2003 Agent Faces
I don’t really understand the fascination collectoys used to have with mail-away figures. To my understanding, the Agent Faces mail-away was well done and met with a great amount of collector enthusiasm. I wouldn’t really know since I was 9 when it happened, but there seemed to be this residual sentiment by GI Joe fans when I started browsing the forums later of “DO A MAIL-IN JUST LIKE IN THE 80‘S!!!”, followed by the 25th Doc mail-in, which proved a disaster. Who likes jumping through more hoops just to get crap? I don’t, but apparently Agent Feces was the last good one, so here’s some sentences strung together about him, along with two old pictures as always.
2003 in some ways was the last best year for GI Joe. Say what you will about them, the Spy Troops toy line had a robust selection of characters, figures that were good enough, visual variety, fun gimmicks, and even fun little side-shows like Agent Faces to encourage more and more Joe purchases. It was a toy line that was still for kids, but after Valor vs Venom and Sigma 6 shit the bed, GI Joe has been strictly reduced to a line supported by the often fickle, nostalgic longings of old men. I could rant about the miserable progression from then till now, but the point is that Agent Faces feels like something that’s as far gone now as those beautiful aisles of an eighties TRU lined with GI Joe from front to back.
We tend to make these funny little mental barriers splitting up Joes by their construction, and often even release year. It makes this figure funny to me, since you could say that he’s meant to be interchangeable with the New Sculpt Agent Faces, even though this figure is made up of classic tooling. More over, he’s made up from both 1985 sculpting (Crimson Guard), 1992 sculpting (Duke and DEF Shockwave), and the newly sculpted helmet from 2003. The parts look mildly mismatched, but as someone who invents weird rules for my photos and collecting, I find a lot of amusement in the stuff that completely turns that on it’s head.
Do the 2000‘s Crimson Guards really get a fair shake from most of us Joe aficionados these days? Seems like “Black Major did them better.” and “V1 is still the best.” is the general notion I see, typically with this figure being used as a case study for why removable helmets don’t really work out so well. I say that because I tend to think all of those things, but Agent Faces does good to remind me of the childlike value of a gimmick. Sure it looks worse, but isn’t it more fun? I find room to forgive the odd looks of the helmet just for enhancing the play value. The Duke biceps that limit his articulation less so, but at least this version has a slightly better head than the normal Segies.
His paint job is decent. There’s no arm patches like the original had, which cheapens the look of the figure. Though, I do think the dark gold trim and buttons nicely differentiate this figure from the original, without looking bad. The main thing I don’t like is the orange Cobra patch on his chest. They did this color with the Infantry Forces too, and it doesn’t look too good. A metallic emblem looks much better, like with the Crimson Guard Force set, but orange was something they were trying out… for some reason.
Besides his helmet, Agent Faces comes with a Franchi SPAS-12 shotgun. Why? I have no clue. Hasbro seemed to have decided that this shotgun was the standard arms of the Crimson Guard, as the Operation Crimson Sabotage guys all came with one too. The later TRU set swapped it for a generic M4. Never really was sure what to think about that, but the M4 is probably a better replacement for their classic carbines as opposed to these somewhat random shotguns. Oh, and as for the helmet: it’s really big and doesn’t fit on the reused Duke head too well.
Mail-Away Agent Faces don’t show up for auction that much, but you can get the complete figure, usually still in his original bag for around $14. In 2024 money, that’s cheap entertainment, though it still feels like a lot to pay for a repaint-era figure. Though, I think Agent Faces is especially worth having, as he has the added novelty of being a new character, as opposed to doofy take on the Crimson Guard that doesn’t look as good as the original.
The Viper Pit 