used.  It’s not prone, it does flake.  It doesn’t diminish my appreciation for the figure but I do find it just a bit odd.  Of course, I’m not a customizer so maybe there’s something I’m missing here.

I mentioned earlier that Repulsor is constructed entirely of existing parts and that applies to both the figure’s head sculpt as well as his head gear.  Eagle-eyed fans of the generation 3 era will immediately recognize the head as belonging to the 25th Anniversary Comic Pack Red Star figure while the helmet comes from the 30th Anniversary Zombie Viper which is more than a bit ironic.  The helmet does a serviceable job of replicating the look of the vintage Sludge Viper although I would have preferred to see a brand new sculpted piece that more closely resembled the source material. Likewise.  As far as the reuse of the Red Star head, it works well enough to serve as a new character.  Previously this sculpt was also used for the Assault on Cobra Island Specialist Altitude (aka Ripcord - modern revisionist renaming be damned!) as well as Red Star but both of them possessed much lighter painted hair.  Maybe it’s the overall change in the skin tone and hair color but I don’t find that Repulsor resembles the legendary actor John Wayne nearly as much as Red Star did.  Plus, the odds are the he’ll be displayed with his helmet on more often than not anyway.  I’d always prefer new characters to have unique head sculpts but I’ve got no complaints with this parts reuse.

In terms of gear, Repulsor shares the same back pack and “plasma-tox” rifle as the FSS 2.0 Cesspool which makes sense considering that he serves as the Cobra CEO’s right-hand man and chief enforcer.  The rest of his kit is pretty standard, both for this set and for someone of his specialization.  Included in his kit is:

• SPAS-12 shotgun
• Plasma-tox rifle
• Backpack
• Pistol
• Figure stand
• File card

All of this makes some sort of sense given both Repulsor’s specialty and his employer.  I do like the fact that the Toxo-Vipers, Toxo-Zombies, and Repulsor all share a common model of sidearm.  It provides some much-needed cohesion among the troops.  It does, but on the negative side, the pistols don’t fit the holsters as they should on some of these figures, and if you want them to stay in place, you might have to glue them in.  I had to do that with my Toxo-Vipers and Toxo-Zombies.  However, these accessories aren’t the real reason that some fans will seek out Repulsor to add to their collections.

No, gear be damned.  People will want him for himself.  While nothing but a repaint, Repulsor has a intrinsic value of being a brand new character inspired by the original concept art of the Sludge Viper that carried the “Repulsor” moniker.  He’s also a single character not a troop builder, so that also expands Cobra’s ranks of named individual personnel.

I do think some Sludge Viper troops should have been included in the set, as Repulsor promises, but doesn’t exactly deliver the Sludge Viper quota.  On his file card he’s not listed as a Sludge Viper per se, he’s just wearing the suit.  It also seems to suggest Sludge Vipers have been phased out; or wiped out of Cobra, and maybe that’s a good enough reason why they weren’t included.  (It should also be noted that whoever wrote the file card misspelled “Sludge-Vipers” [SIC].  The name isn’t hyphenated.)   

Let’s talk about Dawg for a minute.  Let’s not and say we did.  He’s a fugly lump of plastic.  Next!  He’s a shambling brute of what I presume to have been a pitbull that has been both infected with Compound Z and saddled with a ridiculous name.  My god, if I thought Repulsor was a dumb codename, Dawg is a trillion times worse.  What imbecile with arrested development thought that up, and what imbeciles decided to run with it?   There’s a proud history of animal companions in the G.I. Joe team but for the most part this trend wasn’t as embraced by Cobra.  Sure, Gnawgahyde had his warthog, the Croc Master had his “wee croc”, and more recently Night Adder had his guard dog but these animals were never given the same accord as Junkyard, Timber, Freedom, Order, or even Polly. Flash forward to 2014 and the partnership between Boss Fight Studio and the G.I. Joe Collector’s Club.   Not only does a member of Cobra have an animal companion but what a companion it is.

I’m going to say it- Dawg is, to use the vernacular, pretty jacked up.  From his exposed ribs to his partially fleshless tail, this dog has been ravaged by the effects of Compound Z.  According to the convention comic, Dawg was accidentally killed by Outback and was brought back to life by his grieving master.  (That isn’t a joke or Fred being factitious, that’s absolutely what happened in the comic!  Yeah, Poet Laureate material that was…)   The reality is that Boss Fight Studio took the basic frame of a pit bull and destroyed it with mottled flesh, giant pustules, and protruding bone.  Some folks have commented that the blue hues of the paint applications give Dawg a cartoon-like appearance.  However, those colors have been used to represent Compound Z all way back to its first mention as part of the back story of the  30th Anniversary Hazard Vipers.  I understand-- Dawg isn’t one of the gore-covered Doberman Pinschers from the Resident Evil franchise (should have been) but fans need to remember that G.I. Joe is still technically a kid’s property-- at least in the eyes of Hasbro.  Personally, I find that the blue hues help to differentiate Dawg from the zombie dogs of other popular fiction franchise and help to give him more a chemically-enhanced look.  Of course, I’m probably reading too much into things.

I actually thought Dawg was pretty bad.  In fact, I actually laughed out loud when I saw him revealed. Maybe it was the big bulbous eye that made him look like a cartoon, or the fact his head looks more like toothless angler fish than a zombie dog.  I would have also thought the Club would have given us a pack of zombie dogs to maximize the tooling, hell, even Max the bobcat will be used twice, but not so with Dawg.  But maybe that’s a good thing. 

In hindsight, I would have rather had the cash spent on this better utilized elsewhere for new heads or more paint, but at the very least, if Boss Fight doesn’t hit a homerun, I’d rather it be on “throw away” things like Dawg than an actual figure. 

At the end of the day, is Repulsor worth acquiring?  This is a tricky question for me to answer for a couple of reasons.  First off, I have zero nostalgia attachment to the concept of the Sludge Vipers.  As such, he was the absolute last figure that I acquired from the Zombie Initiative set.  (Some of us went the long way around and acquired the figures individually over time rather than buying the set at convention time but that’s a long story.)  Secondly, his color scheme is VERY 90’s-- more so than any of the other Cobra figures sold at the convention that year.  However, once I got him in hand my opinion of him softened somewhat.  In spite of the fact that he’s decorated like a walking kindergarten classroom, I like the overall construction of the figure and I find Dawg to be a great concept given a fairly unimaginative name.  There are also enough design similarities to the FSS Cesspool that help to justify Repulsor’s inclusion in my Joe collection.  However, I can’t justify the prices he’s currently going for on the secondary market right now-- not when the Zombie Initiative set is still available in the GIJCC store for the initial list price.  Had Dawg not been included in his kit, I might have passed on him entirely. 

What?!  Dawg SOLD you on this set?  Yeash!   He’s worth picking up but don’t pay an arm and a leg to acquire him.  Of course, that’s just this Joe fan’s opinion.

The Bottom Line:  Repulsor is a decent figure that offers the concept of a new character combined with a vintage homage.  Beware of inflated secondary market prices, however, as he’s built out of existing parts Dawg, however, is definitely worth considering. 

I’m in the same boat.  Unless you want a Sludge Viper, or unless you want the character himself, there’s nothing really here that is new or innovated that will warrant the prices he’s fetching.  Yes, he’s in my collection because he’s a new individual, so that had merit.  But that might not be enough for someone else who doesn’t necessarily care about new figures, but quality or aesthetic instead.