White Out

Ah, the ever elusive "2001" line. While people from most of the country had no problems finding these figures, it was somewhat of a struggle for me, which I guess serves me right for finding the 2000's so quickly. But I will say flat out: the wait was worth it. These figures are very, very nice. It's hard for me to find too many faults with any of them, although unfortunately almost all of them have at least one fault, minor as it may be.

I start out with White Out. Or Whiteout. Whichever you prefer. I'll say first of all, I'm not a big fan of arctic troops. Even though I grew up in Vermont, where the winters are big and snowy, I still did most of my playing indoors and found that most of my favorite Joes were not geared for an arctic climate. Thus, the arctic Joes got somewhat neglected. But I have happy memories of Snow Job. My first ever trip to Toys R Us...I found the Polar Battle Bear and Snow Job on the shelves and had to have them! About three hours later, Snow Job's gun, one ski and both poles were in the land of misfit weapons buried at the bottom of my sandbox. But, my memories sometimes get me carried away...back to the task at hand:

Whiteout is a nice figure. Yes he is an arctic trooper, but a nicely crafted one, even if he is just a rehash of an older model. The white flecked with tan paintwipe is a great effect and changes him from the past two incarnations, which is a great feat considering they were all white uniforms. The decision to make him a different character was an interesting one, no doubt due to lost copyrights or some other hogwash, but still...he's got a different colored beard and works for me as a different character entirely. His bio on the back of the card is somewhat odd, but very interesting and really gives him some character to separate him from Snow Job. Actually, I believe that in my Joe universe, Snow Job is now retired from active duty and a ski instructor at Killington, a great ski area somewhat near his hometown of Rutland, VT. Whiteout was his hand picked replacement.

The mold is decent, but that should be attributed to Hasbro of the 83-84 era, although the newer designers picked a good one and added to it rather than detract. Kudos to them. His accessories and weapons are fantastic. The gun is great! I think I like the weapon so much because it was used by EVERYONE in the cartoon and has some great history. I will take as many of these cool laser rifles as I can get, although I do not use them as lasers.

All in all, Whiteout is a decent enough figure...kind of hard to find anything WOW about him, but not much to complain about either. Perhaps if I was a bigger fan of arctic troops, I'd be more impressed, but still...a good effort from Hasbro, and I LOVE the "AT" patch!

Back to Profiles

Wanna Go Home?