Scarlett (25th Anniversary)

By KansasBrawler

As much as I personally prefer Lady Jaye, Scarlett is, and probably always will be, the first lady of the G.I. Joe brand. It’s such a shame her figures have always had one or two problems that kept them from being really good. The original was nicely detailed, but the head sculpt wasn’t that great. Her second version, which is the version I had growing up, was a part of the second year of Ninja Force and while her head sculpt looked great, she had the restricted articulation that plagued a lot of those figures. Her SpyTroops era figure was decent but her proportions were a bit wonky and the Valor Vs. Venom was a bit more superhero than soldier and looked a bit too young. They were all good figures, but they missed the mark a bit in one important area and it hurt them overall. Unfortunately, that tradition of being so close and yet so far away to a great figure continues with her 25th Anniversary figure.

Scarlett was initially released in the first 25th Anniversary box set so while she used all new molds, Hasbro was also clearly still figuring a few things out with their new style of construction. Overall, Scarlett’s design is solid. It’s a great update of her original figure that also manages to look appropriately feminine and proportional. Unlike her vintage figures, her limbs look slender and feminine while also being built to show that she’s someone who is clearly physically strong enough to be part of America’s highly-trained, special mission force. The detailing is quite impressive and while they didn’t carry over all the weapons she carried on her person back in the day, they did include a lot of them in molded details. She’s got a knife on her right leg, a quiver of arrows and a small pistol in a holster on her floating belt, two throwing stars on her left glove and a grenade on her left shoulder. While the cartoon may have occasionally treated her like a damsel in distress, this figure of Scarlett is clearly a woman of action who’s prepared for just about any situation on the battlefield. She’s also got the other classic Scarlett details of ankle pouches on her boots and a red pad on her right shoulder. Her head sculpt is also spot on. One of the more common complaints about the 1982 Scarlett was that she wasn’t wearing her hair in a ponytail like she did in the cartoon and comics. I’m sure that was a conceit to toy-making technology at the time, but I’m glad to see that the 25th Anniversary Scarlett’s hair looks more like it did in most Joe media and in a way that would make sense on the battlefield. Her face is also quite feminine, which is not something that could be said about the original figure. This head sculpt is the one Scarlett has deserved since 1982. Sadly, it’s on top of a body that exhibits a lot of the early 25th Anniversary flaws. First off, she’s got a really bad case of diaper crotch. For some reason, it’s even more pronounced on her than it is on most of the other early 25th Anniversary figures. I think it looks worse because her legs are a bit more slender so it makes the fact that they can’t come together as naturally as they should more apparent. Her mid-torso joint is also rather problematic. The joint is situated right under her breasts and while that’s a natural place to place the joint, it also accentuates the torso gap issue a bit more. Plus, it gives her a little bit of a hunch in her back and it’s hard to find a pose that both minimizes the torso gap and minimizes her hunch. Lastly, her grip is a bit loose. She can hold her crossbow relatively well, but at the same time, it’s a bit delicate. It’s a function of the fact that Hasbro was experimenting with dynamic hands and it’s a good thing they got away from using those. The Joes work better as figures when they can hold their weapons properly even if the grip is not quite as realistic. Scarlett is a popular character and hopefully somewhere down the line, Hasbro will revisit her classic look. I think if they took another shot at it with the experience they have working in this new style, they could really knock it out of the park and finally give Scarlett the excellent figure she deserves.

While the construction may be a little problematic, her paint scheme is great. Scarlett’s look has been pretty consistent over the years. She tends to wear a bluish-gray bodysuit with a tan torso cover and tan boots and gloves. They’ve kept those colors here but they’ve darkened her colors a little and it makes things look even better. The tan is a bit closer to a mustard yellow and the bluish-gray is a bit more blue than gray. To break up the large areas of tan and blue, she’s got a couple of olive drab belts, one for her knife sheath on her right leg and one around her waist. These little splashes of color really stand out and help bring just a bit more variety to the figure. The red pad on her right shoulder also works well. The paint work is excellent with no slop or fuzz. The only area where the paint work has some problems is on her face. First off, I think her skintone is just a shade too light. Scarlett looks awfully pale and I think that’s a bit of a problem. Secondly, the skintone is clearly painted on and it’s done rather heavily. I can see the hints of other details on her face but they really get muted by the heavy paint work up there. There are some little flaws here and there, but overall, Scarlett’s paint work is very well executed.

Poor Scarlett also gets the short end of the stick when it comes to weapons. The first box set was a bit wild when it came to accessories. Duke, Roadblock and Snake Eyes got a lot of them while Scarlett and Gung-Ho wound up with just one accessory apiece. While Scarlett’s accessory isn’t as bad as Gung-Ho’s it’s still not exactly a great piece. Scarlett has always been known for carrying a crossbow and this version is no different. On paper, this crossbow should be a good piece. It’s nicely detailed and it’s large enough to look like it has some stopping power while still being compact enough that it wouldn’t be a hindrance to use in combat. However, for some reason, the crossbow is molded in two pieces and those pieces don’t fit together very well. The bow arm and drawstring hook into the main body of the crossbow. The drawstring fits fairly well in the back part of the crossbow, but the connection point for the bow arm up front is a bit shallow and makes it incredibly twitchy. The fact that her crossbow falls apart fairly easily does limit my enjoyment of what should be a great modern crossbow. It’s not nearly as terrible as Gung-Ho’s dinky, flimsy grenade launcher, but it’s still a pretty lame piece of equipment. It’s a good thing Scarlett is so proficient in martial arts and has a lot of other weapons on her person because that crossbow may not be the most reliable piece of field equipment out there.

From a nostalgic standpoint, Scarlett succeeds very well. Her design is an impressive update of her classic look. From an action figure standpoint, though, she falls pretty short. She’s pretty badly limited by the early 25th Anniversary line problems and the only way she looks good is standing straight up. Considering how the Joe line is built on articulation, it’s a shame that she can’t really move all that well or look good doing it. It’s a little surprising that Scarlett never got a real update that fixed all those problems. The Resolute version was pretty close, but at the same time, I kind of wish Hasbro would have stepped back somewhere along the line and done to this version of Scarlett what they did for the 1982 version of Snake Eyes in the Pursuit of Cobra line. This is definitely a classic look and it deserves much better figure than this.