Suited Figures: Toht & Cobra Commander (Toht body) - by Past Nastification

An ongoing complaint I’ve had with 1:18 figures is how they never quite land when it comes to dress attire.  The ARAH format was particularly bad due to its many points of articulation, which completely destroy the “flow lines” of a suit.

I’m starting a new subset of occasional reviews I’ll call “Dress Attire!” 

A good starting place for 1:18 scale suit-wearing figures isn’t even within the world of GI Joe.  It’s Toht, from Kenner’s 1982 Raiders of the Lost Ark line.  Wearing a double-breasted suit and a Homburg-style hat, Toht is about as 1930’s/1940’s as one could get.  This is important because the dress attire from that period, almost a century ago, still lines up with men’s suits today.

Granted, the dress attire/suits of yesterday and today aren’t exactly the same.  The double-breasted suit took its last modern breath in the early 90’s, but a handful are still out there.  As for the hat, no one under 90 wears hats with suits anymore.  In fact, only hipsters wear hats -the formal kind that haberdashers would sell- these days, and that’s usually paired with skinny t-shirts and scarves (as pointed out numerous times by Adam Carolla).

But a Toht figure wouldn’t look out of place next to a GI Joe figure, despite the differences in articulation and build.   Kenner succeeded with Toht because there is no waist/hip articulation.  Some of you probably see that as an automatic failure, and if high articulation is your thing, I respect that.  But to my eye, the unbroken line of the suit down to its bottom edge works perfectly.  Some of the suit bottom is sculpted onto the tops of the legs, which works fine for the t-crotch design.  The closest ARAH style suit figure, Headman, really reveals the failure of the format to capture the look of a suit. 

This is a good figure, but for this review I’m seeing it as a figure in a suit, not through the lens of all-things-Indy.  I’m sure Indiana Jones collectors have reviews reflecting that viewpoint.  Just so you know why I’m not talking about how film accurate it is or isn’t.  I also regret that I can’t show you Toht’s amazing draped-around-the-shoulders trenchoat because I lost it.  In 1984 I placed it on a Major Bludd figure, where it looked even more amazing.  When I organized my Joe collection in 1998, I must have separated it from Bludd without putting it back with the few Indy figures I had.   Bummer.     

This is a seven POA figure.  Neck, arms shoulders (no lateral movement/no elbow articulation), legs at hips (t-crotch) and knees.  This is the same recipe Kenner used for MASK’s Miles Mayhem’s military dress uniform, a format that would have looked better on 1:18 Joes in dress uniforms. 

But wait, there’s more!

Hasbro brought back Toht’s look for its Indiana Jones line with modernized articulation.  Although Toht didn’t get to production until several years later*, the Toht body did see use for a convention Cobra Commander in 2008.  The arms and legs have additional articulation.  Lateral shoulder movement, swivel/hinged elbows, swivel wrists, a swiveling waist (hidden within a rubber “skirt” portion of the suit), t-crotch hips, swivel/hinge knees, and swivel/hinge ankles.  All of these are technically improvements over the original figure, but the original 7 POA body is just fine like it is.   It’s worth noting that the modern figure doesn’t have the inside-the-hand burn mark of the original figure.  Hasbro may have substituted different hands for that reason, but I doubt it.* 

The torso on the modern Toht body is disrupted by the waistline articulation.  Other than adding a spot to attach the “skirt” portion, it doesn’t accomplish anything.  Better suit figures have simply made the entire torso part of the suit as its own animal, and that usually looks better.  The sculptor didn’t do his/her research either, and pushed all of the breast buttons below the belt line, which looks unintentionally silly and just a bit vulgar.

Even with far fewer points of articulation, Toht has a simple grace and fluid look that work nicely for a figure in a suit.  The newer format Toht body shows many articulation improvements if that’s your style preference, but offset by a poor torso. 


*yojoe.com states that the left hand (the figure’s right hand) was used from an Indiana Jones figure and that Toht was finally released later, in 2011.   

2011 Polar Sharc and Ice Storm - By Past Nastification

GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra was such a horrible movie.  So horrible that it had sinking ice in it.  As in literal chunks of ice that were heavier than the water around them and the sunk towards the bottom of the ocean.  That bad. I saw a screening of it opening night across the street from the Wizard World convention in Chicago in 2009. About 4 minutes into the movie I realized that the movie I had waited 27 years to see wasn’t what I was going to be seen that evening.

Even got the extra fancy seats, too.  Such a waste.   

At least the movie provided collectors with a GI Joe toy line.  That toy line was a mixed bag.  The Polar Sharc is a perfect example of it. 

The Polar Sharc is a forgettable and undersized vehicle that looks like it drifted into the wrong packaging from a Star Wars line.  But the driver, Ice Storm, is a great if unnoticed figure. 

The Polar Sharc did appear in the movie, in the scene with the sinking ice, and even looked like the toy but larger.  The design doesn’t look like it belongs in any GI Joe landscape.  Not in the standard toyline, not in any of the comic books continuities or cartoon continuities.  We’ll put that on the film studio and not Hasbro.  Hasbro even did a good job of translating it into a toy.

It’s worth pointing out that the Polar Sharc’s release was delayed and it was hard to come by.  This is probably why there isn’t much like or dislike for it or Ice Storm.  I never saw it in Ross stores, and had even kept an eye out for it. 

More aquadynamic in overall form than the 1984 Sharc, the Polar Sharc has lots of crisp details.  In fact, if you love rivets, then this will be your favorite GI Joe vehicle ever.  It has hundreds of sculpted rivets across its hull.  The cockpit appears to be a padded mattress-style strip with no definitive head/foot areas, so a driver can be placed one of two ways:  on its back looking out the casket-style hatch, or placed belly-down with its face looking out the underside nose porthole, an obvious callback to the 1984 Sharc.  The cockpit/interior is nicely done, with lots of knobs and buttons, exposed control lines, and wiring.   There’s a removable torpedo-launching weapon on the underside.  The underside also sports a backpack peg for a figure, another 1984 Sharc callback. 

The more I look at the Polar Sharc, the more I should like it.  But I don’t.  It looks too much like something Obi-Wan Kenobi might have used on an adventure.   

Ice Storm, by contrast, is a figure I shouldn’t like, but I do. 

Ice Storm didn’t specifically appear in the film, although the Sharc did.  The 25A line provided us with at least three different versions of Deep Six, so I didn’t mind the creation of a new character at all.  The 2011 convention exclusive of this character (although a different figure with a different file name in technically a different continuity) backfills his story.  Now a sailor, he had originally been in the Coast Guard first, adding some complexity to his character.  I guess Cutter is destined to be the only dedicated Coast Guard member on the team? 

The figure is made of recycled 25A parts topped with a new head, and the body parts aren’t even that spectacular.  It looks nothing like a driver for the Polar Sharc should look.  Since I easily mentally separate this figure from the vehicle, that’s not an issue.  Ice Storm looks like a cold weather rescue specialist, and might even be wearing a drysuit under the cold weather uniform. 

The headsculpt is ridiculously awesome.  Ice Storm wears a textured knit cap pulled down low over the ears and eyebrows.  Although the face is sculpted, much of it hidden by the high jacket collar.  We only see Ice Storm’s face from the eye line to the mouth, giving a sense of seclusion and mystery, with dashes of introversion and sullenness.  This is my favorite ROC action figure.  Unlike existing characters that had to be “interpreted” into the ROC continuity, Ice Storm was a blank slate who didn’t get weird for no reason (I’m looking at the sculpted lips on your mask, Snake-Eyes).  In fairness, other interpretations in ROC were actually pretty solid ideas, like Storm Shadow wearing a white suit.     

The Polar Sharc and Ice Storm are both highly detailed and well sculpted.  The Polar Sharc fails because it’s a bad design at its core that no amount of craftsmanship could save, like the sinking ice in the movie.  It could never look good because it was a bad idea.  Ice Storm succeeds because the character was unique and fresh to the GI Joe mythos, plus it also felt like it shouldn’t even exist within the ROC continuity.  Always a plus.