At the New Orleans International GI Joe Convention this year I was fortunate enough to pick up the Action Man “Armored Car Commander” from Tina at Cotswold Collectibles.  Tina displayed both Wave one and Wave two for all to see.  However, only Wave one was available for purchase.  Looking these sets over I kept coming back to the Armored Car Commander.  The radio and accessories would fit right in to my vintage Marine shelf due to the absence of the vintage Tank Commander.  So I plunked down the $69.99 and scooped him into the bag. 

Having read several reviews of the AM pieces I was excited to have this unique piece to display along side his vintage AM counterparts I have here.

Removing the figure from his coffin box reminded me of my first AM purchase while I was stationed in England; the box opens from the top.  Vintage style graphics adorn the beautiful repro packaging and quite honestly, are very nicely done.

On to the figure:

My AM example is a blonde haired soldier.  He comes with plastic garrison cap, brown rubber boots and green fatigue uniform.  He also has a very nice rendering of the vintage style metal AM dog tags.  The purpose of compassion, the GI Joe used is black headed version with the cloth garrison cap.  Brown plastic boots, standard green fatigues and the 40^th rendering of the dog tag round out the figure. 

Removing the uniforms it is immediately noticeable that the skin tones are different.  The AM version is more reddish than the ghostly pale GI Joe.  As for joints and ability to hold a pose, both seem to have equal levels of pose difficulty.  One thing I did notice is the rivet work on the AM is not as good as the GI Joe version.  As you can see, there are rivets sticking out of the legs just below the hip ball.  This my help the figure to not crack as the years go on but that is anyone’s guess.

The uniforms are similar cuts but the materials used in the AM version are thinner.  The buttons on the AM version are dead on replicas of the originals though.  The AM shirt did not have a tag and the inner seam work was not cleaned up.  The GI Joe version has a lot better stitch work.  The pockets are aligned with the snaps just like the vintage but the snaps were misaligned on my example which caused the pockets to be a little too high on the chest.

The head-sculpt on the AM version is leaps and bounds better in my opinion than the 40^th GI Joe version. 

The look of the vintage figure was recaptured in every detail.  I really like the fact that the folks that put this out saw fit to stick with the original look of the figure.  The AM version also stayed with the white pegs on the wrists and ankles to stay in the theme of the vintage rendering where the GI Joe utilized clear pegs.

The weight of the AM version is a lot lighter than the Joe version.  When I held them up to examine the rivet work I made a startling discovery.  As you will see in the following photos, the plastic on the AM is so thin, light actually illuminates the figure’s chest.  Please not the qualities of these photos are not the greatest but they are un-edited to show the effect.  The GI Joe version is actually a heavier plastic and in my opinion will hold up better to rough play.

GI Joe

Action Man

All in all I am satisfied with this purchase.  The unit cost was $69.99 from Cotswold.  The accessories alone are what drove the purchase for me.  The Tanker radio, helmet and jacket are very well done and fit right in with my vintage Marines.  I took the liberty of swapping the Soldier’s trousers with a pair of Master Piece Edition Marine Camouflage trousers to capture the look of the vintage rendering.  

Considering the cost a vintage Tanker would run with an unbroken tripod justified this purchase for me.  Someday, I will locate a vintage Tanker, but in the mean time this bloke will do just fine.