Among the many Joecon sets that came and went, one of the most memorably lackluster was the 2004 set. Among the many figures FunPub could have made, they opted instead for some Dreadnok repaints that were at best, novelties. This Buzzer figure is a perfect example.
To preface this, I suppose I’m developing a habit of hating Joecon exclusives on this blog. I really don’t, at least not generally. But, most of the Joecon exclusives that inspire my comments are ones that I view as being somewhat flawed. This Convention Buzzer figure is flawed, but also represents one of the worst Joecon sets ever made.
The figure himself looks fine enough. It’s Buzzer, with the contemporary 2000‘s ARAH flesh color. He now is in mostly red, and has some camouflage on his pants. A modest, and different look for Buzzer. The problem that arises is that outside of looking different and being mildly limited in production, that’s all this figure has to offer: colors. Just colors. These colors aren’t based on some niche appearance he once had, or an old prototype, or even some bizarre foreign release. They are simply new colors applied to an old action figure to make a new, novelty collectible. The lack of any creativity here and forced nature of figures like this were something I had a great disdain for with FunPub’s Joe and Transformers exclusives.
With that said, Buzzer is still an excellent classic sculpt and I even find the colors to be attractive in a few ways. The flesh tone on this figure somehow seems more appropriate than his pastier vintage tone. As an Australian biker currently hanging out in the Florida Everglades, it seems right that his skin would be a bit darker. The red color coupled with the camouflage has a good urban appearance too, I think he’d look alright with the Alley Viper V6 to name one example.
With all that said, I can’t be the only one indifferent to this figure. I acquired my example sans accessories for a whopping $3. A weird example, but you rarely encounter anything from a convention that cheap. Even as of this writing, complete examples of this figure are easy to find under $20, if you hunt I’m sure you could even get this figure for less than $15. If you really want a Joecon exclusive, he’s not a bad option for that novelty. Beyond that, it’s a really shallow figure for a convention exclusive.
2004 Buzzer Links:
Generals Joes 2004 Convention set Review
Heh. I got this figure last fall from China in a “random” lot with 4 other figures for about $12. I was iffy on that, because there’s no great purpose for this version of Buzzer.
The TF vs Dreadnoks set was odd, one of the Club’s bolder experiments, but it under performed, so back to the mostly troop builders after that. The best thing about that con set is that for some reason certain figures from it wound up at “grey market” chinese sellers.
This convention set was almost a good idea, but it’s also easy to see why it’s a dud. The Dreadhead idea is not very good, especially because the figures were so different from any Dreadnok figure. Generic Dreadnok bikers could work, but they could never be so damn uniform.
This Buzzer is an alright figure, but not really useful or even that interesting. I think the lack of Torch does a lot of damage to that set, as you’ve got a Buzzer and a Ripper, but no Torch in stupid red pants. 2 out of 3 IS half bad, in that case.
Supposedly, there was going to be more done with the Dreadnok “factions” from the set. There were, I think, three different color palettes and they were going to be used as part of a story. But, that never happened and we have crappy repaints.
I’d much rather have had another year or two of Funskool production of these figures than most of the repaints we got from the club and Hasbro. This Dreadnok set was so bad it deserved to sit unsold for nearly a decade.
This was the only Con set where massive Asian overstock came out. It’s widely believed that the club intentionally underreported production numbers of some sets (notably the 2003 Firefly exclusive and the Fuchsia sets) and these overstock of these could be a residual of that overproduction. (It seems they stopped in ’05.) There are alternate, unreleased versions of several figs from this set, too. But, they are basically the same as the production figures.
I’m happy to be catching up on your reviews. Like A-Man, I also saw this guy in a Chinese random lot and thought he’d be good enough for the sole representation of Buzzer in my collection. I like weird repaints, after all. Plus, how good would he look with a Whispering Willie chainsaw?
I’ll still grab him if I see him for cheap.