[En Sabah Nerd]

I had an unexpectedly packed weekend for figures. First at Walmart I found an endcap display for the new exclusive Transformers so I picked up Cheetor. It's the Kingdom figure but with colors closer to the original toy. The dark metallic blue is the most immediate difference, I think it looks so much better than the plain light-grey standard version which I've passed on many times now.

Then at Target I got very lucky and entered the toy section as they were stocking so I found a fresh case of GI Joe classified wave 3 and the Black Series assortment with Gideon and Dark Rey, I only picked up Zartan, the Scarlett repaint (not pictured, it was for someone else), and Moff Gideon. Zartan is just a pretty damn fun toy overall, he looks great and is sturdy, my only personal gripe is that I find the monkey paw trophy to be such a weird accessory for him. I'm not super-versed in Joe lore but I don't recall Zartan ever going for mysticism, I get the snakehead but can anyone explain the monkey paw? The Scarlett repaint still looks good but personally I prefer the original, the colors popped more and I liked the more natural freckled redhead look. Moff Gideon looks good, the likeness is better in hand than the early promotional images suggested. Sadly, at least on mine, his shoulder pads restrict his shoulder hinges so his overall articulation winds up subpar but he can still stand around in a menacing fashion.

Finally, my BBTS pre-order for the Select Hulk arrived. I don't know why they changed the name of this figure to "Immortal Hulk" so late in the game when the original "Rampaging Hulk" title was a better fit. If I were told a company was doing Immortal Hulk the assumption would be that it would feature Devil Hulk's specific psycho grin, this is just classic Hulk with a cosmic Hulk alt-head. I have no intent to display him with the robot's head but it's not a bad prop to suggest Hulk just thrashed his mecha-mimic. I really dig this Hulk figure, he's nice and big, he's solid, and he's almost as articulated as Hasbro's 80th anniversary Legends Hulk. For a 7" scale classic comic Hulk it doesn't get better than this.