I always liked the Zandar figure when I was a kid even though he, out of all the Dreadnoks, kind of gets short shrift in the show and the comics just in terms of screen time. His super power in the file card is aggressive anonymity, so much so that people can’t remember having ever met him or the sound of his voice. Looking at his crazy facepaint and bright orange mullet, I’m not quite sure I believe that could be possible, but let’s take a look at G.I. Joe Classified Zandar!

The box has some nice character art on the side and a render of Zandar hanging out in the same gas station area we’ve seen on the back of other Dreadnok boxes. I always like seeing that one because the Dreadnoks did have that gas station headquarters in the Hama book. I do think it’s a shame that none of the Dreadnoks have that cool logo Zartan got on his box on any of the rest of their packaging.

Zandar comes with two knives, a pistol, a backpack, and a spear launching rifle. The knives are interesting as one is a pretty traditional pig-sticker that resembles Zarana’s and the other has a longer handle with a more unique blade with a blade that looks like a wedge. Both fit in sheathes on Zandar’s person.

The pistol looks pretty standard and fits in the holster on Zandar’s vest. It’s got no extra paint, nor does it have a hole in the barrel for the blast effects.

The pack fits on the back nicely because the sculpting is contoured to his back. There are little black stick things on the sides of the pack that are not removeable and I think are meant to be the spears he shoots with the rifle.

The rifle is also mostly black plastic with a bit of silver paint for the spear tip. He’s got a hell of a scope on that rifle and I imagine the larger chamber below is gas-power for firing the spears. I have to admit, I never really thought about his weapon before because my friends who had this guy usually had lost all his stuff, but I do find the concept of a harpoon gun on land kind of unique. Kind of like a heavy crossbow.

I love the sculpting on this figure, especially the self-assured grin on his portrait. Yeah, he’s forgettable, but he’s cool with it. He wants you to forget him. The design is faithful to the vibe of the original, but there are a lot more little details and asymmetry added besides the more glaring change of the tactical vest. I especially like the little gold oni skulls and the bit of chain mail on the shoulder pads.

I like the vest as a bit of a modernization, I just wish it were removeable and they included an additional holster without the vest so we had the option to have a more classic version. They went to the trouble of actually doing the chest paint from the original figure, it would have been nice to include a way for us to easily see them.

Articulation is pretty standard for G.I. Joe Classified, though his neck movement is better than the figures in the past couple of waves. I was surprised that he looks up as well as he does with all the long hair. The one issue I have is the shoulders don’t hinge up very well due to the shape and stiffness of the shoulder pad plastic and the fact that the pads are glued directly to the shoulder ball. In the picture above, that was pretty much as high as I could initially hinge them outward. It’s a little frustrating because there is a pretty effective way to implement this kind of shoulder pad and get full range of motion by attaching the pads to a cup inside shoulder joint socket (see Hasbro’s recent Stormtroopers) but none of the Zartan family have them designed this way and I feel like they suffer for it.

Paint is solid with a really nice face print and a really shiny metallic gold paint on a lot of the costume details. The blue of his armor is a little more muted than the original figure, but I think all the additional gold keeps it from getting too realistic and drab.

Overall I’m really pleased with this take on Zandar on the design side and I love how they implemented the tweaks to his classic look. The only downside for me is the limited shoulder movement range on the stiff shoulder pads. That said, I did heat up the shoulders and part of the limited shoulder movement was a stuck hinge and freeing that helped movement a bit and now I can get him closer into a T-Pose.