Robo J.O.E.
Greg Scott was a brilliant scientist who designed robotic suits. His lab was attacked by Destro, his technology stolen and he was left for dead. And you thought you’ve had bad days at work. So the Joe team finds him and uses his own tech to “rebuild” him. Now he’s a cyborg. I wonder if when they turned him on he flipped the hell out Autobot Spike style and screamed “what did you do to me!? Couldn’t you have used a captured BAT body and used that instead of my clunky-ass space armor?” Let this be a lesson to all scientists working on military projects. Make a living will and state: in the event of my impending death, do not rebuild me as a cyborg.
As for the code name, JOE is supposed to stand for Jet-tech Operations Expert. If that’s the case, shouldn’t it be Robo-JTOE? That just won’t do. I can come up with an actual three word acryonym. How about Juggling Optometrist Expatriate? Or Journalistic Oral Entymologist? Now that I think about it, why isn’t he called Robo-GREG?
The Star Brigade sub-group from which he hails gave rise to a major departure from vintage Joe articulation. The Armor Tech figures were larger and did not have o-ring construction. The arms and legs were simple hinge joints, and thus the figures could not achieve dynamic poses. This does lend itself to the idea that these were supposed to be troops outfitted in bulky armored space suits. The usual 90’s era spring-loaded weapon is here, and it mounts to his shoulder. He also has a removable solid black helmet, which looks as though it would completely obscure his vision. The head sculpt is what you’d expect from a half man half robot, and the left side of his face is covered with robotic parts. Some pretty uncomfortable looking wires protruded from his nose. Ouch. The colors are again bright, but it kind of reminds me of the orange of some NASA spacesuits. There must have been an accident with the spray gun when they were painting his armor, as he’s got a lot of Orange overspray on the black sections.
He is like a clunky, really bright version of the six million dollar man. Does he glow in the dark?
He doesn’t glow in the dark, but I think he would look cool under a blacklight.
I feel bad for poor Greg. They definitely messed his face up. Why couldn’t they have given him a respectable face half face plate? All the cool cyborgs are wearing those!
His origin smacks of Robocop, Darkman, and Swamp Thing mixed together with the aforementioned Spike incident which you mentioned. Much as the figure is lacking, his names pretty much kills the deal here.
I was just thinking about collecting the Star Brigade Armor Tech figures, and I find this Robo Joe review. Robo Joe is one of two Armor Tech figs I own, and is my least favorite in terms of a character concept.
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He lives on my Defiant!
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This was the very last of my ARAH buys of old. After that, I figured if I was going to buy sci-fi figures, shift focus on the Star Wars relaunch and Playmates’ Star Trek figures. I still have Robo-JOE minus his helmet. A cool update custom of him I saw used an Iron Man 2 drone.
I love this figure. š