I hadn’t quite recovered from the deluge of late 2022 figure drops when the Tiger Force wave shipped early from Target.com. I had picked up Bazooka and Tiger Force Duke and RAM the week before and Outback not that much earlier and so I’ve gone from Tiger Forceless to a nice little squad in a short time. Let’s take a look at Recondo!
I was so jazzed about this guy showing up that I forgot to take boxed pictures, so here’s some Target photos. I’m pretty sure this is what the box looked like in hand, but I honestly forget. The art looks cool from what I can see and I bet it will look great on a plastic-free box when they release Recondo with his original deco.
Recondo comes with a good amount of stuff including a removeable hat, a pack, a rifle with removeable magazine, a pistol and a knife.
The pack has nice detail in the sculpting with different cloth textures for the bag and the bed roll as well as a little bit of paint to differentiate the two. These packs could always use a little bit more paint on buckles and things like the canteen, but this looks nice. I like that it stays on solidly and that his gun strap kind of looks like it could also be pack straps. I did find myself wishing that he had a removeable canteen at one point, but that’s probably more of a me thing.
The hat is removeable and fits fairly tightly on the head. Removeable hats at this scale can be a bit overlarge, but I like the fit on this one. His hair underneath is a little slicked down to make for a better fit.
The knife is like a machete, but doesn’t have the blade shape I normally associate with machetes. It’s a little curved, kind of like a kukri knife. Either way, it looks like it would be effective in cutting a path through the jungle and fits well in the hand and the thigh sheath. I like the small detail like the diamond tooth pattern bits on the handle and the shiny silver paint on the blade.
The pistol is a bit smaller than most Classified pistols, I imagine to make it fit better in the chest holster. It has a hole at the barrel that can fit the Viper three pack blast effects. The rifle has a removeable magazine that stays tightly attached and can also accommodate a blast effect. The rifle is a little smaller and thinner and so more subject to bowing and bending out of shape. I do wish there was a little more heft to it, because my memory of the original figure was that his rifle was huge.
In a line full of epic mustachios, Recondo arguably has the most epic. It’s the Iliad of mustaches. His face is also full of character and I love that they give these guys slightly quirky expressions instead of dead eye glares all the time. I thought the chest was Flint re-use, but the collars look different to me and I like that it is getting to the point where I’m not always sure what is re-use and what is new on this line. Whatever the case, the sculpting fits in perfectly with the established Classified style and Recondo has a great build that’s heroic without seeming over the top.
The articulation was super tight on Recondo right out of the box, though ironically the hip functionality was perfect. The arm tolerances are so tight that at one point the harder plastic of the elbow joint actually scraped off a chunk of the bicep plastic. Recondo has:
- Ball and socket head, neck, waist
- Swivel/hinge shoulders, wrists, hips, and ankles
- Swivel biceps, thighs, and boots
- Double hinged knees and elbows
- Hinged ab crunch and butterfly hinged pecs
The articulation moves well once I got everything loosened, though I do wish the ankles hinged forward a tad bit more as it would help with balancing poses when crouched.
Paint is pretty solid with mostly clean applications and color separation and the face printing has sharp eyes that stand out underneath the shade of his hat. He could always use a little dirtying up with some washes or mud splatter or a couple more buckle details here and there.
Classified continues to be one of my favorite lines, releasing solid figure after satisfying figure and Recondo is no different. Even that weird scrape on the arm didn’t dull my enthusiasm for the figure, though I hope that doesn’t happen in future figures. The hat fit feels even more impressive when I compare him to a similarly hatted recent Mattel figure.
Finally, is it just me, or does Recondo seem like he could easily be named Outback? Maybe I just associate that style of hat with Australians, but I did feel compelled to pop on the Crocodile Dundee soundtrack as I wrote this one up.
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Source: Fwoosh
