Retaliation Lady Jaye

by KansasBrawler

Hi, my name is KansasBrawler, and I am an unrepentant, unabashed Lady Jaye fan. I realize Scarlett is still generally the most popular female Joe, but between with having grown up with Lady Jaye (since the original Scarlett wasn’t on the pegs when I got into the line in the late 1980s) and my love of Flint as the best Joe character in my opinion, Lady Jaye was a natural extension of that Flint fandom. I was very excited when Flint and Lady Jaye were announced as part of the Joe team in Retaliation and while I’m not sure what I thought of Flint’s portrayal, Lady Jaye was spot on—she was strong, smart and savvy and that’s just what I want from my Lady Jaye in Joe media. I’m also very glad I was able to get my hands on this figure because A) it’s a really good figure and B) apparently it’s somewhat hard to track down so I’m very happy that I was lucky enough to find one of my characters on the pegs.

The mold for this version of Lady Jaye is shared with Retaliation Scarlett from neck to toe. Now, full disclosure, I passed on Renegades Scarlett because I just really didn’t like the look. She was a pretty bad pegwarmer in my area, so I had a lot of opportunity to pick up that figure, but I never did. However, seeing the mold used for Lady Jaye made me like it a lot more. It is a really good mold, but it just got saddled with (in my mind) an unfortunate color scheme and a subpar head sculpt in its use as Renegades Scarlett. The detailing on this mold is quite surprising. It’s a very standard female body decked out in BDUs but is also equipped with body armor designed to accommodate the female form better than standard body armor…something that the real world military is apparently just finally getting around to acknowledging is a necessity. The detailing on the body is impressive as well. The design team took the time to not only sculpt on details like the straps on the body armor but also things like pockets and belt loops. Seriously, belt loops—it’s added touches like those that make me really love the new product Hasbro is putting out. Since this figure was designed before the Retaliation line, Lady Jaye doesn’t suffer from any of the articulation cutbacks that affected some of the earlier figures. Even though her limbs are thinner than the other Joes, she’s not sacrificing articulation to create a more physically accurate female sculpt and I applaud the Joe designers for pulling that off. Once again, I do feel the need to mention nice ankle joints. I don’t know why, but when a Joe has ankles that can get into a very wide variety of natural positions I really appreciate it. The ankles also manage to look more natural with the added articulation than the ball wrists that some figures have started using. Don’t get me wrong, I like the added wrist articulation they provide but on figures like Renegades Duke who wear short sleeves, they look can look a little awkward because there’s nothing to mask it. The only new piece Lady Jaye gets is her head sculpt and while it’s not perfect there are definitely some angles where she looks pretty spot on as actress Adrianne Palicki. Again, I’m glad that the Hasbro sculptors have been able to provide good actor likenesses on movie figures this time around.

Where I find myself liking this use of the Renegades Scarlett mold far more than the original is the color scheme they used for it. I understand the Renegades aesthetic for the Joes was designed to be somewhat less than military because they were soldiers on the run, but the color Hasbro used for her pants to me made them look more like sweatpants than jeans that that really killed the figure for me for some reason (full disclosure, I really hated the design they used for her head so I’m sure that didn’t sell the figure for me either). However, when decked out in desert camo, this mold really shines. It’s a testament to the mold’s design that it can function well both as a standard soldier but also a soldier on the run from the government just by changing its color scheme. While Lady Jaye never showed up in this outfit in Retaliation, it’s very similar in concept to her uniform so it works really well for me. The camo tampos are really clean and crisp and I appreciate the attention to detail that they used the tampo up onto her neck as well. They could have cut the corner there to save a little money since it’s not a terribly prominent part of the mold, but they didn’t (as opposed to leaving Cobra Commander’s neck black [or blue, depending on which version you got] for his single pack release).

Lady Jaye doesn’t get any crazy spring-loaded missile launcher or even a zipline and that’s fine by me because instead of something I’ll never use, she gets equipped with a metric ton of weapons and other assorted gear. I haven’t seen a kit this impressive since 30th Renegades Tunnel Rat and I’m really glad that for whatever reason Hasbro decided to arm Lady Jaye to the teeth. For weapons she comes equipped with two different silenced submachine guns (and the silencer on one of them is removable—the one that originally came with the PoC Cobra Shock Trooper), two rifles, a bazooka, a machete, two knives and her signature javelin launcher. What’s even more impressive is that her rifles and javelin launcher get detailed paint apps instead of being molded in a khaki color like the other weapons. What’s even better is that the weapons they gave her are all ones I really like. I swear, the 30th Lifeline’s rifle is hands down my new favorite Joe gun and Lady Jaye looks pretty good holding it. In addition to her guns, she also has a pair of backpacks—one that can carry the extra rockets for her bazooka and then the strapped backpack that the original 25th Anniversary Lady Jaye came with. Again, the second backpack gets really detailed paint apps and Hasbro did an amazing job bringing out the details that were designed into it. My only real complaint with the backpack is that because it sits up higher than the bazooka backpack, Lady Jaye has to have her head turned so her ponytail doesn’t get in the way, which is just a little nitpick-y thing that I find somewhat annoying.

I always set the bar for a Lady Jaye figure pretty high because she was one of my go-to figures back in the day, either partnered with Flint or infiltrating a Cobra installation without backup because that’s how I saw her specialty as an intelligence agent back in the day. While this is definitely not the Lady Jaye I grew up with, this is still a very nice Lady Jaye. She looks like a competent soldier and with the gear she comes with, it’s pretty clear she’s not afraid to throw down. Once again, I appreciate the change in Retaliation designs that skewed more towards real-world military than superhero because this Lady Jaye also is a great representation of women in the military—capable and willing to fight. I like that she has come with the best kit of weapons in the line so far and that they managed to work in a couple throwbacks to the Lady Jaye of old with her gear. While I don’t have her javelin launcher in her hands while she’s on display, I did have to smile a little when I saw that Lady Jaye was still carrying it.