 Hello everybody! Who did Cobra Commander 788 here? And I apologize for the crappy webcam video. I'm just shooting a quick intro here. We're gonna be doing things completely differently in this video, just totally differently from the way I usually do things. I had intended to do a review of Tomax and Xamod in this video, but I decided that I just didn't have all the things that I needed to do a proper review, so I'm setting that aside and I'm gonna do something different. Instead of looking at a vintage G.I. Joe toy, I'm going to look at a modern Joe. Recently, I picked up some retaliation G.I. Joe action figures on clearance at Toys R Us, and I thought I'd go ahead and review one of them. I'm going to review retaliation Lady J. But before I get started, I have an announcement and I have a question. First of all, the announcement. The location for the 2015 G.I. Joe convention, JoeCon, will be in Springfield, Illinois. Springfield, as you probably know, has a lot of meaning in the G.I. Joe universe. I intend to be there. I am planning to be at JoeCon in 2015. So, if you're able to make it out and if you see me wandering around there, go ahead and say hi. I'd be happy to meet you. I'd love to meet some people. Now, I have a question for all of you and it's kind of a question about general collecting. Maybe you can give me your opinions and insights. I have been saving my money to get something big, something really big G.I. Joe related. Of course, I'd do a review of it when I got it, but it's big and it's expensive. Since I've been saving my money, I haven't been getting a lot of other Joe stuff recently. I really like to have a steady flow of new G.I. Joe items coming to my door every week and I haven't been getting that. I've noticed that I don't get as much joy when I get a rare item, an expensive item, a big item, as I do when I get a whole bunch of the little stuff. But I do still want the rare items. I do still want the big items. I'm not sure if I'm going about this the right way. I mean, should I leave those expensive rare items for later and just focus on filling some gaps in the collection I already have, or should I just go ahead and get those items now because it will be easier going forward to fill those gaps with the more common item. What do you think? Should I get the big stuff now or should I get the little stuff now? What would you do? Please leave a comment on this video. I would really like your opinion on that. This is Retaliation Lady J. She was released in 2013 as part of Wave 2.5 of the G.I. Joe Retaliation movie-themed action figures. Of course these were related to the G.I. Joe Retaliation movies starring The Rock and Bruce Willis. In the Retaliation movie, Lady J was played by Adrian Palicki and I guess this is supposed to be her likeness and I think that's good enough. It looks not too bad. I don't really know as much about the modern era G.I. Joe figures as I do about the vintage figure so you'll have to bear with me as I go through this review. I do not have a figure stand that will fit a modern figure so I'm just using some sticky tack on one of her feet. Let's start out by looking at the packaging. This is the card that she came on and as you can see on this side it is the regular G.I. Joe Retaliation movie logo with Dwayne Johnson and Snake Eyes on there and really nothing else. It's a very plain packaging. On the flip side we can see that this action figure is worth zero flag points because they don't do flag points anymore and she has no file card. The closest she has to a file card is this up here in the corner right here where it says Lady J is a covert ops specialist and weapons expert on the G.I. Joe team. Using her elite intelligent skills she helps uncover an evil cobra plot. She disguises herself in a daring mission to infiltrate the layer of the enemy to prove the terrifying truths and we see covert ops weapons are included. We have a little bit of the cross sell on this side some of the other action figures that are available and as far as the card art for Lady J goes we don't have the awesome vintage style painted artwork on here we just have a few photos of the action figure with her weapons. One thing I did not notice on the packaging when I reviewed the battle caught a roadblock is this blurb on the side of the plastic blister which says G.I. Joe is the world's greatest special ops fighting force with top-secret ninja training from the toughest of masters led by the ultimate ninja commando roadblock. These elite heroes defend the globe from the evil forces of cobra and again it insists that roadblock is a ninja which I frankly just reject that doesn't make any sense at all and just in case we don't have enough ninjas we have the Arashikagi symbol next to the name Lady J and that makes no sense whatsoever. I don't really have a problem with ninjas in G.I. Joe ninjas have been a part of G.I. Joe for a long time and I can accept that as long as it's done reasonably as long as it fits in the story but it doesn't really fit in the story when everybody on the G.I. Joe team is some kind of ninja. Let's start as we usually do and look at the accessories first and oh my goodness does she have a lot of accessories. She has an arsenal far more accessories than she could ever actually carry. Let's start with a spear gun which is obviously an homage to the vintage era Lady J's power javelin and I guess that looks pretty good but I never liked the original power javelin to begin with so I guess I don't really care that much for this either. She includes two submachine guns here that are just plain green no special coloring on these they're kind of plain-looking and honestly again she has more guns than she can carry so I guess if you had other figures you could just give these guns to other action figures. She has another assault rifle and this one has some crazy paint apps on it. Look at all the different colors on this it looks like three or four paint apps on top of a black plastic rifle and it's it's amazingly detailed it looks like it has a grenade launcher underneath here under the barrel it has a scope on it and it's just incredibly detailed in fact there might even be too much paint detail on here it looks a little bit patchy I think I would have liked it more if it had more of a unified color scheme but there's no denying this is a pretty awesome assault rifle we're not done with accessories oh no there's much more she comes with this assault rifle with a foregrip here and I actually really like this one I think this one is my favorite of all the accessories she comes with it has the the paint application on here but it does have a more unified color scheme it looks like it's kind of painted for Desert camouflage it's got a darker colored magazine there it's not as patchy as this one I mean this one looks almost like a quilt it almost looks like I don't know the army didn't give her a gun so her grandmother knitted one for her and she used different color yarn it's just all patchy but this is a really nice looking assault rifle this is definitely my favorite accessory in addition to the assault rifle she comes with a pair of backpacks and I have one on her this is not like the old vintage style the backpacks that peg in the back this actually has some rubbery shoulder straps unfortunately when you have the backpack on her hair gets in the way a little bit and it restricts the motion of her head but let's take this backpack off and take a closer look at it it just looks great you know we never got this much detail in the vintage era and even though I'm not a big fan of the modern figures it there's no denying that this accessory looks really cool the other backpack she comes with is this one it has some rockets which go with her recoilless rifle here I'll get to this in just a minute now this is definitely a modern take on the classic backpacks that came with short fuse and with zap now the color obviously matches short fuses backpack much better as you can see it's larger but the function I think matches more closely zaps backpack in that it has ammunition for a recoilless rifle and zap of course was the bazooka soldier even though bazookas are outdated they're not used by modern military anymore nonetheless he was called the bazooka soldier and that's kind of what she has here a modern version of the old recoilless rifle here's a close-up comparison of the classic next to the modern and of course unlike the classic backpack this one has removable rockets each one of these four rockets actually comes out and you can fit them in the rocket launcher here and the rocket launcher itself comes apart in two pieces and you just put the rocket in the front end like this it goes in about that far it's not spring-loaded it doesn't fire or anything and of course this does it'll fall out pretty easily but it's still kind of cool that you can actually put the rockets in and you couldn't do that of course with zap or any of the vintage era figures so that's a nice modern update one problem I do have with these rockets though is that really no kid could play with them once these got taken out of the backpack one time any kid is going to lose this in about five seconds and I really do think that this is kind of the kind of thing that is made for adult collectors rather than kids I just think that maybe this feature might be lost on children and we're not done with accessories no there's more she comes with two little knives kind of shiv style knives unfortunately does she doesn't have anything to store them on she has no sheaths for them at least as far as I can tell and they don't fit in any of the other accessories so these are just out there loose and you know just ready to be lost and finally she comes with a machete which is pretty nice it looks pretty cool I don't know why she has it again she doesn't have any place to store it and Lady J is really not known for wielding a machete but it's still nice and again she comes with so many weapons that if you have other action figures you could just give this to somebody else let's look at Lady J's articulation and this is where there is a great difference between the modern era figures and the vintage figures she can look left to right and she can look up and down her head is on a ball joint but unlike the vintage figure the ball joint is where the neck meets the head rather than where the neck meets the shoulders so that's a little bit different and like with a lot of the modern era figures she has the feature where you can just pop the head straight off and if you wanted to you could put somebody else's head on this body for instance I could put Firefly's head on her body and now Firefly has boobs her arm at the shoulder has a greater range of articulation than the vintage figure it can swing all the way up and of course it can swing all the way around like the old figures at the elbow she can bend at the elbow about 90 degrees and she does have a swivel she can swivel her arm all the way around she also has a swivel at the wrist which is a nice feature that I wish vintage figures had she can move at the torso a little bit not too bad and at the waist she can move her legs apart really far that's much greater range of motion than the vintage figures she can move her leg up at the hip a little less than 90 degrees and she has a double jointed knees so she can bend her knees all the way back some of the modern figures have an additional point of articulation that the vintage figures didn't have and that's at the ankle and at the ankle she can move her ankle foot forward and back like that and she has a little bit of a rotation but not very much I don't know how I feel about the ankle articulation the vintage figures did not have ankle to articulation and I really didn't miss it but I guess the modern collectors really like that extra articulation at the foot looking at the figure overall this is a pretty good looking action figure but one thing you notice immediately is that she is really skinny she doesn't look athletic at all and I would think that anyone man woman anyone who's in GI Joe which is an elite military force is gonna have to be pretty athletic but she doesn't look athletic at all she looks bone skinny which to me seems really weird I do really like her digital camo on her shirt and her pants that looks great I wish vintage figures had that they just didn't have the technology to do that back in the 80s and we have some nice color interests some variation in the colors that that keep the figure looking interesting and not too boring even though she does have a very military look to her as I noted before her ponytail which is made out of a slightly rubbery plastic does get in the way of backpacks as you can see it's covering up the hole for the backpack there that's the hole that this backpack would go in let's demonstrate that here see it fits in pretty well except except the head the hair bumps right into it honestly I would skip the backpacks anyway this backpack and this weapon really don't have anything to do with Lady J she never carried this type of weapon really in any representation that I know of so you can just skip this and maybe give it to another action figure if you want to and this backpack I mean it looks really cool but it does obstruct her head movement so she can just skip that and you know what I'd really just give her this weapon I think she looks great with that weapon it's a good looking gun she looks good with it she can grip it with both hands because it has a foregrip here and I just think it looks great you can get some great battle poses like that and I think that would be my choice so what do I think of the modern figure as compared to the vintage action figures and unfortunately I don't have a vintage Lady J to compare I'm sorry about that but just in general comparing the modern figures to the vintage the modern figures look great they are awesome they have some great articulation and I do like them I didn't like them initially but I've warmed up to them a bit but I honestly think that honestly think that with all of the accessories they come with especially the micro sized accessories that a kid would instantly lose I really think that they're meant for adult collectors they're not really meant for kids to play with and I think that's one of the problems that I have with modern Joe they're not really designed to be toys really if they had just given her this weapon and left all this other stuff out of it I would have been fine with it and if I got this action figure as a kid I would have been thrilled I thought I would have thought it was really cool I just think they they don't need all these other little bits a confession I didn't really like the G.I. Joe retaliation movie at first there were some parts of it that's just really bugged me but I have come around and I do like the movie now I have accepted it as an important part of the G.I. Joe history I can enjoy it now for what it is and so I don't really mind action figures made in the visage of the actors that appeared in the movie and so I like this I really do I really didn't think I would like it because I'm not a big fan of the modern era figures but I'm warming up to them that's all I can say that was my review of retaliation lady J I hope you enjoyed it if you did make sure you give this video a thumbs up and don't forget to subscribe remember when I hit a hundred subscribers I'm gonna be giving away a free vintage G.I. Joe toy you don't want to miss out on that and don't forget to like my Facebook page you get updates on my Facebook page that you don't get anywhere else thanks for watching and I'll see you next time