G. I. Joe Retaliation Roadblock 2012

Professor blog: 000007 Subject: Roadblock Brand of product: Retaliation Original Release year: 2012

This particular Roadblock was part of the first wave of the G. I. Joe Retaliation movie toy line. He comes with a missile launcher, a missile, a shoulder piece and a weapon that mounts on the shoulder. This figure was based off of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. He is also bigger than most of the other G. I. Joes. The average G. I. Joe, since 2009, is about 4” tall. This figure is actually a tiny big bigger than the others, giving the impression that he is massive.

Now, to be perfectly honest, this figure was a big bust for the movie line up. He looked good and impressive for a toy but he had some serious flaws. The first flaw is that his right hand has a fake gun molded into it so it is technically useless. You can not do anything with it but pretend to punch people. The next big thing is that he has no ankle joints. This is a very tedious thing if you are trying to use that big bulky shoulder gun. One thing to notice about the Retaliation line is that they changed the file cards. We changed from a detailed biography with information about their life to these… tiny card things with little to no information. I included a picture of what Hasbro considers the new bio cards. The last one is the saddest one. The first and second wave of the G. I. Joe Retaliation line actually had no figure stands. This was unique for the modern G. I. Joe toys. Every modern Joe came with a figure stand since 2009.

Now this particular joe is modeled off of Mr. Johnson. He looks quite amazing if you take the looks into account. He is one of the only toys that was specifically designed to look like the real actor (the other being Joe Colton / Bruce Willis). Now, even though this figure is quite bad, they released another toy for the Rock that is quite good. That is the 2012 Ninja Dojo set. That version of him is quite good and has articulated feet as well.

Background of the toy: This particular Roadblock came to me unopen from Walmart. He arrived into my collection in September 2012. He has no breaks or chips and his paint looks amazing. He is complete and has all of his paper work and weapons. He is the proper color and has no damage.