Tunnel Rat

To put it simply, 1987 was probably my best ever G.I. Joe year. At that point, I was old enough to do odd jobs mowing lawns or babysitting and had a decent chunk of spending money to "invest" however I saw fit. I was around 13, which was bordering on being "too old for toys" (HOGWASH!!) but could still peruse the toys shelves with a determined confidence reserved for stock traders and car shoppers. In 1987, I made the conscious decision to by EVERY SINLGE G.I. Joe toy I could find. And with the exception of the ever elusive Defiant Space Shuttle Complex, I did just that. However, being at that age, it was a time when I still played with my toys...heavily I might add...so most of my collection from that time period has seen better days. I am currently working to rebuild a lot of my figures from the time period, but am also focusing on the last twenty or so figures I need to complete the entire collection. Now, to be honest, Tunnel Rat was probably not one of my favorite figures of the line...hell, he's not my favorite figure from 1987 even, but a lot of my other choices get a lot of popular press, so I thought I'd focus on one of the understated figures from that series.

First of all, Tunnel Rat is cast in the likeness of G.I. Joe scribe Larry Hama, which is kind of a neat bit of information. Quite a few figures were molded after existing people, and the G.I. Joe store that I frequent (near Hasbro's home office in Pawtucket, RI) actually has a regular customer that was the mold for Frostbite, who seems pleased about this to no end. But I digress...

The Tunnel Rat figure is a perfect example of Hasbro really making an effort to make their figures as divers in cultural background as possible. Tunnel Rat is one of many Asian-Americans in the line, but is just a "normal guy" not falling into any of the stereotypes that previous Asian figures fell into (i.e. Storm Shadow; Quick Kick...). He is a very simple, yet extrememly effective design that works well in almost any facet of the military. He could pass as a grunt, a covert operations specialist, or almost anything else you can think of. Tunnel Rat also had an interesting specialty (E.O.D.:Explosive Ordnance Disposal)which for some reason required crawling through tunnels. As you will see with my figure below, that was a specialty that I took VERY seriously. Tunnel Rat quickly became dirty as I used him constantly in play in my backyard and used to bury him on a regular basis. His color scheme is excellent, with a nice olive drab shirt and black pants, with appropriatly colored straps, holsters, grenades, etc...He is fully loaded as well with a pistol on his chest, a grenade, a small knife on his thigh, and a big strap of machine gun bullets over his chest. His face and arm camouflage are nicely applied as well and overall, each part of him really works with the other parts.

Tunnel Rat is about as close as I come to a perfect all around figure. As a stand alone figure, he works very well, and with his accessories, he is simply awesome. But as I said earlier, all of my figures from 1987 went through a rough playing season and as a result, all of Tunnel Rat's accessories have been lost. I do plan on replacing them at some point, however, I refuse to pay $20 to do it, which is what complete Tunnel Rats go for on EBay most of the time, due to the hard as hell to find flashlights that came with the figure. I am confident in time, though, that I will get a complete Tunnel Rat, and then can use this one's nice parts for some cool custom figures. Until then, though, I equip Tunnel Rat with a suitably large enough weapon to make up for his, which is I believe Big Ben's heavy machine gun. He seems happy with it.

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