Comic Pack Scarlett (25th Anniversary)
By KansasBrawler
The first wave of 25th Anniversary comic packs relied pretty heavily on repeated characters. As such, I wasn’t super into them since I had most of the figures in better color schemes thanks to the box sets. However, since I wanted 25th Anniversary Colonel Hawk, that meant I also wound up with another 25th Anniversary Scarlett. This is the same figure that Hasbro released in the first Joe box set. If you want a full accounting of this figure, just read that earlier Field Report. The short version is that this means she has the same awkward articulation issues as her previous version. Even the dreaded diaper crotch wasn’t fixed by this point so the only way Scarlett can sit is with her legs spread wide apart. This figure is pretty dated and truthfully, I only needed one version of Scarlett like this.
However, at least the color scheme is different. I don’t know if I’d call it better, but at least she looks different from her standard counterpart. Instead of tan and blue, Scarlett is wearing yellow and lavender. It is fairly close to the look she had in the Sunbow cartoon, but as someone who grew up on the later years of the cartoon that didn’t feature Scarlett quite as heavily, I don’t have any nostalgic ties to the look. For me, Lady Jaye was always the first Joe female I thought of because that was the era of Sunbow I started with. I know some of the Joe fans that appreciated the Sunbow look were excited for her, but honestly, to me, this is a slightly strangely colored Scarlett in my collection.
For gear, she has the same crossbow that the box set version came with. This one came packaged with a clear rubber band on it, so I haven’t removed it and that makes this rather fragile crossbow far sturdier. The clear rubber band doesn’t even detract that much from the weapon’s overall look because it’s a crossbow. For a little more modern weaponry, Scarlett also gets a matching silver pistol. It’s not much in the way of gear, but Scarlett didn’t have much for accessories back in the day either, so it’s actually a fairly correct reference to make.
I don’t mind this figure as the cost of doing business to get Colonel Hawk. It’s a decent, if not groundbreaking figure. My inner neon lover does like the brighter colors on Scarlett, but overall, it’s still a rather uninteresting figure because it’s so close to what I had already. The only reason I bought the comic pack she was in was because of the new Colonel Hawk figure. I passed on Snake Eyes/Storm Shadow and Duke/Cobra Commander because there was nothing new there. At least this Scarlett references part of her history in the Joe brand and was packed alongside someone newer and more interesting.
My guess as to why so many of the 25th figures have awkward articulation and off sculpts [see Duke] could be that Hasbro was planning them to be kept in the packets as keepsakes
Actually, the colors on this Scarlet figure, just like the 1997 o-ring figure, remind me of how Scarlet was colored in the 1991 DIC season two episodes. I wonder if the idea for these two figures came from those DIC episodes. By the way, isn’t it strange how in the cartoons, and in the comics, Scarlet had her long hair in a ponytail, but the 82-83 figure’s head was not done with a ponytail? But, years later, the Hasbro folks figure out a way to design Buzzer’s ponytail.
That side profile is so unfortunate. Were many like that? For us late to the game – what was the point of the Comic packs? Referencing those looks? Why repeat so much? Thanks for Helping the newb.
I think Hasbro reuses moulds so much as tooling new ones is really expensive. Its cheaper to do several subtle versions of Snake eyes and Bumblebee than create a whole new mould