August | 2017 | The Viper Pit

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.

Tiger Force Tripwire Links:

Yo Joe!

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Joeaday

Although 1991 gave birth to some of the worst GI Joe vehicles in the line, the figure assortment was nicely different. Amid cool new figures like the Crimson Guard Immortal, Desert Scorpion and Red Star, you also had some rather decent updates of a few older characters. A few of these updates like the Cobra Commander from that year were rather questionable, but in my eyes Mercer at least is a solid upgrade over the original.

The original Mercer is a figure I have mixed feelings over. His head looks goofy to me, his colors aren’t great, and his identity as a character feels permanently tied to the Renegades. V2 Mercer has a cool and fairly distinct head sculpt, great colors, and as his filecard states he “Recently transferred into the main body of the G.I. Joe team”. I feel like this figure represents the character in a more interesting way and stands better on his own.

Mercer’s sculpt is one of the best parts of this figure. His vest is adorned with straps, buckles and a lot of good details. His pants are also well detailed and bear a strong resemblance to the legs of an 86′ Viper, which is another nice touch the original Mercer didn’t have. Another interesting part of this figure is the arm with a metal sleeve on it. I don’t really know why he wears this, but the look is very cool. When I was kid, this detail was the one I was the most fond of, as I thought he was a cyborg.

His weapons are also pretty interesting at the very least. For a long time, I had thought his larger gun was something the designers of the figure had just made up. Turns out, it’s a real gun called the Calico M960. It’s supposed to be a submachine gun although it appears they upscaled it somewhat generously. His smaller gun is a laser riffle that’s a bit less interesting than the Calico, but can look charming when paired with certain figures. Lastly, he also came with a backpack mounted missile launcher, a rather boring requisite part I have no sentiments of.

As far as I’m concerned, this Mercer is one of the better figure’s from the nineties. Which is good too, as he’s common and readily available. A complete example can be easily acquired for less than $10 from a dealer, and if you forego the guns, the figure usually only runs a few dollars by himself. That’s not much for a figure that’s so nice generally.