Tripwire (GI Joe)

November 28, 2010 | By More


This is one of those figures that doesn’t seem to be getting much love. He’s still warming the pegs at local discount stores here for around $3.

Tripwire is the mine sweeper of the GI Joe team. Armed with a metal detector, he’d go out and search for mines. Sad to say, but you don’t hear as much about mines these days as you do about IED’s.

Appearance:

With the number of bomb squad member that have been seen in films and TV since this character was first made in plastic, I think everybody can see that Tripwire is woefully under dressed. That little piece of chest padding isn’t going to offer much in the way of protection. Neither is that little chin strap.

Now if you want to compare him to his original appearance, that is a different story. Overall, he’s a pretty nice update of minesweeper. He’s probably one of the least changed of all the modern updates.

One of the things, I wish they had updated was the head. The original and this revision both have a fully sculpted head with a non-removable helmet. Yeah, I know this lets them do a realistic looking chin strap, but come on. after 27 years this guy must be blind behind that dark visor.

I know the die hard fans weren’t happy bout the use of Flash’s padded chest for this figure, but it works. If anything it looks like it offers a little more protection.

With the desert theme part of the “Pursuit of Cobra” series of figures, I wonder if we will see a more “Hurt Locker” style Tripwire. To me it seems like a fairly obvious update. I’m all for tradition, but the new figures seem to be modern interpretations of the old characters, so we’ll have to wait and see.

Fun:

You know I’m torn here. Trip comes with a nice bit of accessories and decent articulation. Normally, those are all the things I go for. However, since he’s an update of the most boring of the Little Green Army men, I’m not sure.

The backpack has a place for storing three loose mines. The idea being he would find a mine, defuse it, and take it for use against Cobra. They snap together nicely and are held tight by the pack.

His main piece of gear is of course is his metal detector. I have to hand it to Hasbro, all of these accessories have held up well since there original release. A whole bunch of detail on the detector, but a little paint would have been nice.

Topping of the accessories is the sand to fuel the MASS device and the requisite stand. The bottled precious element is okay, a little texture on the inside would have went a long way. For a large picture of the sand check out last weeks “Name That…” post (Check out our Weather Dominator Review for more MASS device details.)

Overall:

You know this is where price comes into play. For the $3 I paid for this figure, he’s a good buy. If you are a die hard classic Joe fan, go grab one from the warm pegs. If you want to get a fun army guy for little Bobby, pass on it. With no guns or removable helmet, Tripwire will almost always end up on Doc’s stretcher.

Engineernerd Score: 84/100

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Category: Featured, GI Joe, Toy Reviews

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  1. Errex says:

    Overall, a good figure, although it is true that this isn’t a character you’d get unless you didn’t find any other that interested you more at the store.