new GI Joes make all previous GI Joes look like worthless shit.

haha, hyperbole.
Finally got my hands on GI Joe: Pursuit of Cobra wave 1. Man, are they great. I skipped Storm Shadow, so I won't be telling you about him. But the rest, well, here we go:

Beachhead seems to be my favorite. There's a lot of elements that let you know it's Beachhead, but there's a few subtle changes. For one, the color palette on this particular wave of figures is muted, an attempt to make them look realistic, I suppose. It works quite well. The camo pants and green sweater are much darker than earlier modern-era Beachheads, and I think it looks fantastic. He also has this tac vest that has to be seen to be believed. There is a drawback to this figure, unfortunately. He has so many guns that have no place to go. I guess it was a choice for Hasbro between the vest and an arsenal of weapons, or a back pack and a few weapons. I have to admit I like it this way. Also, he seems to be missing a knife that would fit into the sheath on his back. It's not a big deal to me, since I've been collecting Joes for a decade and have plenty to spare.

The Alley Viper. How I dig thee. I, like most collectors, am a nut for Alley Vipers. I remember during the Joe vs. Cobra line, I'd buy all the Alley Viper/Big Ben sets I could find. Seriously, I have a bunch of useless Big Bens. Anyway, I always like the idea of an urban assault trooper, ever since 1989 when I could never find the original Alley Viper. We finally got a modern era Alley Viper in the Cobra Island packs, in all its retina-scarring glory. This is a repaint of that figure, but man, is it an improvement. Instead of blue and orange, this figure features red and black. It's an effective contrast; very striking. They're subdued colors that still say the guy wearing them in dangerous. The hook gun is slightly improved so that it fits on the backpack, which was nigh impossible on the figure from the CI set. This figure also has two new helmets in addition to the Alley Viper facemask. One is the gas mask we got with last year's Rise of Cobra Pit Commando, but it's still cool. The other is a helmet with goggles, and that's the way I'm currently displaying my Viper. The only complaint I have with this figure is that I don't have five of them.

I bought Snow Job earlier this year from an ebay seller in China. Considering the only difference between them is a tampo on the jacket (the early one has the Rise of Cobra 'hawk GI Joe logo, the new one has the new logo found on the back of the packages), I'll consider them the same. What makes this figure awesome is all of his accessories. Skis, ski poles, sniper rifle, bedroll, icepick, radio, a backpack that can hold just about every accessory the figure comes with, and a frying pan. That's right, a goddamn frying pan. I really like this figure. Undoubtedly a highlight of the line so far.

Firefly is pretty neat. He's completely redesigned, and that's a plus. He has a second head that looks great, and makes sense since the guy would probably want to conceal his identity and that old ski mask just wasn't cutting it anymore.

Duke is, well, another Duke. Initially, I wasn't going to buy him, but he kind of reminded me of Arnold Schwarzenegger's character in 'Predator' so I picked him up. I was glad to see that it wasn't just another Duke, but that they tried to do something different and made him environment-specific, in this case jungle warfare, which makes the purchase easy. I was really glad Hasbro did away with the actor likenesses, because if I bought another figure with that assclown head sculpt from RoC, I was going to scream. I like how this figure uses the chestpiece of the Reactive Impact Armor from the movie- nice touch.

Snake Eyes is really neat. It hits all the high points for a Snake Eyes figure- sword, uzi (in this case, two uzis), wolf. Timber, the wolf, is finally articulated. When you move his tail down, his head moves up. Simple, still effective. You'll probably end up buying him anyway, so you don't need my recommendation.

Cobra Commander. Had he had these colors in the movie, people might have had a better reaction. It's a mere repaint of the movie figure with some new accessories, but the mask isn't a cloudy plastic, it's chrome, and it's damn neat. I kind of liked the Cobra Commander design from the movie, but not the color, so it's great to see that fixed with this figure. This figure was intended as a mail-in, but that plan got scrapped along with one of its intended accessories, the HISS drone. That piece is still in limbo, but I'm sure it has tooling somewhere, so I'm sure we'll see it someday.

I bought these at Toys R Us, and it's probably your best bet, unless your local Target has them too. Wal-Mart is a lost cause since they're doing all they can to kill GI Joe again by charging $10 each for their Joes, and they don't have any POC figures anyway, so fuck them.