Roadblock (25th Anniversary)

By KansasBrawler

I’ll be the first to admit that some of those early 25th Anniversary figures were pretty rough. I’ve been forgiving of some of them, but a lot of the figures in the first two five packs were pretty awful. Those figures were defined by pre-posed hands, wonky proportions and joints that lacked a full range of motion. While he’s not as bad as Gung-Ho, Roadblock was pretty awful and I was pretty disappointed with him even when I first got him. I’m very glad Hasbro has released some better versions of him because if the first 25th Anniversary Roadblock was the only one we got, that would be a crying shame. Marvin Hinton is an iconic member of the Joe team and he deserves a far better figure than he initially got.

At first glance, Roadblock doesn’t look like that bad of a figure. However, once you scratch the surface, you can tell that Hasbro was really unsure what to do with this new Joe line. Aesthetically, the figure actually doesn’t look too bad. He really does a great job of looking like the original Roadblock figure, however, that’s about where the similarities end. His arms have a similar problem to Gung-Ho in that the elbows don’t fully bend. They’re not as bad as Duke’s or Gung-Ho’s but they’re still not ideal. Secondly, I don’t know how I never noticed this until now considering how long I’ve had the figure, but his right shoulder joint is ridiculously too tight. It moves and sounds almost like it’s a tightly racheted joints like some lines use, but that’s clearly not the case because A) Hasbro doesn’t really use those types of joint all that much and B) his left arm clearly moves normally. I don’t know how I never noticed that until now, but it’s surprisingly annoying. I’ve only moved the shoulder joint laterally a few times since unpacking him and there are already some pretty impressive stress marks up there. Finally, Roadblock also has ridiculously pre-posed hands. Yes, they do look okay when he’s holding his Ma Duece (assuming you could actually get him to hold it well), but in any other context he just looks strange. His right hand doesn’t look that bad, but his left hand honestly reminds me of the old “death claw” I would sometimes unconsciously contort my right hand into during my speech and debate days. I don’t know why it would happen, but for some reason I’d twist my hand into this weird shape without knowing it if I was really uncomfortable making a speech. Odd fun fact about KansasBrawler aside, these are terrible hands and I’m very glad Hasbro dropped pre-posed hands quickly though it’s a shame that the first 25th Anniversary Viper couldn’t escape the same fate. Roadblock’s head is also a bit off to me. First of all, it seems just a bit too small. His helmet does add a little bulk, but considering how little I had my Tiger Force Roadblock wearing his helmet, I’d prefer not to have him permanently helmeted. Secondly, he also seems a bit too baby-faced. Roadblock was another Joe that always seemed just a little older than the rest of the team. He also looked pretty tough. This Roadblock doesn’t have either of those qualities in his face and that’s a shame. This is another one of those figures that wasn’t even great for the time. He just had too many problems for me to forgive and call even an okay figure.

While the Roadblock’s construction left a lot to be desired, his paint work was actually fairly good. Though I’m not personally familiar with the original Roadblock figure, I saw his original look enough in the cartoon to know that he looks like he stepped out of my childhood television screen. The camouflaged tank top is very well painted and looks far more realistic than his original figure’s did. Roadblock’s brownish-orange pants are another call back to his original look and the color is decent, even if it’s not my favorite. The paint work on his leg straps is a little fuzzy, so that’s a drawback and his mustache and beard paint app isn’t terribly well placed. It would help if those details were sculpted on his face like they were on the original figure. To me, it doesn’t look like those are sculpted elements and are created solely by the paint work and it hurts the figure that they’re applied a little off kilter. It may look like I was a little harsh on his paint work, but I don’t think I am. There are far worse paint offenders in the modern line that Roadblock is pretty middle of the road, but there are some flaws that need to be pointed out.

Finally, we have to look at Roadblock’s gear. I really want to like it, but he’s so poorly designed that he can’t really hold much of any of it all that well. I got him to hold it once well for the photos, but honestly, I’ve never been able to replicate that pose again. I must have been having a really good day when I got him to hold them when I took these photos very early on in my Joe photographing days. First off, Roadblock is wearing a set of character-specific webgear that really does a good job of both looking like the original figure’s torso but also seems like it would be strong enough to carry his big backpack full of ammunition. I think one of the reasons I didn’t use backpacks on my Joes a lot as a kid was that they just plugged into the figures. I wore a backpack and I knew I had to strap it on over my shoulders. Unless it was a really important character-specific piece (like say the H.E.A.T. Viper’s) I didn’t use them that much because they just looked a little off to me. However, Roadblock’s new webgear really helps address that problem by making it look like Roadblock’s wearing a backpack like you actually would. Roadblock also gets a very basic helmet, just like he did back in the day. It fits his head well and does help bulk him up, but at the same time, it’s still pretty clear that Roadblock is kind of microcephalic. On his back, Roadblock has a large backpack that carries the ammo for his 50-caliber machine gun. There’s a slot on each side that you can plug the bullet belt into so it’s clear that the machine gun feeds from the backpack. It is nice to finally see Roadblock’s machine gun handled in a more realistic fashion. I always kind of wanted Roadblock to have a big belt of bullets for his machine gun because I learned as a kid that’s how heavy machine guns worked. It was clear Roadblock’s wasn’t a model that had a large magazine so it was supposed to be belt-fed, but it had no belt. Finally, we have to talk about Roadblock’s personal M-2. Much like Roadblock, it’s a very good-looking piece but its functionality leaves a bit to be desired. It’s very difficult to get Roadblock to hold it well and that means it’s an indictment on both the figure and his weapon. I know I would have been pretty disappointed as a kid had my Tiger Force Roadblock not been able to hold his weapon in some fashion. I didn’t really care if it wasn’t that realistic, but at least he could hold it and aim it at people. This Roadblock really can’t do that. Once again, he looks great when you can get him to hold it, but it’s so hard to get that to happen that while Roadblock’s been sitting on my desk waiting to be reviewed, the machine gun has been sitting beside him and he’s standing in a neutral pose with his weirdly contorted hands.

There are no two ways about it, the 25th Anniversary Roadblock is a bad figure. He’s not awful like Gung-Ho, but he’s still pretty bad. I’d be willing to forgive most of his problems if not for those blasted hands. Those hands just totally kill this figure for me because there are essentially useless. They don’t hold his accessories very well and they look completely unnatural if his gun isn’t precariously balanced in his hands. It’s the worst of both worlds. It’s good that Hasbro figured out that even though the 25th Anniversary line was mostly designed for us old-school collectors, those “kid-friendly” things like articulation and being able to hold their weapons still mattered to us. While it’s a bummer that this particular Roadblock never got a update functional update (especially since they made some new hands for those arms when Copperhead later used them), at least the Resolute Roadblock used similar motifs so that he can take over for the 1984 Roadblock look on my shelf. This figure is just too awful to even have the honor of representing the original Roadblock figure.