Road Pig & Rawkus

Ah heck yes! Road Pig is as vile as they come. A heaving mass of muscle, stink, and anger, this menace is like a wrecking ball swinging at full force at everything in his path. His behavior is so deporable, the Dreadnoks have put him on probation. Back in the '80s, Zartan famously upset mental health advocacy groups because his filecard referenced both schizophrenia and multiple personalities, which could have led people to assume those were both the same condition. And yet, just a few years later, we have a character who's explicitly written with Dissociative Identity Disorder: "Road Pig" is the big, brash one, while "Donald" is more gentle and quiet. They even had different lettering in the comics, underscoring that this was more than just him choosing to act different ways. After Ron Rudat created the Thunder Machine, the Dreadnoks took a definite Mad Max lean. That's why the vintage 1988 Road Pig had a crotchplate bolted to his pants, wore football pads on his shoulders, and used makeshift weapons. This new version keeps those features, but adds a bunch more. Taking a cue from either the Legion of Doom, Raider Nation, or a Spirit Halloween, his lopsided shoulderpads have large spikes and even a human skull impaled upon one of the spikes. He's wearing chaps over jeans, has angular metal plates protecting his shins, and there's a mini crossbow bound to his left arm. In what will be a continuing theme with this figure, his one kneepad is a stylized boar's head. The body is entirely new, and appropriately chunky - he's built like Brock Lesnar, which is a perfect choice. We get a whole lot of paint apps, too. The buckles on his gear, the piggy belt buckle, the studs on his belt, nothing seems to have been skipped. He's also covered in new tattoos, which makes a lot more sense for a Dreadnok than it does for a bunch of other characters. The 1988 figure just had an anarchy symbol on his left shoulder - that's still here, but it's around to the side instead of on the front. Below that is the type of mark you'd see stamped on meat at the deli, a circle with two stars beside it, and a drawing of a pig in the center with the words "Certified Grade A Ham" around it. Cute! There's a big, square chain around the right bicep, and on the forearm there's a cartoony original design: a big round cartoon bomb, with a cute X-eyed pig face drawn on the front; it has wings rising up out of the side to flank the flaming fuse on top, and the whole thing is above two crossed bones and a banner reading "Pork Bomb." Again: cute, funny, on-brand... great stuff. Finally, he's got "Dreadnoks" tattooed on his stomach (despite only being a probationary member?), but the style they've chosen for it makes it muddy and hard to read, so that's the weakest bit of the design. Road Pig's civilian name of "Donald DeLuca" was a reference to GI Joe's design director at the time. Before that, Larry Hama had given him the preliminary name of "Theopholis Kallikak", one of the many nods and references he worked into the filecards. In the late 19th and early 20th century, seemingly-respectable scientists tried to do studies in favor of eugenics - you know, the basic "some people just have bad genes and should be sterilized for the good of society" stuff that only an immoral loser would believe today. The scientist would track "conditions" through multiple generations of a family, to see how these things propegated, with the only humane part of the entire study being that the published findings only identified the subjects pseudonymously; for instance, the study of developmental disabilities was attributed to "the Kallikak Family," not the Wolvertons. Eventually the name became derogatory slang for the rural poor, so naming a character "Kallikak" would have been the 1920s equivalent of naming him Billy Hill or Red Neckerton. Road Pig comes with two heads: one plain, and one with the mouth open. They're both good sculpts, with a broad jaw, a dimple in his chin, and a nose that clearly looks like it's been broken. The open mouth even allows us to see he's got a couple gold teeth! If for some reason you don't want to see as much of his face, the figure includes a simple gasmask that's been modified to give him tusks when he wears it - really leaning into that "pig" theme! And then, to take it a step further, there's a biker helmet that doubles as a full pig mask. The silver helmet part is a fairly normal "outlaw biker" thing, a military-style bowl with some horns and spikes welded on, but then a brown leather mask hangs down the front, giving him a snout that reaches down past his neck. There are even larger tusks here, and a stylized nosering, as well. The goggles seem a bit wide-spaced: whoever's wearing this wouldn't be able to see what's directly in front of them, just whatever's at 10 and 2. This is done as a third head, rather than trying to create something that would fit over the existing ones, and it looks terrific! 1980s Road Pig was famous for his weapon: a cinder block on a stick. This version gets that, plus the wrist-mounted crossbow and four bolts for it sculpted on a pad strapped to his right leg, but does not get the ribbed armor plate he wore on his right arm like a shield. Instead, he gets an actual shield: a fancy riot shield, the kind with LED lights on the front. You absolutely get the impression some law enforcement agents came for the Dreadnoks and Road Pig just stole this from one of them. It's been painted with hazard stripes at the bottom and a firebreathing pig saying "Good Luck" at the top. It doesn't fit the arm super well, but it won't fall off as long as you've got his hand on the handle. You can also have him wield a simple meat hook, or give him his new weapon, the Boar Hammer. That is what it sounds like: a giant hammer, shaped on one side like a meat tenderizer and on the other like a screaming hog's head. Spiked bands circle the handle, and there's cloth wrapped around the middle. Interestingly, Road Pig is implied to be lefthanded: the shield only fits on his right arm, and the lack of a shoulder pad on the left side means that arm can be moved more freely, to swing those heavy weapons. Plus, his crossbow's on that side, and wouldn't you want to aim with your dominant hand? So there ya go: environmental storytelling makes Road Pig's lefthandedness canon. And if all those weapons are too much for you, you can always trade in his fists and have him beat suckers the old-fashioned way. After all, his stats are Mercenary 2, Melee Weapons 3, Strength 4, Hand-to-Hand Combat 3, so he's going to be ready either way. Road Pig gets one more new thing: a pet dog! A pit bull named Rawkus, this pupper is mostly the same molds as Junkyard, just without the PVC vest. So that means a good Fred Aczon sculpt with good articulation. Rawkus is reddish brown with white paws and a white stripe on their chest, plus little pink paw pads, and wears a studded black collar (again, the same sculpt as Junkyard's). As is the style with Classified's canines, Rawkus includes a swappable second expression. The normal one is snarling a bit, but the second (identified by Hasbro as the "alternate 'good dog' head") has its mouth fully closed. Both heads are sculpted with a slight scar over the right eye, and the short, triangular ears pricked up and tipped toward one another. Definitely a good dog! After literal years of us dragging Hasbro for how crappy the GI Joe Classified figures were being designed, they've finally managed to turn the ship. Road Pig - frigging Road Pig, of all characters! - is pretty much the Platonic ideal of what Classified needs to be. He matches the old figure (shin armor, dark pants, crotchplate, black pads, white flattop) but doesn't just reproduce it (spikes, swine imagery, lots of small details that never existed before, new types of accessories). Here he is, figure #135 in the line, and he's easily a Top 5 release. Maybe top three. It might be recency bias talking, but off the top of my head, I'm struggling to think of two figures that are better than him. Road Pig is so good, it almost makes up for the waste of goddamn time that everything between Roadblock (#28) and the Techno-Viper (#117) was. At last, someone has understood the assignment! Top tier, S-rank, Double-S-rank figure. Hot damn! -- 12/06/24 What's in your Classified Top 10? Tell us on our message board, the Loafing Lounge.

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