25th Anniversary Breaker

By KansasBrawler

The 25th Anniversary comic packs did some pretty great things with a limited parts library. Considering how small Hasbro’s plans for the 25th Anniversary line originally were, they fleshed out the line with some quickly assembled comic packs. Unfortunately, not all those figures were winners and Breaker is unfortunately one of those early 25th Anniversary figures with so many flaws it’s hard to enjoy him as a figure.

This version of Breaker was released before the RAM set, but they share the same parts. That means both figures share the same terrible pitfalls. The legs come from 25th Anniversary Duke and these pieces are actually serviceable. They’re at least a little more interesting than the standard 25th Anniversary Snake Eyes legs. However, I have noticed they make Breaker a bit taller than I think he should be. The legs look just a tad disproportionate. His upper body comes from the 25th Anniversary Snake Eyes and that makes sense considering the vintage figure used the same torso. To complete the look, Breaker also uses the 25th Anniversary Snake Eyes webgear. I really do like this piece even though we saw it a lot during the early days of the 25th Anniversary line. His arms come from 25th Anniversary Duke and they look just as horrible here as they do on Duke. Between the wrist slits and the gimpy elbows, these pieces are just awful. I really don’t understand why Hasbro kept using these arms as long as they did. Yes, when Breaker was first released, they really didn’t have another option, but there were a lot of figures that had Duke arms that really shouldn’t have. Honestly, Hasbro should have retooled those things before they even thought about doing comic packs. I’ll forgive 25th Anniversary Flint for having Duke arms, but by the time Breaker came out, the flaws of the Duke arms were so commonly discussed, it should have clued Hasbro in to the fact that something needed to be fixed. Up top, Breaker has the new head they designed for him. Unfortunately, it’s a bit too big. Breaker looks a bit bobbleheaded, and that’s only worsened when he’s all geared up. From head to toes, Breaker is unfortunately a pretty terrible figure.

The figure itself is awful, but his paint work is at least serviceable. There’s not a lot to talk about here, but that’s fine. The vintage Breaker was a pretty simple figure, so it makes sense for his modern counterpart to be equally simple. Most of the figure is your basic olive drab green. It’s a good military color and makes sense for Breaker since he’s from the era where the Joes looked pretty military. However, the entire figure being molded out of that color also exacerbates the problems inherent in the Duke arms. You can clearly see that the arms are molded out of olive drab plastic and painted flesh color because there’s a big green slit on each arm. The flesh tone on the arms and head is applied a bit too heavily overall and that kind of hurts the look of the figure. The only other real color is found on his webgear. The black straps are painted well and the additional details (the pouches and grenade) are painted cleanly.

The one shining point on Breaker is his gear, but even that has a few problems. Hasbro did an amazing job recreating his classic helmet with the communications rig on it.  Unfortunately, that helmet has a pretty big profile so when put on an already oversized head, Breaker’s head looks even bigger…which is something I didn’t think was possible. The comm rig attaches to the helmet and the cord hooks onto his backpack. It’s a really nice look and it vintage accurate, which I appreciate. For weapons, Breaker has a pair of 25th Anniversary Snake Eyes pistols. They’re not my favorite pieces, but they’re more than the vintage Breaker got. Each pistol has a holster it can fill so if you want to keep Breaker more vintage-accurate, you can just have him keep his pistols holstered. Breaker’s final accessory is honestly pretty ingenious. In the comic, Breaker was known for blowing bubbles with gum. To recreate that here, the Hasbro folks made a gum bubble that can attach to his helmet mic. It creates the illusion that Breaker is blowing a bubble with the gum quite effectively and sure beats the other way they could have potentially done it—having a small hole in Breaker’s lips that the bubble could plug into. While the figure itself is pretty uninspiring, this accessory is just genius and almost redeems Breaker for me.

Breaker unfortunately typifies everything that was wrong with the 25th Anniversary line. The limited parts choices make Breaker look bad to begin with and the one piece they tooled up for him was out of proportion. It’s a shame that Breaker hasn’t gotten revisited because he’s a classic Joe and he deserves a good figure. I’ll admit, the gear is spot on, but such good gear on such a bad figure is like putting lipstick on a pig. It doesn’t matter how good the gear is, Breaker’s still a crappy figure. He honestly approaches Gung-Ho levels of awful. I really hope the continuing Joe brand finds a way to give us the modern Breaker we deserve and not this hunk of plastic. Breaker’s part of the Original 13 and he deserves better than this. Honestly, now that Gung Ho has finally gotten a good figure, Breaker is about the only one from the 25th Anniversary line that I think absolutely has to get updated.