When it comes to Tripwire figures, there’s a few everyone talks about. The original, for obvious reasons, but after it the most popular seems to be the Funskool figure and Listen & Fun Tripwire, for their rarity and exotic qualities. Rarely spoken of, however, is the Tiger Force version of the toy.
The Tiger Force was an odd mixture of characters for a Joe team. You have your A-tier stars, like Duke, Flint and Roadblock mixed with stranger choices like Lifeline, Frostbite and Tripwire. Frostbite feels hard to reason, but Tripwire seems like a good fit for the team. Given that the Tiger Force does their combat in jungle locations, there’s ample opportunity for booby-traps and IEDs. There really isn’t a better team Tripwire could have been placed in, so while he’s odd, he does fit in.
The figure itself is attractive and interesting without pushing it. He’s predominately brown, with a lighter green shade on his helmet, gloves and belt. The orange tiger camo pattern is limited to his body gear, which certainly stands out a bit, but also prevents the figure from appearing too bland. He also features some gray and silver details that are minor, but do highlight some of the nice sculpted details that might be missed on the original version.
For parts, he includes the same mine detector, mines and backpack as the original only in black. Black parts never seem like a bad thing, although on such a colorful figure I sometimes think the green backpack is actually a better match. Like with the original, these are fun parts that make up a good amount of the figure’s charm. The mines give him something to do, but they can also be placed as traps during play, by him or Cobra. I think they certainly make up for the lack of a weapon given how much fun they could provide. The mine detector is also a great part. It’s usage is straight forward, but the variety it provides gives it an appeal that was common in the early Joe line.
This figure seems to fetch around $8 to $12 at the moment, which is a pretty fair price. Sans parts you can even get this guy around $4 which really isn’t bad if you already have a few other versions of Tripwire with his parts. For that much, it’s a fun figure to have around and displays nicely with the rest of the Tiger Force.
Great review. I’ve never had a vintage O-Ring Tripwire, so maybe this is the one I should go for when it comes time for The Skoog to enter my collection.
If you don’t care about having V1’s, you could easily grab this guy without his parts and the ARAHC figure with his and just share the accessories between them. The ARAHC version is super duper cheap last time I checked.
Thanks for the tip! I think I’ll do that.
Some fans seem to think Tiger Force is a jungle team, despite Frostbite’s file card mentioning the desert.
Tripwire seemed the oddest of the carded 7 tiger force figures, because he was minor character compared to the other 6. He had more to do in the comics before fading away. His toon appearances weren’t too many. Also, interesting how close his head is to his original release. Curiosly, Tripwire had two recolors in the vintage run, but of the other new 1983 JOEs, none were recolored for US/Canada releases until 1997.