Toy Review: Agent Helix & Scarlett

07/23/09

Agent Helix & Scarlett

I said in my Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow review that I wasn’t impressed with the female figures in the GI Joe movie line and that’s true. The first releases didn’t look all that great in their fatigues, especially considering how nice the 25th Anniversary Baroness looked. That figure is by FAR, the best looking female figure I have in my collection in terms of sculpt. None of the other action figures I have comes close to matching the look of that itty bitty figure (this assessment does not include the statues). When I saw the movie Baroness I had almost the same reaction I had when I first saw the Marvel Universe Hulk, and that was:

“He looks like he’s strung out on crack.”

The other figures didn’t look like addicts, but they weren’t very nicely done. Cover girl looks nothing like the actress in the movie (either that or they tried entirely too hard to get the look down and crossed the line where they should have stopped) and Scarlett looks… ugh, that ponytail. Forget it.

Thankfully, those three figures seem to be part of only the initial wave of figures from Hasbro’s Rise of Cobra line. When I passed by Megamall the other day, re-stocks of Agent Helix and Desert Ambush Scarlett had arrived and I happened to have had some cash leftover. Sadly, this was also the day that stocks of the Marvel Legends 2-pacs with Ironman and Maria Hill arrived, but that’s for another article. Even toy collectors with OCD have to make choices when it comes to lunch money.

At p450 a pop, these are relatively cheap toys with a lot of accessories. They come in nice collector friendly packages that (as one collector pointed out), you can open without destroying, unlike the classic carded figures back in the day. You just need to cut through the tape and open the bottom to slide out the plastic tray. It’s great for storage, since some of these accessories are tiny. I mean really itty-bitty. Miniscule. Infintesimal.

For instance, Scarlett comes with a nice assortment of junk. She’s got 2 identical pistols so she can play at being Lara Croft, one of those launcher accessories all the Joes come with these days with a weird looking yellow projectile with bumps on the end, a rope with a harness and a grappling hook on the end that is tied to the weird looking yellow projectile with bumps on the end, and her trademark crossbow. The crossbow is the best piece since you can break it down into the pistol portion which fits in her holster, and the bow, which clips on right outside.

Many of these new Joes have a holster for one or two of their weapons, but not for the others. Scarlett’s got one for her bow, but not for the pistols. It is VERY easy to lose these things. You can not understand how easy it is until you spend an hour looking for one because it happened to pop out of her hand and skid across the floor underneath your desk. Sometimes it doesn’t even matter if they have a holster. Storm Shadow has one and the pistol still pops out. The bow clips on Scarlett’s hip holster, but it’s very loose and falls off pretty easily.

I’ve taken to keeping every thing in a tin, and only playing with them on a desk that I’ve cleared of all other things. Big wide space where I can easily see anything that falls off of them.

Agent Helix is even worse since she doesn’t even have a holster and her hands don’t seem to be molded to her guns well. She comes with a rifle, a square-bladed machete, the requisite rocket launcher, and 2 “auto-pistols”. The pistols look great (though I would have preferred they molded it in black instead of gray), but she holds them at an funny angle since their grips are too flat and wide to accomodate the shape of her palms.

Paint is pretty good. Scarlett is much improved from the first one, though her paint is largely what looks like some drybrushing on her dark blast suit and her lipstick. It does what’s needed and looks pretty good. Helix has the yellow on her suit and some details on her belt. Acceptable work, but nothing to rave over.

Helix also has some weird apps in her hair. I figure it has more to do with character design than the perrogative of the toy company, but she’s got black hair with white streaks. Or blonde hair with black streaks. It looks pretty ridiculous, and it doesn’t help that the paint they applied to the molded hairpiece is all over the place. I find myself wondering how easy it’d be to get a Rise of Cobra Baroness and switching that hair for Helix’s.

Articulation is top of the barrel as far as I’m concerned. I’m not looking for Toy Biz Marvel Legends level here, especially when it comes to figures this small, but as with the GI Joe 25th Anniversary line, Hasbro has come up with some great jointery here that doesn’t really affect the overall look. If you want a list, see that link at the top of this review and read about Snake Eyes’ points of articulation count. It’s the same, except that Scarlett’s head and shoulders are both affected by certain quirks in her design. It’s nowhere near as bad as Storm Shadow, though, so joint junkies may rejoice.

The only thing that would improve these would be a thigh cut, and a double-hinge elbow. The elbow would probably not have effected the sculpt, and it would have allowed them to hold weapons more naturally. And as for the thigh cut, I don’t know why Hasbro hasn’t made it SOP on all their lines. It is an absolutely necessary joint, more important than an ab crunch or a tilt ankle, and since it’s essentially a peg swivel joint, it’s a lot less complicated than either.

Even without those two features, these two girls can get into a variety of poses, and the included stand is just icing.

So if you’re looking for some nice female figures to add to your 3.75″ line, these two intelligence officers are right up you’re alley. As of this writing, Toy Kingdom in SM Megamall has a whole bunch of both of them in their main display area, but chance are they’ll be gone by the weekend. RUN!