General Hawk and I take a look at this latest wave of 25A figures that's only recently beginning to hit store shelves in any significant quantities. It's a pretty broad spectrum of characters from Spirit, Wild Bill, and Snake Eyes on the Joe side to the Cobra HISS driver and the much-anticipated Viper for Cobra. Somewhere along the way, Duke decided to change his clothes and "jump" on the bandwagon!

Check them out at the 25th Anniversary Review Index! (It might the first time that Hawk and I really disagree on a few figures!)

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Great reviews as always! (although you two always seem to me happier with these waves than me )

A couple of things:

Those "scrapes" on SE's forearms that you mentioned? They're a continuation of the "ribbed" stripe that runs down his sleeve. They were there on the original as well, but the grenades obscure them a bit, making the spots on the forearm stand out as if they don't belong, but look at his shoulders and you'll see the upper part of the stripe.

And the HISS driver fits perfectly in the DTC HISS and the HISS v2, so for those that prefer those models & don't want to have to army-build the new v1 re-tools, the HISS driver is pretty sweet. And I agree - the best army-builder of the lot -- I went and got two more today to man the remainder of my HISS forces .

Now where's the SE Parka wave? I heard it was already at retail - why haven't you reviewed it yet?

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Man I want these all so bad!

I'm especially foaming at the mouth to get every HISS Driver I can!

C'mon Target and Wal-Mart, restock already!

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Excellent reviews...someone definitely needs to take a picture of that Duke in front of the Statue of Liberty playset from the first X-men movie.

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I gotta say, I entirely agree with your reviews.

I am actually of the opinion that Wild Bill's head size was a good compromise, and the Indiana Jones picture from the review proves it. If you want a removable hat, you either have to compromise on the size of the head, or on the size of the hat. I can live with Bill's head size. That gigantic freaking hat on Indiana Jones just looks so silly that I can't even put it on Indy's head. Bill looks awesome with his hat on, so I think that the small-ish head was neccessary to make the hat work without looking stupid.

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Just a lil fact checking, since a mention in the Viper review had me doubting myself. The original Viper *did* have the red ribbed detailing on the inseam... it's not a carry-over from the Valor vs Venom design.

It seemed like an odd thing to get wrong, since it's visible on the 1986 Viper *in the pictures*... just thought I'd point it out.

The hat they gave to Bill fits w/o modification and without force onto Ace's head, so Bill's is still way smaller than it needs to be.

Ok, I give, how did you guys pull of this picture? I'm assuming photohop was involved somehow. I don't even like that figure and you guys managed to make it look awesome.

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Oddly enough, no photoshop was used at all.

The vehicle is the Indiana Jones "Jungle Cutter" which has some nice foot pegs scattered throughout. The blueshirt is using the peg and Duke is leaning up against him.

As far as the Viper seam I guess I should have stated that it was MUCH more prominent on the VvV version than on the original, as it seems to be with this figure.

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kinda off subject the parka snake eyes is so cool too, he's out and I got him along with bludd, baroness,flint, and the newest cp copperhead,shipwreck,duke, and red star..all nice figures besides shipwreck.
Tim