When I was a kid, I always loved the portrayal of Zandar, even though of all the Dauntless warriors, he only got short shrift in terms of screen time in both the series and the comics. His superpower in the File Cards is offensive anonymity, to the point where people can’t remember ever seeing him or hearing his voice. Looking at his crazy face paint and bright orange mullet, I’m not sure I believe this is possible, but let’s get to the GI Joe Classified Zandar!
The box has some nice character art on the sides, as well as a rendering of Zandar hanging in the same gas station area we’ve seen on the backs of other Dreadnok boxes. I always love seeing that because Dauntless does have that gas station headquarters in the Hama books. I do think it’s a shame that none of the Dreadnoks have Zartan’s cool logo on the rest of their boxes.
Zandar comes with two knives, a pistol, a backpack, and a spear-fired rifle. These knives are interesting because one is a very traditional pig sticker, similar to Zarana’s, and the other has a longer handle and a more unique blade that looks like a wedge. Both fit the sheath on Zandar.
The pistol looks pretty standard and will fit in the holster of Zandar’s vest. It has no additional paint and no holes in the barrel for explosive effects.
The backpack fits the back perfectly as the sculpting follows the contours of his back. There were some small, non-detachable black sticks on the sides of the backpack, which I assumed were the spears he fired from his rifle.
The rifle is also mostly black plastic with a bit of silver paint on the tip. He had a very large scope on his rifle and I imagine the larger chamber underneath was the gas power used to fire the spear. I have to admit I’ve never really considered his weapons before as my friends who own this guy have usually lost all his stuff, but I do find the concept of a harpoon gun on land a bit unique. Kind of like a heavy crossbow.
I love the sculpting of this character, especially the confident smile on his portrait. Yes, he’s forgetful, but he’s cool with it. he want to You have to forget him. The design stays true to the vibe of the original, but adds more small details and asymmetries in addition to the more obvious changes to the tactical vest. I particularly like the golden imp skull and the chain mail on the shoulder pads.
I like this vest because it’s a bit modern, I just wish it was removable and they also included an extra holster without the vest so we could go for a more classic version. They took the trouble to paint the chests based on the original figures, and it would be great if there was a way for us to see them easily.
Articulation is pretty standard for GI Joe, although his neck movement is better than figures from past waves. I’m surprised he looks just as good with his head up as he does with long hair. One issue I have is that the shoulders don’t articulate well due to the shape and stiffness of the shoulder pad plastic and the fact that the pads are glued directly to the shoulder balls. In the picture above, this is almost as high as I could have hinged them outward. This is a bit frustrating because there is a very effective way to implement this kind of shoulder pad and get a full range of motion by attaching the pad to cups inside the shoulder socket (see Hasbro’s recent Stormtrooper), but The Zartans didn’t design them this way, and I feel like they suffered because of it.
The paint is solid, has very nice face prints, and has a very shiny metallic gold paint on many of the costume details. The blue of his armor is a bit more muted than the original figure, but I think all the extra gold keeps it from becoming too realistic and drab.
Overall, I’m really happy with Zandar’s design-wise, and I like how they’ve tweaked their classic look. The only downside for me is the stiff shoulder pads which limit the shoulder’s range of motion. That said, I did heat up the shoulders and part of the limited shoulder movement was the hinge catching and releasing, which helped with the movement and now I can get him closer to a T shape.
