Zanya (30th Anniversary)

by KansasBrawler

I’ll admit, I was relatively slow to warm up to the Dreadnok set. Initial images didn’t necessarily grab my attention, but considering I didn’t have an avenue to get it other than online, I figured I should grab it when I got the Slaughter’s Marauders set just if nothing else to save on shipping if reviews on other sites made me fall in love with the set. However, when I got it in my hands, the Dreadnok set really did wind up making me far happier than I expected. Between the amazing second figure ever of Zandar and a new modern Road Pig, what’s not to love? What really made me happy, though, was that Zanya was finally getting a figure. I was glad she finally got plastic treatment and while I know many fans would rather have seen SDCC Zarana get out to a larger market through this pack, I’m honestly happier with Zanya than I would have been with Zarana.

As I’ve mentioned before, my first Joe comics were the DDP series. Don’t get me wrong, they’re not as good as Larry Hama’s Marvel stuff, but from a nostalgia standpoint, I have a lot stronger connection to DDP than I do the classic Joe comic series. Zanya was a nice surprise in that first story arc. I liked the idea of certain members of Cobra High Command turning working for Cobra into more of a family gig. Add in the really nice two-parter they did with Zanya later which showed how she first fell in with the Dreadnoks during the short-lived Frontline series, and you had a modern character that I really wanted to get a figure of. Zanya’s upper body is shared with Zarana (which I think is part of why she gets less-than-favorable looks from people who would rather have had her) and her legs are a combination of Lady Jaye and Rise of Cobra Cover Girl. Of course, her head is brand new and the give her a lot of character. Zanya definitely looks like a girl you wouldn’t want to mess with. The head sculpt does a great job of suggesting the she’s younger, and as I recall it was clear she was in her late teens when we were first introduced to the character in the comics. I’ve also got to admit, they did an amazing job with her facial piercings. While they could have just put silver dots in the proper places and called it a day, they went the extra mile and sculpted in the piercings for her eyebrow and lower lip. To be honest, I can’t tell if they did actually sculpt in her nose ring or not, but it’s very clear the other two piercings are sculpted elements. My only issue with her head sculpt is her hair horns. The rest of her dreadlocks look really good, and I know she wore her hair like that in the comics at times, but the horns back there are one of those details that looks good as a drawing but doesn’t really make the transition to a 3D element as well as it should. It’s not a make or break detail with me, but I do think the head sculpt would look a little better without those two pieces of hair sticking up from her head. Sharing her aunt’s upper body does make her seem a little repetitive, but I don’t have Zarana and I’m not really interested in paying the high secondary market prices for her, so I have no beef with seeing that tooling used for her here. I do wish she was just wearing a regular short-sleeved shirt like she did in the comics, but I do like the torn shirt look here. It makes her look more like she belongs with the Dreadnoks. I also find myself liking the choice they made for her legs. There aren’t a lot of options for female legs in the Joe line and I’m glad Hasbro did a little mixing and matching to create a very nice, unique pair of legs out of existing parts.

The paint job on this figure is a little maddening as I look at it. They do some very hardto- do details nearly flawlessly, yet there are a couple of mistakes on easy-to-do parts that just baffle me. Starting with the amazing, the tampos they use for her fishnet gloves are incredibly crisp. That’s a detail you need done well if you want it to come off right and they really knocked them out of the park. The detail work done on her shoulder strap is also very clean. However, the shirt has a spot missing right in the middle of Zartan’s hood. I don’t know if it’s the angle I took my photos or am looking at the figure while I’m writing, but it seems a lot more pronounced on my version as compared to others from review sites. If it’s a more common problem than I realize, I’ll happily walk back my criticism and I realize that the spot in question is probably a bit hard to paint cleanly, but it’s an odd place to be missing paint. Even though the front of her shirt has problems, the back where she’s got “For Life” still visible on her tattered shirt does look very nice. The other paint flaw I noticed is that they did a poor job lining up the paintjob at the top of her belt. I’ll freely admit, I didn’t notice this until I was reviewing her, but I set Zanya down facing towards my computer monitor and noticed that the olive drab green line for the top of her pants did not match up between the front and back halves of her body. The paint ends abruptly right at the seam between the two halves, which makes it a bit more noticeable. That’s something that seems to be pretty common from the other review shots I’ve seen of her, but it’s a little surprising. That’s a relatively simple place to paint and it’s surprising to see a flaw there.

Zanya is another Dreadnok without a signature weapon or shtick (beyond being part of the Zartan family). However, unlike Burn Out, they really don’t try to force a shtick on her and just give her a pair of nice weapons. Zanya gets an AK-47 and a nice large revolver. I can just see her grabbing an AK-47 at the Dreadnok compound and that revolver reminds me a lot of a police service revolver. Considering the filecard makes mention of Zanya’s skills as a pickpocket, I really like to think she lifted it off a cop during a traffic stop just because she could. Her weapons are nice and simple and most importantly fit with the character they’ve established. Plus, that’s a great basic AK-47. Hasbro, as far as I’m concerned, any time you can use that AK- 47 for a Cobra soldier, I’m all for it. There’s a reason it’s considered a classic weapon in paramilitary circles. It’s cheap and it can take a lot of abuse. I’d love to see Cobra Troopers wading into the field with an AK-47, getting back to their classic terrorist roots. While I know there was a degree of outcry against Zanya because she wasn’t Zarana, I’m also sure there would have been a lot of pissed off collectors who dropped major cash to get a Zarana from the secondary market. Since Zarana was a figure I had no interest in, I had no problem with Zanya finally getting some attention from Hasbro. Let’s be fair, of the three characters with some legs to them introduced by DDP (Kamakura, Wraith and Zanya), she was the last one to get any attention. I realize the DDP era wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but I really did enjoy it at the time and I’m glad to see someone at Hasbro liked it enough to pull Zanya from the ranks of the dustbin to finally appear on my shelves.