Redwolf - Falcon Master toy review

[Eye of Agamotto]

REDWOLF the Falcon Master:

So I got my hands on another of Action Man's teammates, the Native American Redwolf. He has appeared on three of the CG movies that you can watch right here on BFTB. Here is a review of this figure:

First off, we will look at the boxed figure. Pretty basic packaging if you ask me. The bottom right corner of the box shows Action Man and Professor Gangrene. They are bordered by Gangrene's green ooze which covers the bottom half of the box. The rest of the box displays the familiar orange. The artwork inside the box behind the figure is of a jungle scene. The figure is displayed standing with his falcon bird over his left shoulder. Pretty nice display overall for such a simple box really.

The front of the figure. Redwolf has no weapons or personal equipment of any kind, unfortunately. He does have a nice set of red/black/gray camo trousers. This is the first time I have seen this color pattern for this figure. The catalogs and one review I've seen show him in a similar camo pattern, but in blue. He has heavy looking gray boots which look rugged enough for a Native American tracker. He wears a blue and gray vest made out of rubber with a molded black bag slung over his right shoulder. There is a red cloth hood that is attached to the vest which Redwolf can actually wear. There is also a red patch molded to the vest with the letter "W" on it. I don't know what it signifies. Redwolf's face is nicely molded with characteristic Native American features. He has red and white war-paint on his face, and on his hair. Not visible in this picture is the red pony tail which is actuallly rooted hair.

Detail of the back of the figure. Here you can see his pony tail and cloth hood. The vest has a couple of molded on pouches where you can pretend he keeps his pogy bait. Redwolf has the standard AM body, except for his left arm. This arm features the "action gimmick" which enables him to launch his falcon. His left arm is useless for anything else other than the action feature. It is molded to be straight only. He wears a protective glove which has a mechanism on his forearm where the falcon attaches, and a plastic trigger hanging underneath this area. Attach the falcon to the red slider piece, and then pull it back until it clicks. The falcon's wings collapse in this position, and when you pull the trigger, the bird is launched and his wings unfold and he is supposed to glide. The wings worked 5 times out of 10, but the bird did manage to "fly" about two feet before crashing. The bird itself is not too bad. The body is molded in plastic and nicely painted. The wings and tail are made of a very light weight foam, and the wings open and close with a rubber band.

Here is Redwolf with his hood on. Not a bad look for him. You can see some more detail of his face.

Overall, Redwolf the Falcon Master is a really cool addition to the Action Man team. However, the falcon launching feature is pretty lame. This feature drops the coolness factor a little for me. It's hard to use him for anything with an arm that is always straight with a plastic trigger hanging off of it. While the falcon is neat, I would have preferred Redwolf's arm to be normal, with a falcon that could still attach and detach according to your own whims. The lack of any extra accessories for Redwolf is a bummer, as well. A hatchet or pistol would've been nice. But, as this is possibly a rarer figure to get a hold of, I am happy enough to add him to my AM team.

The team so far:

Edit: Photos deleted. I will hopefully provided new photos in time.

[jamarmiller]

hey thanks for doing that, thats a good review

one of the down falls of ACTION MAN in the US is they usually only have ACTION MAN, they usually dont release his team mates and I think that is a big reason why the line always fails in the US. Action Man is Great, but come on give us his team mates too only one guy can get boring in a toy line!

the Blue camo your talking about is the previous version. the X-missions version. what you got is the EXCLUSIVE mexico version of the exclusive mexico only X-missions the Gangrene code Movie.

Some of these did make it to 2nd hand stores like Big Lots though in the US the Professor Gangrene from this Mexico only line is actually the Cobra Retrictor guy that shows up in Valor vs Venom and the first x-missions movie

This is the first time I have seen him out of the box so a big thank you. I didnt know about the red hood or the red pony tail

[Eye of Agamotto]

Thanks for the comments, Jamar. I enjoy doing these reviews although uploading/downloading sucks for me on dial-up!

I totally agree that Action Man was never marketed to last here in the US. I don't know how much the cartoon series prompted toy sales, but without comics and toon tie-ins, toys tend to have shorter life spans - unless the toy is very well established already.

I really think that the 12" line is a thing of the past, as you have stated before. I like that scale, but it is obvious that if Action Man were to come back, a different scale would probably be required. 3 3/4" or 8" I suppose. Plus a cartoon/comic to grab attention. Will it ever happen?

Thanks for clearing up the red pants question. I was thinking it must be a Mexico version, but I didn't see Hecho in Mexico or the like, so I wasn't sure. The clue for me was that this figure is made a little cheaper, as compared to other AM figures. For example, Redwolf's legs are hollow plastic, whereas every AM figure I have has solid rubber/plastic legs. So Redwolf is lighter and feels a bit cheaper, unfortunately. I wonder if the newer figures were all like this?

Time to think of what the next review will be...

[The Baron]

If it makes it easier for you, you can e-mail me the core of the message and I'll post it for you, although thinking about it I would need access to your account. I'm sure we could find a way though, and I agree, your reviews are both excellent and very much appreciated.

Now, this has been a burning question in my mind for ages now, and I'm 99% certain there is no answer, but here goes; is there any known connection between the Action Man character Red Wolf and the Red Shadow agent of the same name?

[Eye of Agamotto]

Thanks, Baron! I enjoy being here at BFTB. I'm glad that I can be of some help here in the Action Man section. We will be getting a faster connection soon, thankfully, but thanks for your kind offer.

As for the Red Wolf connection, well, perhaps Jamar or someone else here can equate the two. I'm not familiar enough with Action Force to even consider an answer. But it may simply be a license issue that keeps the name in rotation. For instance, GI Joe's main toyline, comics, Extreme toyline, comics, and Sigma 6 used some of the same names, but for completely different characters. Metal Head, Mayday, Rampage, Lt. Stone, and Inferno, to name a few. I could see the same thing for Redwolf in order to keep the rights to the name before some knockoff company grabbed it up. Just speculating, though.

[The Baron]

Now that's as good a theory as any, and one that I hadn't considered. Thank you!

[jamarmiller]

Oh man the pics are gone!

if you dont want to host them let me know Ill be glad to host them dude, this is too good of a review to NOT have them

( what happened to all your pics for that matter?)

[Eye of Agamotto]

Oh man the pics are gone!

if you dont want to host them let me know Ill be glad to host them dude, this is too good of a review to NOT have them

( what happened to all your pics for that matter?)

Wow, I haven't visited here since September 20th! Yeah, my pictures are all gone. Our dial-up connection is incredibly slow, and photobucket kept changing their format so that it was near impossible to upload pictures to my account. So out of frustration I deleted my account, and lost all of the pictures in the process. Add to that that my interest in being online (anywhere online) has been non-existant, and you get why I haven't been around lately. On a whim I checked BFTB yesterday while I was at work and saw your comment here. So today I braved the computer again and logged in to post.

I still love Action Man, but my interest in surfing the net is gone. I don't really know why other than the time it takes to navigate everything takes more time than I care to waste. Not troubled enough by it to go with a high speed connection, so there I remain. Hopefully you'll all forgive me for losing all of the pictures to my reviews. They were fun to do at the time.

So that's the story, friends. Until the next time I decide to pop in, happy holidays!

Chris