Sci-Fi

Landmark!! This is the last member of the Joe team, as originally presented on the GI Joe website (when there was a GI Joe website), who still needed to be produced. Meaning figure #177, released in 2025, was actually planned for production even before 2020. It also means he had a bio back then: Sci-Fi lives in a slow-motion world. He never hurries to get anywhere or do anything. He is the living embodiment of what one would describe as "chill." That's what makes him the best laser marksman there is. When you're pinpointing a spot miles away, a millimeter of movement will throw the beam a hundred feet wide of the target. Once Sci-Fi locks in, his movements are imperceptible to the human eye. He's a methodicial perfectionist and an exceptional, if deliberate, electrical engineer and laser expert. The character Sci-Fi demonstrates how Larry Hama kept up with the latest technological advances - but not because of the laser rifle. No, rather, it's the character's filename; when he was released in 1986, Sci-Fi's real name was revealed to be Seymour Fine, one of the puns names Hama loved to use from time to time; and today, giving the laser guy an eyesight joke would be perfectly commonplace, but the first patent for what would eventually become Lasik surgery had only been applied for in 1986, with research into the topic only beginning at the start of the decade, which means Hama had to be reading science papers to know about it. Sci-Fi was not the first "laser trooper" on the Joe team - Flash was right there in 1982 - but he's always been a weird one. Like, Flash wore a weird uniform, with padding like a catcher in baseball, but Sci-Fi is in a neon lime green suit with silver gauntlets and greaves, and a piece of chest armor that looks like it could belong to Robocop. In best Classified fashion, the broad strokes of the idea are the same, but there's a lot more detail to be found: for instance, the armor is more angular, with distinct panels in different colors, there are black panels on the inside of the arms to match the ones on the legs, and there are little latches, straps, and ports to be found on the surface of the uniform that were never there before. The design update manages to make him look slightly futuristic, as he should, but keeps him from looking like he's cosplaying 1986's idea of futuristic. The Robocop comparison we made earlier could have been a lot more damning if that movie hadn't come out the year after the original figure, bevause in 1986 Sci-Fi wore a rounded helmet with a chinstrap and a visor that covered his eyes, something that would have been seen as a total ripoff just a year later. When Sci-Fi was brought into Generation 3, he had a new feature: a second helmet with a full face mask instead of just a visor, and Classified has carried that innovation forward in the form of a single helmet with swappable plates, both half- and full. In G3, the helmets were removable, and the same is true today. However, back then he was wearing a head-sleeve, while this time he's bareheaded. His hair is black, matching the '90s toys, rather than the blonde he was on the cartoon. The helmet goes on and off easily. Before opening the figure I thought it would be one of those things where the hair is removable to make the helmet fit better, but nope! It's sized to work as-is. Sci-Fi has swivel/hinge/swivel ankles, double-hinged knees, swivel thighs, hips that are a balljoint mounted on a hinge, balljointed waist, balljointed chest, swivel/?hinge wrists, double-hinged elbows, swivel biceps, swivel/hinge shoulders, pectoral hinges, balljointed neck, and a barbell head. He's nice and stable, perfect for a guy whose personality is "can stand still real good." His stats are Marksman 2, Energy Weapons 4, Electrical Engineering 2, Anti-Armor 2. It seems like his Marksman role should be higher, but maybe he doesn't necessarily hit the target perfectly at first: after all, his talent is to stay on a target, it doesn't say he doesn't have to walk his way onto it in the first place. Beyond the helmet with its swappable faceplates, Sci-Fi's only accessories are his laser rifle and the thick tube that plugs it into the big backpack, which is presumably the battery powering his weapon. They've opted to have him wear it with the pointy part at the top instead of the bottom, like the original. Because he uses a laser rifle, he gets a fancy laser blast effect. A two-part effect, in fact! There's a big round ball that plugs into the barrel of the gun, and a longer, pointed part that plugs into that. Now, you may think of lasers as being almost preternaturally straight (since that is literally their defining feature), but this one is wavy and has lightning crackling around it, which makes it look like a rejected Ghostbusters proton stream more than a laser. Probably because an actual laser would be boring. Plug in a blue lightsaber blade if it bugs you too much. Sci-Fi has always been a little weirdo among the GI Joe ranks, never really feeling like he fit in. Even on a team of oddballs and loose cannons, he was always a distant outlier. The Classified update does still feel distinct and futuristic, but the new tiny details that have been added somehow make him more "grounded," and he seems more in line with the rest of the team. -- 02/27/26 How many Joes fit the theme less than Sci-Fi does? Tell us on our message board, the Loafing Lounge.