Legs, hands, belt: 25th Zap
Arms and lower torso: 25th Cobra Trooper
Upper Torso: Wild Bill, with Recondo neck
Head: POC Hawk
Webgear: 25th Steeler
Visor: vintage Steeler
Paints: Vallejo Panzer Series Middlestone, Testors Flat Black
This figure is part of my GI Joe OG13 25th Classic Set, one of seven OG13 sets in my collection.
The Hasbro 25th Steeler releases were the quite disappointing in my mind--neither figure really looked and felt like the original Tank Commander. This custom rebuild required the most work that was really beyond the level of anything I had done at the time (which had been simple part swapping, elbow shaving, and basic repainting with Testors) but getting this guy right inspired me to push my skill set.
The first task was to provide a new torso that at least had the collared look of the original. The Wild Bill upper torso was a good start, but its neck was undersized in length, offset by the oversized lower torso in length. So the neck was carefully cut out and replaced with a longer neck with glue and Aves Apoxie sculpt.
The head was replaced with the POC Hawk head-a fine sculpt but felt too young to use for Hawk himself. It seems to work well here, and also fits the small helmet. Holes were drilled into the helmet for the vintage visor. A bit of red colored plastic was added to a dash of red/orange to this OG13 set wherever I could sneak it into the group. I had seen someone else do this previously, I guess inspired by the box art.
The Cobra trooper torso had a better height fit to the figure but had to be worked down at the connection to the upper torso, and at the hip sockets. The Zap legs had the right beef and height. Though these legs would more accurate for use on all figures, I saved them for figures that needed added height. The final figure ended up one of the taller figures of the set, but he doesn't grossly tower over the other figures.
The Vallejo Middlestone was a great match to the original figure's color-I've used to color correct the elbow pieces of the vintage O-ring Zap and Steeler (with a semigloss finish).
