Tripwire (2008)
The original Tripwire was one of the first Joes whose accessories impressed me more than the figure. I remember creating a little mine field on the carpet and searching them out using his detector. The mines were soon lost in the carpet, by the way. That was about the extent of my play with him. I don’t think I ever gave him a gun and put him into battle. The figure was pretty uninteresting to me, and he seemed like a rather goofy character compared to Grunt, Duke or Gung-Ho. Maybe that was due to his clutziness from the file card, or his nebbish appearance in the cartoon. His bulbous helmet didn’t help his case with me either.
The look of the figure was greatly improved by the new construction style of the 25th anniversary series. The helmet on this figure is very well done. The proportions are great, and the sculpt is clean and crisp. Though most of the figure uses Flash’s mold, it’s not a great concern, although an untextured version of the chest padding showed up on another figure in the series. I’m just glad they didn’t opt for a separate piece to snap over the chest. That could have been bulky and weird.
There wasn’t a whole lot that could be done to make this figure more exciting, but the improved look of the helmet goes a long way toward making Tripwire more appealing.
I think they could’ve used the upper arms of the Cobra Commander figure and a different pair of upper legs, plus the smoothed-out torso introduced with the HISS driver, to make this more accurate to the original toy. And hey, if he had a working holster, then he’d be the first Tripwire figure that could defend himself.
I like his updated look. Tripwire got alot of use from me, he went out mine sweeping and got shot a lot. Usually the first blood drawn …..
The helmet is an improvement, although still not removable. I wish they had used an untextured padding on the single carded version using the A.V.A.C. body. The texturing was an easy cop-out for the design team which could have been avoided.
I’ll admit, I wish they had taken the texture off the torso pad, but considering I think release-wise, the original Tripwire came out before H.I.S.S. Driver (as I recall, I bought Tripwire in winter of 2008 but I didn’t remember seeing H.I.S.S. Driver until that summer–if I’m wrong on this, I apologize) and honestly, I’d rather have the money go into making his unique accessories look good than smooth out the torso…however, not using the smoothed torso for the repainted single pack release after H.I.S.S. Driver existed was a pretty bad oversight on Hasbro’s part.
Did they do a reapint of him in the eye burning red as a nod to the old “List’n N fun” varient?
No, but that would have been more inspiring than either repaint they did. I use the term repaints VERY loosely for the single carded version since it’s nearly identical (there might be a slight difference in the shade of green used for the base, but I’m not even willing to go that far) and the black and silver from RoC wasn’t much better, especially since they also released a Grand Slam for RoC in a very close color scheme.
I like this figure, but what’s up with the collar? Even the original Flash didn’t have one, so why does Flash/Tripwire? On it’s own terms, it’s not a bad figure, but my problem with the 25th is the over re-use of parts and the figures not being faithful to the originals.
For story purposes, Tripwire wasn’t versitile. Very slow paced character for a team known for action, not too many times did the Joes navigate a minefield. Even his bomb defusing role got taken over by other characters.
He really needs a total do-over. Removable helmet. Different gear.
Another great, iconic G.I.JOE!
2nd Least Favorite Joe Ever
I hate Tripwire, always have always will.
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