2001 Gung-Ho
A problem endemic to many a figure from the ARAHC line, is the fact that many of them are nice, but not all that necessary. This comes from the fact that they often took common molds, and repainted them in similar colors, such as with both Cobra Commanders, the Baroness, Low-Light and others. Many of these figures now provide me with some enjoyable novelty, but at the time it made for a lackluster lineup. Gung-Ho’s another one of these unneeded repaints, though this figure’s actually pretty decent at face value.
Figures like this Gung-Ho are actually something that frustrated me as a kid. I barely ever saw the ARAHC figures back then, and it was really disappointing to get my first shot at expanding my own GI Joe collection, apart from my brother’s, only to be greeted by a lot of the same figures I had open access to. That coupled with this line’s absolute lack of anything a kid might like (fun colors, gimmicks, recognizable characters), left me passing them over in favor of other things every time. Hasbro improved on these issues in 2002, but even as a kid, this half-assed approach was dissuading.
The other two Battle Corps versions of this Gung-Ho are both nicely colored and remain extremely common. This version is about as nice as the other two, maybe even a little nicer for the toned down vest and olive-drab pants. It’s a little bland, but Gung-Ho has enough crazy looking figures that this one’s an okay change of pace. Probably the most irritating thing is his pale, pasty skin, though I’d say it matches a little better with ARAH figures than the later 2000‘s Joes when everyone turned orange.
Nice colors aside, why did we need this? Sure it’s a strong mold and a good rendition of it, but the original take with the green vest was still as good. With near reissues of Baroness, Torpedo and Roadblock floating around, it seems like it would’ve made more sense to bring back the V1 mold. That figure was probably a lot cheaper and easier to get a mint copy of in 2001, but I might’ve preferred it a bit to have a decent one, just in muddy ARAHC colors. It’s a head-scratcher, but then again, I like this mold a bit better anyways, so perhaps it was no big loss.
Gung-Ho comes with the same M-60 and backpack as this mold’s first release, and he also includes a figure stand. I like this M-60, even if the scale probably isn’t too realistic. The backpack’s alright, it sticks out quite a bit and doesn’t have a great profile, but it does the job for the figure.
Like a lot of figures from his era, he’s gotten harder to find, though this version of Gungo-Ho remains inexpensive floating around $10. You can get him sealed in his original pack with Leatherneck for $20, so that’s also an option. All things considered, it’s a fun, cheap version of Gung-Ho when everything else has gotten too expensive, but it leaves something to be desired when you have a bunch of other Gung-Ho’s.
It’s an utter travesty that we didn’t get this mold in 1983 colors. Imagine the 2000/2001 lineup but with:
1992 Wild Bill in 1983 colors
2001 Gung Ho in 1983 colors
2001 Leatherneck in 1986 colors
1992 Duke in 1984 colors
1992 Destro in 1988 colors
1991 Low Light in 1986 colors
They could have left the rest of the line alone and these small changes would have introduced necessary splashes of color while remaining true to the characters’ roots. So much wasted potential.
Yeah, he’s fine. There were two 90’s version of the mold that were adequate so this is just there. After this there’s the Desert Patrol version(s) that are, bad skin tone aside, just as shrug worthy. The soft hands are an improvement.
Too bad he come with the flag.
What The CLUB did to create the convention Gaucho, an ball jointed mod of V1 Gung-Ho head on (mostly) V3’s body…too bad Hasbro didn’t do that at some point. Did I just give the Collector’s Club credit for a decent idea?
My childhood Joe-buying days ended in 1991, so this was a rare bright spot in the ARAHC collection as a mold I’d never handled or owned. But it’s crazy how Hasbro thought the winning formula was to release an even drabber version of a figure that was fairly restrained (by 90’s standards) in the first place.
A repaint of this mold with the V1 colors has got me thinking. One challenge is that all four appearances of this ’92 mold have separate colors for the shirt and the trousers, whereas V1 has the same base turquoise for trousers and vest. Sure you’d add the camo pattern to the trousers, but if the ’92-mold shirt were also turquoise it might blend together too much. V1 works because there’s a lot of bare skin and a distracting chest tattoo. But still it would be better than Hasbro’s oughties Blah Period.
I’ll go to my grave cursing this figure for not being a 1983 Gung Ho repaint. I don’t know why I feel it would have been one, but there’s a lot of 83 figures repainted in this time frame, and this colouring on the original mold would’ve been much better than this figure.
I really like the design of this Gung Ho, even though I think there’s an issue with every release of it. He’s got a bit of Blain from Predator, but still comes off as Gung Ho, I think this might have been one of the better molds to get the marbleized plastic of the ARAHC, but of course he didn’t!