Nice looking figure. Wish it had a head with a removable hat, but what can you do?

Counting down until the casting community starts offering steadi-cam MG kits at $8-10 a pop...

And Repeater heads to slap on Ultimate Roadblocks.

With a normal figure, I can concede this point. With the price point per figure for the subscription service, it's just not acceptable. And it's the multiple concessions across multiple figures for multiple years now that bothers me. They're tooling some new parts, I get that it's expensive, but if you're offering premium figures for a premium price, invest in doing it right.

Of course, that's my opinion, and it only goes as far as to why I can't bring myself to buy into the service, despite being tempted. Obviously, enough people are okay with it to warrant a third round of these, so it's not enough of a problem to kill the line.

_________________

Hmmm.... a couple months ago, I meet GITrekker in person and in the course of conversations I mention I'd like take a Retaliation Jinx and make her into a modern Vypra. GITrekker knows people...

BOOM! Vypra made of Jinx mold on the FSS3 list.

Coincidence?

I think I should get my FSS for free for them stealing my idea.

_________________

Nice try, but I do NOT have those sorts of connections. Heck, I don't expect I'll get a free Vypra, and I came up with the original character name and file card in the first place.

Well, technically, in 1997, when several collectors were involved with some aspects of the line, Hasbro called me and said, "We need four names for a female Cobra vehicle driver to run past the legal department for approval and we have a meeting in an hour-and-a-half."

Heyyyy, no pressure, right? Vypra was the name that apparently passed the legal test and/or sounded best to Hasbro. The others were Vypera, Serpenta -- and I really don't remember the fourth. Might've been Serpentera. I think they made the best choice. I'm still stunned they went along with the file name of "Ann A. Conda". I try to poke some fun at them for "Skip A. Stone" and "Albert M. Pine" and they actually liked it...

And as far in advance as toys are planned out, they probably had Vypra in mind WELL before we met. Heck, the Club is probably figuring out FSS Round 5 right about now...

Well, "doing it right" can be open to a certain amount of opinion and interpretation, even on a premium figure such as these. I really don't see anything about Repeater to complaint about.

But consider this. IF -- and I concede that I really don't know -- but IF the mold that you desire is just plain GONE, not just lost or misplaced, what's the alternative? If somebody along the production line just flat out says, "Sorry, we no longer have that mold", or they find out that somebody dropped the thing and it broke, what do you do? Spend literally thousands of dollars to tool a replacement for a very limited run, or find a substitute that is at least agreeable?

Honestly, if the Club is going to spend money on new molds, I would much rather they do so on new heads, so that these FSS figures resemble, facially, the characters they're intended to as closely as possible. I can live with a different vest or whatever, as long as the overall end result reasonably looks like a modern version of the original character. In my opinion, Repeater does.

Serpenta?

I kinda like that.

_________________

Yeah, I think it was probably too close to "Serpentor" or some such. But hey, you have an hour and a half, you come up with what you can...

Reptilica?

Serpentress?

Serpentina?

Vipera?

Viperonica?

_________________

Showoff...

I sort of like Reptilica, but "Viperonica" sounds like someone I'd expect to see in a crossover between G.I. Joe and Archie -- we find out Mr. Lodge and Destro have been buddies for years, and that Riverdale is going to be the next Springfield, and that Mr. Weatherbee is a cousin of Dr. Mindbender's with a weight problem. And don't even ask what happens when the Dreadnoks drop in on Pop's Malt Shoppe...

As if that crossover between Archie and the Punisher some years back was weird enough, thank you.

As suspected, this is by far the most interesting of the three FSS attempts for me.

-Muskrat: awesome. A figure I liked as a kid, and one that I liked from the convention set as well. Looking forward to him.
-Vypra: zzzzzzzzz...huh? Wake me when something interesting happens.
-Hit & Run: kind of a letdown, if the picture is how the actual figure turns out. I don't care about the green face and arms, nor do I care about the accessories, but the Lifeline chest and gear on the legs isn't ideal. But I'll still get him.
-Repeater: awesome. Another figure I liked as a kid. I'm glad they gave him the holster and pouch from the Wave 3.5 Roadblock. And yet again, I don't care about the accessories: the rig for the PoC Iron Grenadier doesn't do much for me, and I'd rather see him with something that wasn't a dead ringer for the smart-guns from Aliens, so I would probably make something for him if I felt the need to give him the steadi-cam gun.

I'm looking forward to seeing how Big Ben turns out; he's the last of the reveals that I'm interested in.

Repeater is fantastic, and the only negative is the lack of the gun.

Slice should have been bright orange! He still looks really, really cool, though.

_________________

That's a nice version of Slice.

Hopefully Slice will have a new head and not just a plain ninja head with the "pasta strainer" mask over the front.

_________________