Baroness (2004 comic pack)
The Baroness is one of the Cobra mainstays, and has been showing up in GI Joe comics and animation since day one. In those early days, before suffering burns over most if her body in a fateful HISS tank battle, she wore a simpler blue jumpsuit, like most other Cobra agents. With all the Baroness figures over the years, I’m surprised that her early appearance in blue hasn’t been done in some way other than repainting her later armored uniform.
From the o-ring style comic pack based on Marvel GI Joe issue #1 comes this repaint. If you collected the revived o-ring figures from 1997 through the mid 2000s via the these comic packs, convention sets and Toys R Us multi-packs, you probably grew tired of the mold at some point.
On a positive note, a new head mold was created for this figure, and though there was nothing wrong with the 1984 Baroness head, this one at least provides a little freshness to the figure. The hair and face are quite different from the old version, and the head is undersized, a common issue with comic pack figures. Baroness also has one of the teensiest, tiniest accessories ever, a pair of glasses.
Thankfully the overused Baroness rifle wasn’t included. Instead, she’s equipped with a pair of pistols, a conventional and a laser. The laser pistol’s shape reminds me of the transforming camera guns in the comic.
I don’t disagree that the glasses are probably a very small accessory, but they look huge on her head. Aside from that, it’s a great looking figure. The original is still my favorite, though.
I never saw any of these. I scoured comic shops looking for them but never found them. But no avail. It seemed like a cheap way to get some good characters i’d always wanted.
As Jerry Seinfeld would say, she’s got ‘man-hands’ because of that small head.
This was actually my first Baroness figure, when I found Comic Pack #1 at a comic shop.
It’s not a bad figure, but I’m still waiting for a proper blue suited Baroness from the early days of the comic when she had yet to be recast as a leather-clad sex kitten and Cobra itself was depicted as an openly Fascist organization who referred to their enemy as “the Americans.” I thought it made Cobra look like a realistic, truly legitimate threat and preferred this version to the “used car salesman forms an army through some crazy pyramid scheme” origin, which turned out downright silly and outlandish by comparison.
In fact, it would have been easier to simply state that CC and the Baroness were descendants of Nazis. Hasbro kept gearing them towards a more generic brand of villainy, most likely due to avoid controversy. But honestly? Even in this day and age, I still believe that Nazis deserve all the bad rep they can get. The world must never forget.
@Clutch
About ten years ago when i was getting back into the hobby and watching whatever old vhs tapes i could find, I was positive that Baroness was a carbon copy Ushci Hitler [not sure if i spelled that right]. It was only when i got that Cobra trooper six pack and i read more comics that i realised Cobra was a deranged, multi cultural organisation inspired by crooked buisness ventures and not neo fascism.
I think the youth in my home town are getting dumber as everytime i go down the street i see more skinheads. I am now determied to become a History teacher so i can stop it.
Nice experiment of 10 years ago…
I really love the comic packs, but sure wish the heads were larger. I would love for Hasbro to bring out the o-ring figures again.
That weapons that originally came with Ambush is a grenade launcher, not really a pistol.
I think sticking that head (with bettter glasses) on a recolored Scarlett V1 body would be closer to the Baroness’s original look.
@Clutch
As I see it, the chief characteristic of Baroness’s distinctive costume is “armoured”, not “leathern” (http://static.comicvine.com/uploads/original/0/4873/262819-26871-baroness.jpg)
I don’t remember the Marvel run presenting unambiguous evidence that the Baroness’s costume was leather; certainly, the (unarmored) elements of her costume were typically black and form-fitting, but then, so was Snake Eyes’ second, “ninja” costume, and I don’t believe anyone’s ever claimed that *he* was wearing a full-body leather suit.
And I prefer what the Cobra organisation eventually became in the later issues over the rather uninspiring “early instalment weirdness”. What Hama eventually turned them into, a sort of dark mirror-image of American capitalism (the file-cards frequently note that Cobra is ruthlessly meritocratic with operatives being driven by, and rewarded with, lucrative paycheques, while Cobra Commander’s origin as a frustrated businessman and the cobra-emblem itself hearken back to the early American revolutionaries with their snake-emblazoned, “don’t tread on me” banner) was far more interesting than yet another Nazi throwback, and in keeping with Hama’s generally according the setting and characters a more thoughtful, introspective treatment than other writers might have, or would have been expected for a comic-book based on a toy, in the first place.