1989 Slaughter’s Marauders Spirit
I’ve talked about the Slaughter’s Marauders at least once before when I posted about Slaughter’s Marauders Low-Light, but perhaps an even more interesting figure to look at is Spirit. Both as a character and a repaint, I have some thoughts on him, and like the rest of the Slaughter’s Marauders, he’s a good bit of quirky fun.
V1 Spirit is a toy I like, and think is iconic, but I do have issues with it. His costume is pretty chintzy, his colors are decent, but if not somewhat bright, and the figure discolors to an ugly shade if you look at it wrong. Nothing major, but a few of these problems are solved by his inclusion in Slaughter’s Marauders. While he has the same palette as the rest of his sub-team, the green shades feel well suited to Spirit, and it solves the problems I mentioned, which is something his contemporaries in Tiger Force and Python Patrol rarely did.
Of course, the figure still has plenty of it’s own issues. Like the fact that the plastic quality is the same shoddy Brazilian plastic used for all of the Slaughter’s Marauders figures. More so than the others I had a really hard time tracking down an example of this guy that wasn’t broken, and had to combine a few to get a decent example. Also terrible: He has no eyebrows! I’m not really sure what to think about that. It feels like a missing paint application, but then again, maybe he just changed his look like Duke in the Tiger Force?
Spirit’s accessories are similar to the V1‘s, with a few differences. Most obviously, all of his parts are in black now, which makes some of the details a bit harder to see, but at the same time acts as a nice color alternative to the originals. His belt/skirt features a brown drape instead of red, and is nice for being slightly more muted. I’m not sure if there’s any significant changes to the gun’s sculpt or to Freedom, but as A-man told me with Low-Light, his gun was changed so maybe the same happened here.
I have a hard time picking a favorite Spirit figure, since I feel like there’s problems with all of them. The Slaughter’s Marauders colors on this one provide me with a reasonably colored version of Spirit, that doesn’t yellow easy or look terribly out of place among a larger Joe roster. Of course, this comes at the cost of his eyebrows and plastic quality, and for that reason, I can never use him without feeling uneasy.
You have to be a pretty hardcore collector to want to bother with Slaughter’s Marauders, honestly. A mint, complete SM Spirit will run around $30, and is not too easy to find, either. Broken figures with a few parts will still run between $15 to $20, which with most other Joe items, would seem absurd. My personal strategy with these has been to target them in lots and buying multiples of cheap junkers to slowly piece together a perfect figure. More often than not, an SM figure will at least have one break on it somewhere, and when a figure nets me extra spare arms and crotches I have less to fear about using them in photos too.
I quite like the colours on the SM Spirit. The quality isn’t the best, but it’s probably my favourite depiction of Spirit overall.
It’s a shame that there’s a terrible flaw with pretty much every use of the v1 Spirit mold, as he’s definitely one of the better characters from the Joe run, and the sculpt itself is quite nice, albeit kinda stereotypical. It’s also a sculpt that definitely doesn’t lend itself to other characters, so the likelihood of it showing up by the Third Party Producers is slim to none.
I have full sets of the figures’ gear because I never got an unbroken one. I want to pick up the figure to have around since I like Spirit and this version is good for photos. But, you’re right, even loose figures are stupidly expensive right now. And, I’d snap his thumb in a second if I tried to put the gun in his hand.
I remember when the Marauders seemed to widely disliked. Maybe it was part of the “anything after 1985/86 sucked” mentality of early online fandom.
It’s really a shame about the plastic quality.
I am waiting for figures like him to be banished by the PC social justice warrior crowd. The funny thing is, I grew up between two indian reservations in the rural west, and have indian relatives. I remember my cousin who is an indian always always always wanted Spirit when we played, and at least in my rural area, the indians prided themselves on hunting skills and the males still considered themselves warriors for their tribes, whether they ever actually fought or not. And many joined the service, so I see Spirit as actually somewhat realistic, except for the weird arrow gun thing.