Tag Archives: 2018

2018 Manleh (Red Laser Customs)

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2018 Manleh (Red Laser Customs)

In 2018, Red Laser Customs, a very similar entity to the Black Major, made a massive set of 19(?) figures. Among a plethora of Spy Troops characters and original creations, there were remakes of the famous “Argen7” figures with swivel-arm sculpts. The downside was that this set was a logistics nightmare, and is the reason why Red Laser Customs is no longer a thing, as I understand it.

International Joes are a weird thing to me, as on one hand, seeing the curious and unique way our favorite toy line emerged all over the world adds a lot of interest to collecting. On the other hand though, most of what makes them interesting is limited to that one novel aspect, and in some ways it’s questionable why you’d even want them. The original Manleh from Argentina is a cool figure, but costing around $1000, you really can’t do much besides look at the thing on a shelf. It’s too precious to handle, and even then, most of the appeal is just in how exotic the figure is. Once that’s taken away, the figure just becomes an oddball recolor.

I realized this earlier with the underwhelming feeling I got from Joecon figures that were often times international homages. “Remaking” things like the Funskool Dreadnoks in ‘04 or even the 25th-era repaints like the TNT homage they made, doesn’t really have the same appeal as owning something old and esoteric from a foreign country. And although RLC’s Manleh is a much better recreation than those figures, my initial reaction to owning this toy was “I own a Manleh!” followed by “What the hell do I do with Manleh?”. Really, I enjoy owning this figure much more than I would the real thing, but the experience seems to highlight to me how overrated foreign figures are at a certain point.

These gripes aside, Manleh really has an incredibly eye-catching color scheme. Blue and yellow are colors that compliment each other really well. The tones make him look unlike much of anything you’d have seen Hasbro make in the 80‘s, though the camouflage ties him back in with classic figures well enough to overcome that. The tone of the colors is darker, which appears to be a faithful recreation of a darker Manleh variant I’ve seen floating around, which is in contrast to a noticeably lighter colored figure. That, or those dark ones are just discolored, and this toy’s colors were based those discolored examples.

The quality is good on this figure. A major problem with the way these figures were sold is that you had to buy them in a large set. This was a terrible mistake, but also one that made the entire package seem a lot worse to me than it really was. Most of the figures have really solid joints and good tolerances that make them easier to pose than other bootlegs I’ve handled, but for a while I didn’t really notice that since I got a handful of figures with duplicate limbs and similar problems. When you buy so many figures at once, that sort of thing is bound to happen, but it still lowers the overall experience. Worst thing I can say about Manleh is that his gun fits really loosely in his hand, but that itself is a lot better than having a grip too tight to hold anything.

For accessories, he just included the M-32 Pulverizer, the same gun from V1 Stalker. The original Manleh included a Snake Eyes Uzi and a parachute, but I’m not too bothered by that, since there’s plenty of Uzis to go around, and parachutes suck. I will say though, while it looks decent with a few classics, the Pulverizer is probably one of my least favorite guns from the swivel-neck era.

Despite the fact that this figure honestly offers more than the Argentina figure it’s based on, it’s current worth is really around $40 more or less. I say that without much to go on, as you don’t find these for sale very often any more. The other RLC Argen7 remakes only go for about that much though, sometimes a little less, so it’s fair to say Manleh’s not worth more than that. Because it’s a bootleg, there’s a much lower price-cap on it since it’s not a “real” GI Joe, and thus has no value to a completionist.

gi joe Argentina argen7 manleh funskool toy skydiver gi joe Argentina argen7 manleh funskool toy skydiver

2018 Manleh (Red Laser Customs) Links:

Attica Gazette

Forgotten Figures: Rarities – Plastirama 2nd Series Figures

2018 Red Laser’s Army Blackout

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2018 Red Laser’s Army Blackout

The Spy Troops line from 2003 is remembered for it’s terrible sculpts, goofy gimmicks and relatively brightly colored toys. In many ways, the line was poorly done, but in others, it’s still worth remembering. If you look past Spy Troops and it’s follow-up Valor vs Venom, it was probably the closest we ever got the GI Joe’s glory days in the 80‘s. Detractors of this era might find that a dubious statement, but think about it: Spy Troops was the last time GI Joe had a major push with mostly new products and a fair amount of new characters, with everything that came afterwards being an unending deluge of adult-targeted remakes and nostalgia driven impulse buys. Even the new 6-inch Joe line, is mostly just stale remakes of the same old ideas and characters.

Blackout came as a part of Red Laser Army’s controversial set of customs in 2018. He’s been largely overshadowed by the other customs in the set, which include remakes of the Argen 7, as well as new characters with incredibly well done skull masks. Compared to that, Blackout doesn’t have much going for him, but it’s safe to say he’s a fun little remake of a popular Spy Troops character, and his limitations certainly don’t make him any worse than what he’s based upon.

The figure’s made from a variety of ‘83 tooling, like Short-Fuze’s torso, Grunt’s head, Snake Eye’s legs and Clutch’s arms. I’ve found that these parts are starting to get pretty boring as far as third party stuff goes, but here, it kind of works for a few reasons. First, as his character portrays a reject from the GI Joe team, it’s seems pretty appropriate he’d be done up in a similar uniform to the original thirteen Joes. There’s also not been that many figures that were done in black and silver like this from that era, so it works, even if it’s a little stale compared to other RLA offerings.

The only real problem I just can’t get past is the head; Grunt’s head simply does not work for me here. It’s butt-ugly and doesn’t look much like Blackout from Spy Troops. I guess RLA didn’t want to commission a new head just for this guy, but this could’ve been so much better with a Caucasian casting of Doc’s head, with the glasses painted up like his original goggles. Heck, I like that idea enough I might just do it myself.

For parts, you get Gnawgahyde’s sniper rifle and bi-pod. I’m not sure what to think of this choice, especially as his only accessory, but it works. In my mind, this gun is permanently associated with Gnawgahyde, so seeing it with anyone else feels weird. Then again, he can hold it a couple of ways, and at the very least it’s a vintage sniper rifle that’s not been done to death.

gi joe custom red lasers army 2018 factory custom

Not many of these were made, so finding them at all takes some work. It’s very hard to price these because of that, but among 3rd party items, these are rare and you won’t see them very often. Of course, I don’t think this was a highly demanded item in the same vein as some other 3rd party releases, so I wouldn’t assume them to have a value beyond $40~, which is where most figures like this top off in value. I preordered the set he was in and got this guy at a highly discounted price, though I’m not sure I’d bother hunting for him now if I didn’t already have him.