Alpine

We told you Bazooka seems to have gotten a re-release: it's because Hasbro's just made his hetero lifemate, and having them both available at the same time would mean more sales of both! Alpine grew up on the flat Snake River Plain, surrounded in every direction by a mountain barrier. He took up mountain climbing in college and has been at it ever since, becoming extremely proficient and driven. The Joes have sent him up first on many a vertical assault mission, and he always comes down in one piece. Larry Hama may have chosen Minidoka, Idaho, as Albert Pine's birthplace simply because it was geographically suitable for the backstory he was creating, or it may have meant something more: while Minidoka is a real and unassuming place, it also shares its name with one of the World War II Japanese internment camps; the Minidoka War Relocation Center was actually located in neighboring Jerome County, but was given the Minidoka name so it wouldn't be confused with the camp in Jerome, Arkansas. Given Larry Hama's depth of knowledge on military and governmental topics, he may well have known about that camp and decided to draw some degree of attention to the area's history. Alpine's traditional look involved a baseball cap and a pair of goggles, presumably to help protect him from loose debris plinking him while he climbed. This figure maintains those, but for the first time makes them both removable, so you're really free to decide how you want him to look. His hair is short enough that it doesn't keep the hat from looking correct on his head, and his thin mustache is shaped appropriately. Far from being dressed like a military operative, Alpine looks like a really dedicated climber who's just out on a big weekend trip. He wears a green jacket with black padding on the shoulders and chest (matching his hat) and brown sections on the forearms. He's got fingerless gloves, presumably because he finds that gives him a better grip on the rock face, his pants are tucked into his boots, and he wears a harness around his hips that features more than a dozen carabiners hanging from the front, several loops for his line to be fed through, and a chalk bag at the small of his back. Really neat stuff! Al's in his traditional old colors, green on top and brown on the bottom, though giving him black boots and gloves is new. The carabiners get picked out in silver, so we can tell what they are, and if you move aside the rope that's wrapped around his chest, you'll see he's repping some hometown pride: his T-shirt is promoting Idaho. And the paint is really light, which makes the shirt look old and faded, like he's already washed it a thousand times. No surprises with the articulation: Alpine has swivel/hinge ankles, swivel shins, double-hinged knees, swivel thighs, hips that are a balljoint mounted on a hinge, balljointed waist, hinged chest, swivel/hinge wrists, double-hinged elbows, swivel biceps, swivel/hinge shoulders, pectoral hinges, balljointed neck, and a barbell head. His jacket is PVC, so it won't block too much of the chest movement, even though it comes down all the way to his waist instead of stopping above it like the Generation 1 figure's did. The packaging lists his stats as Environmental Specialist 4, Bladed Weapons 1, Recon 2, and Mountaineering 4 - presumably the "bladed weapons" part is a reference to the climbing axes he's armed with? He also gets the machine gun and PGAC grappling cannon from the Alley-Viper, and a grappling hook with a real string wrapped around it (proviously available with "Arctic Mission" Storm Shadow). The rope around his chest is a separate piece, and not the same one Shipwreck had, but you know what we don't get? A backpack, meaning there's no way for him to carry all this stuff when he's climbing. Alpine never got much to do in the comics, so it's a good thing the cartoon made so much use of him. It'd be really interesting to know how they decided that he'd be the happy, outgoing counterpart to Bazooka's quiet lunkhead, and why the two of them would form an unbreakable pair bond; because if they hadn't, neither one of these figures would be as appealing as they are today. -- 01/31/25 Who's your favorite pair of best buds? Tell us on our message board, the Loafing Lounge.