Cutter (2008)
By Past Nastification
Cutter was one of my favorite early ARAH characters. So when Hasbro got around to phoning in the modern era version, it was a letdown. Released as “GI Joe Cutter”, the parts used to create the figure’s body were fair enough. Flint arms and everything else from the neck down from Shipwreck create an adequate uniform for a Coast Guard design.
The departures from the original figure, such as a few different colors and the addition of gloves, don’t matter one way or another. The gloves are probably an improvement, and long or cuffed sleeves might have been an interesting alteration. The PFD (personal floatation device) is a removable piece and well done. A dock rope w/hook and a pistol round out Cutter’s gear.
So far, so good-ish. The figure falls apart because of the head choice. It’s a Gung Ho head. The somewhat underslung jaw works for manly man Gung Ho, but not for the serene and mildly sarcastic Cutter. Were I given the task of making a GI Joe movie, and a time machine, Kevin Kline circa 1990 would play Cutter. That’s whom Cutter should look like.
But the face isn’t the biggest strike against this Cutter. It’s Hasbro trying to force the Marine Corps utility cover to pass as a Boston Red Sox baseball cap. I wonder if Hasbro chose the Red Sox logo because it’s simply a letter, which they could argue (with a wink) that it stood for something else if any legal issues had arisen.
The utility cover shape is so off for a baseball cap design that I would have preferred Hasbro let Cutter go without his cap. The ’08 General Hawk head, painted with rust-colored hair and a mustache, would have worked fine. Hasbro could have slyly kept Cutter’s love of the Red Sox alive by printing the top portion of the “B” logo on the Shipwreck chest as a t-shirt underneath the extra wide-open collar.
What could have been a serviceable figure is not fully realized because of a poor head choice.
When Hasbro’s efforts look like mediocre fan customs.
Hasbro didn’t randomly choose the Redsox logo. The original Cutter figure was a homage to Dwight Evans.
I was all in on the 25th line until I saw this guy. My first of many passes on modern figures.
When this figure came out I still had all my Cutter figures and would have gladly added the “modern” Cutter but there is nothing I liked about this figure.
The better route would have been taking elements of the 1984 hovercraft pilot and the 1992 sea operations specialist, combining and creating a better figure that could have lent for a more interesting character than this parts-tastrophe.