As I continue to pack things away prior to my move early next year, access to my collection will be shrinking, thus limiting what I’ll be able to pull out for review here. I am trying to spotlight some things before they get packed away, but it won’t be possible to get everything. Classified, however, will be the last part of my collection that I box up, so you’ll likely see an increase in Classified reviews over the next couple of months. And hey, that ain’t a bad thing! And it’s likely that I’ll be missing a midweek review here and there as demands on my time increase. Anyway, the last batch of Classified that I got in was pretty Cobra focused, so let’s switch back to the good guys and take a look at Alpine today!
Once again, I find this current window box design to be peak Classified packaging. It’s pretty compact, looks great, and mostly lets the figure do the talking. I loved Alpine on the Sunbow cartoon and the original RAH figure was released at least a year before I started getting out of toys, so I couldn’t tell you why I never owned this figure as a kid. Honestly, I don’t remember ever even seeing him on the pegs, but chances are there was probably just that one figure competing with him that I wanted more. After all, 85-86 had some really heavy hitters contending for my allowance. But still, considering the living room sofa doubled as a mountain to stage many of my JOE battles, it’s bewildering to me that I never opted to get their Mountain Trooper.
Albert leans into the original figure design pretty strong. He’s got the green jacket with all sorts of reinforced patches. And instead of being all sculpted on the body like the original, we get the usual soft-vest with jacket sleeves sculpted on the arms and the illusion works fairly well here. I want to say the original figure had brown pants, whereas here we get gray. The boots are black with a green reinforced framework. The larger scale let Hasbro go all out with his gear, including a separate belt with two sculpted clusters of silver climbing hooks hanging off the sides. He’s got a chalk bag positioned in the back middle of the belt and there are various loops to attach gear to. We’ll come back to those in a bit. Finally, he has a coil of rope that rests on his shoulder and can be removed and fingerless black gloves.
Oh yeah, he’s also representing his home, Idaho with this cheesy, touristy T-shirt. It’s a wonderful little touch and I love it!
The head sculpt is OK. Again, since I didn’t own the RAH figure, I think I associate Alpine more with the cartoon than anything else so maybe that’s why this portrait isn’t a direct hit for me. It’s certainly not bad though. The ballcap is removable and the goggles can be worn up on his forehead or down over his eyes. It didn’t seem like they could comfortably fit over the cap though. The goggles have nice clear lenses and they look really good over the eyes.
Alpine’s climbing gear is mostly recreated from the RAH accessories, except you get two climbing axes instead of just one, while instead of two grappling hooks on one string you get a bigger, single hook. I’m pretty sure the climbing axes are new, or at least I haven’t seen them included with any of the figures I own. These are very nicely done with orange handles and silver painted blades. I especially love that they aren’t the same sculpt, as one has sculpted green tape near the handle. On the one hand, that’s an impressive little touch, on the other hand, it kind of makes up for the fact that they are the only new accessories included with him. Although I will toss it out there, that these look more like ice axes, but seeing as how I have lived in Florida for the last 30 years, I am in no way an expert on mountain climbing or ice, as we have none of those things here, so I may be far off base on that.
There are loops on the back of the belt that look like they are designed to hold the climbing axes, but they seem really awkward in those, so I opted to tuck them through the belts around his thighs. This method looks much more natural to me and makes Alpine a lot less likely to impale himself through the backs of his knees. That frees up any of the loops you want to hold the grappling hook, which is the same accessory that came with Arctic Storm Shadow.
His final piece of climbing gear is the rifle-style launch line, and this is the same one we saw included with the Alley Viper. I wasn’t a huge fan of this accessory with the Alley Viper, but it makes a lot more sense here. The grapple harpoon is painted orange to match the grips on the climbing axes, while the rifle is a nicely detailed sculpt and includes a scope. There’s also a loop on the gun and on the grapple to connect a piece of string, but it’s not included, so bring your own string. Now is as good a time as any to bring up the conspicuous absence of a backpack. The RAH figure came with one and it was integral to him carrying all his gear, but we don’t get one here and that seems like a really big oversight. Let’s move on to Alpine’s single weapon.
Like the grapple rifle, this assault rifle is also borrowed from the Alley Viper, which makes for a rather big departure from the submachine gun issued with the RAH figure. That weapon made more sense as it’s more compact and probably easier to handle when climbing. This one isn’t terribly large or unwieldly, but still maybe not ideal. On the other hand it’s one of my favorite weapon sculpts in the line. The detail is amazing, it’s got a drop out magazine and optics up on top. This one also has the magazine and stock painted green to give it a little character.
I like Alpine a lot, but I’m falling just short of loving him. The figure itself is fine, but I’m always a little disappointed when these guys can’t carry all their gear, and that goes double for a guy who should be able to pack all his gear while he’s climbing a mountain. The belt design doesn’t seem to really gel with the gear he has and the lack of a backpack to attach his grapple gun and rifle to is really unforgivable. I know I can’t be alone on that one, because it looks like a number of third-party talents have been 3D printing backpacks for this guy. Still, if this is what a disappointing Classified figure looks like, I’d say Hasbro is still doing pretty well. And it’s good to get Bazooka and Quick Kick reunited with their best bud.