1998 Heavy Duty

The 1998 Joe line was small, but probably the best collection of post-1994 repaints ever made. The decos were elaborate and good looking on every figure released in the year, although that amounted to only a set of 15 figures. Among those was a repaint of the 90‘s Joe staple Heavy Duty, and what also amounts to probably the only decent toy of the character.

I remember at a time, Heavy Duty was a really unpopular character for being seen as a Roadblock replacement. I think Joe collectors that inhabited forums of the early 2000‘s made a big stink of this, but even as a kid who knew none of that, there was this dissuasion towards him for not being Roadblock, that I remember talking with my brother about back then. Over the years Joe would often times revisit similar themes by making characters that often overlapped with one another, like Wet-Suit and Torpedo or Breaker and Dial-Tone. I think Heavy Duty was meant to be that in the same way for Roadblock, it just doesn’t work because Roadblock arguably has the best personality in the franchise, whereas Heavy Duty is some Repeater-tier toss away character.

The sculpt on Heavy Duty screams of 90‘s attitude. He’s got a detailed backwards cap with “JOE” on the back and ripped of sleeves for some extra badness. Other than that, he looks like a normal ARAH sculpt with a few knives and grenades to go around. Nothing looks too crazy, though I think there’s something to be said for the sharpness of the sculpt; his face, muscles and a few other details represent some peak sculpting work.

As for this repaint specifically, he has some very fall-centric colors. They look realistic enough and seem distinct, but he does run into the issue of not really matching up with anything. I can forgive that if it’s a cool bootleg in digital-camo, but for a figure like this I tend to find it more limiting as he looks out of place with so much. The upside of this is that it’s a fantastic looking repaint that highlights this sculpt’s details much better than Heavy Duty V1 or the later Chuckles repaint. His pants even feature a four-color camo pattern, which isn’t as intricate as ‘97 Stalker’s, but it’s still rather detailed.

A real flaw of this figure is his accessories, he doesn’t come with any. Depending upon your feelings of V1 Heavy Duty’s gunner-rig, you might not mind that, but to not include anything is a tad frustrating. It’s even more weird when you consider the fact that he’s packaged with a vehicle, the MOBAT, which supports a crew of 1, and also includes Thunderwing. There’s an ‘86 Hawk backpack and a Big Bear AK-88 tossed in there, with some ambiguity as to who it goes to; I suppose you could say it’s Heavy Duty’s, but arming Joes with Warsaw Pact inspired weapons always seemed to me like the most random and low-effort choices for Joe guns. Weird pattern: They gave Grunt an AK the year prior too, so the Joes seemed to have adopted a number of Russian weapons into their armory.

1998 Heavy Duty is especially common and not all that expensive at around $13. This is probably because the set was rereleased in the ARAHC line with no changes, so Heavy Duty and the MOBAT he came packaged with stayed on store shelves a lot longer than other Joe items did during the same period. Of course, technically the only part he has to lose is a generic figure-stand, so that’s another element that erodes some of his value.