Red Shadows Secret Base (2010)
While many Joe fans are no doubt standing in a line tonight waiting to partake of the club’s final offerings, I’m set up in the relative comfort of JAD HQ by my lonesome with a glass of wine, old club exclusives, and a camera. To be honest, I’d rather be anywhere than standing in a line, even one that leads to cool toys. It’s just in my DNA.
The Red Shadows Secret Base is the one and only playset released in the history of club exclusives. The term playset may be a bit loosely defined here, as the set is closer in scale and function to the old battlefield accessory toys of the 80s. Despite this, the base is a functional bit of space, at least from the front. The back side doesn’t provide much opportunity for play or display, and the dual blast doors are frustratingly fiddly. It’s like I’ve seen this all before…
Pay no attention to the Red Shadows Base’s resemblance to a certain Imperial bunker on the forest moon of Endor. Though the club gave it a missile launcher, a nice paint job and more painted details than its galaxy far away cousin, one can’t escape the iconic design. However, it is nice to be able to pose your Red Shadows con set around it, and you know, actually play with the thing. Imagine that! Speaking of which, it seems my Ewoks have escaped their own universe and crossed over into the Joeverse. Guess they caught the series finale of Rebels.
It was odd they even got permission to use a Star Wars tooling.
Great article, but wait, there’s something that I don’t get about this base. If this base was meant to be made for the bad guys, the Red Shadows, then why were the colors on this base done in an army dark green color, instead of the Red Shadows red color, or at least in black? Wouldn’t any of those two colors had been a better choice for a Red Shadows base? I’ve never seen anything from the Red Shadows that was done in any color that wasn’t in red. I wonder why was this particular Red Shadows base done in this color. The Red Shadows Staff Car, which was also released that same year at the same convention, was molded in red plastic. Could it be possible that this base was originally meant to be made for the good guys, but there was a last minute change, and they couldn’t change the colors on the 500 Red Shadows Secret Bases that they had made? Also, the color of this base matches with the uniform colors of the Z Force figures that were released at the convention that year, specially the color on the uniform of the Jammer figure. Anyway, I was wondering if this playset can be used with the taller scale 25th Anniversary style figures. I would have like to have seen a photo of one of those figures standing next to the base to see a comparison in height between those, and the smaller scale o-ring figures.