6 INCH: BEACH HEAD

Sometimes I wonder if I'm a late-bloomer. In this instance, the focus is Beach Head. I wasn't a fan of him as a kid. I'm not sure why, he pretty much has everything that a kid should like in a figure. His time in the cartoon didn't hurt his popularity and I admit, I don't remember how much comic time he got from the writer, Larry Hama. I've stated I got back into GI Joe in 2002 when Hasbro relaunched the toyline with yearly themes. Part of me becoming a fan meant collecting the comic book by Devils Due Publishing and joining an online fan group or 3. It would be at JoeBattlelines.com (aka JBL and before that, Savage SoundOffs) that I would learn quite a bit about my favorite toy from childhood. The point here, a lot of people helped show me the way with a lot of characters that I didn't care for or pay attention to. Beach Head was one that I grew to like. And maybe, I took a slightly harder military edge with GI Joe during the theme years. Specifically, harder on the GI Joe side, but accepting of Cobra's eccentric side.

I would love to say that this Beach Head figure is the bomb. It's the best of the best of the best. With honors. Greatest thing ever. But alas, for me, it is not. I found many of the figures suffered from incredibly stiff hands and locked knee joints. I understand that hot water will help soften them, but I found that's only a temporary means. I did this technique and Beach Head, like Snake Eyes and Zandar (off top of head) still have hands that can't stretch to hold a weapon. To get their legs to pose for photography, nearly impossible. Due to much of my photography being outside, I'm not about to carry a thermos of hot water just to loosen these figures up. Utterly frustrating and that's one of the reasons why I gave up on the line a few times. (Later figures seem to be better, but the hands still give me issues) Also, Beach Head's weapons stupidly come in green and not the green his outfit is. I'm a snob in this regard. The weapons are to be black. Maybe boltgun metal and black. I'm not opposed to desert troops having desert colors on their weapons, but black is universal. 

All that aside, Beach Head has a place in the Zedd Universe. Well, at least the small one. The big Beach Head represents a more classic GI Joe universe. I go back and forth with how the Classifieds fit in. The VS story that he stars in, it's pretty separate from any of the stories going on; past and present. It does, at least, set up that Beach Head is still a GI Joe and suffers failures like any human being. My Beach Head is a mix of Sunbow cartoon and filecard.

If one questions why I keep buying these things when all they do is give me a headache, well... simply put; It's Beach Head. The figure is pretty cool even if the design is kinda weird. But it works and Hasbro didn't mess with him so much that he's not an attractive figure. To make this Beach Head partially work for me, I outfitted him with a wonderfully made weapon from GridIron Studio. In fact, I'm slowly equipping the figures with different weapons of better quality. Hasbro makes locked joints and stiff hands, but skimps on the flimsy weapons. That makes no sense to me. Worse yet, because of the softer plastic, many of the weapons come warped. For this photographer, that doesn't do me any good.