You may remember that I ended last year going hot and heavy with G.I. JOE Classified and so I tried to go easy at the beginning of this year. Well, that turned into an unintentional three month Classified hiatus, so it’s long overdue that I start hitting the Classified content again. And what better way to get back into it than with a glorious new vehicle! For a while I was really convinced that the only vehicles we were going to get out of Classified was motorcycles and the Trouble Bubble. But then HasLab got going with the glorious HISS Tank and the forthcoming Dragonfly Helicopter and the horizons expanded. What I did not expect was to see any mid to larger sized vehicles outside of HasLab projects. And then The VAMP hit Pulse and I was gobsmacked! Naturally I mashed that pre-order button and here we are!

The vehicle comes in a nearly fully enclosed box with just a small window to show off the Clutch figure. Honestly, the size of the box didn’t blow me away, but then there is some minor assembly required as you have to pop on the four wheels and mount the rear machine gun. There’s also some accessories to attach and we’ll get to those each in turn. I really loved the fact that Hasbro packaged the machine gun in it’s own tray to keep the barrels from warping, and you get the ubiquitous cardboard footlocker with tissue wrapped extras. On the other hand, I was a little disappointed that there weren’t any blast effect parts included, especially for an expensive item like this. Still, if you collect this line, you probably have quite a few already. Let’s start with the pack-in figure, Clutch…

Lance Steinberg, aka Clutch will always have a special place in my heart because we were both born in NJ and only about 30 miles from each other: Him in Asbury Park and me in Metuchen. He’s also one of those clean and classic looking JOEs from the early days that reminded me a lot of the 12-inch hand-me-down JOEs that I got from my uncle. In addition to the VAMP driver, Clutch was my JOE’s chief mechanic, a role he shared with Cover Girl, and it’s possible that my head canon had the two of them getting up to more than just oil changes when they were alone in the garage. Anyway… Classified Clutch does a beautiful job of taking the design beats from the original figure and really flushing them out and extrapolating lots of detail. Classified’s other vehicle-bundled JOE, Breaker, kind of came out a little generic, but that isn’t the case with Clutch here at all. You get an intricately detailed tactical vest over a short sleeve t-shirt, olive green trousers with brown knee guards and high boots with brown around the sculpted laces. I dig the lighter green used for the t-shirt against the olive green and brown for the vest.

The head sculpt reflects that classic JOE flavor I’m talking about with the black beard and mustache. The update has the mustache not connecting with the beard, which was an interesting choice, but I can dig it. Hasbro went with sculpting the hair as part of the head here, and while I prefer the hair sculpt to be a different piece, I’m guessing they wanted the sideburns to seamlessly connect to the beard, so they went this route. It looks good, although the paint doesn’t always quite match the hair sculpt around the edges. Still you have to punch in pretty close to notice it. Everything else here looks great!

The helmet fits over the head and features loose chin straps hanging on either side. You also get a sculpted optics mount on the front, which I thought was a wonderful detail. It would have been really cool to have a night vision scope to attach to it. Maybe some third-party will oblige or Hasbro will revisit the concept later.

You also get a fully enclosed helmet, reminiscent of the Steel Brigade style, but this is an actual helmet rather than a second head option. On the one hand, I think this design is really bad ass and I dig the teeth painted on the sides. On the other hand, it seems like overkill for a jeep driver and more akin to something a pilot would wear. This helmet is definitely getting gifted to another JOE, I just don’t know who yet.

Clutch sports some sharp tatts printed on each arm. You get some racing flags, dice, and burning rubber on the left forearm and some crossed pistons and a pin-up girl on his right. I love both of these designs and they really add a lot of personality to the figure.

Clutch has an equipment rig on his right thigh, which includes a removable wrench. This is the same wrench sculpt that came with Cover Girl, but the additional red and gray paint really make it stand out and picks out the detail.

As for weapons, you get an automatic pistol and a shotgun. The pistol is sizeable with some great attention to detail. I especially like the stars sculpted on the painted brown grips. The pistol can be carried in the holster attached to his chest.

The shotgun is a repaint of the one that came with Cover Girl, this time with a brown stock and foregrip, instead of green. Hey, it never hurts to have a boomstick tucked behind the seat! Now let’s get the VAMP out of the garage and ready to bust some snakes!

And here she is all ready to roll out! I think Hasbro did a wonderful job taking the classic VAMP design and enhancing it with some extra detail and modernization without going overboard. There are no stickers to apply, so all the lettering is tampo’d or preapplied decals, and there’s a lot of it. From tiny warning signs to insignia and registration markings, it was fun to discover it all when I first got the VAMP out of the box. I really like the olive green plastic they used for the body and the addition of some extra black for the roll cage looks great. In addition to installing the wheels and rear machine guns, there are a number of smaller accessories and fixtures that need to be attached. These include three sets of light rails. One goes on the front ramming bar and the other two on the top of the windshield frame. The frames are black with translucent blue lenses for the lights, giving them a bit of a glow effect, even though they don’t actually light up. It’s also nice that these are optional in case you want to go with a cleaner more classic look. Grab bars also snap onto the frame above the door hatches.

The profile is perfectly iconic and I dig how high it sits on the wheels. I’ve seen some people complaining that it’s too small, but I don’t agree. Yeah, it does look pretty silly if you load it up with a ton of figures, but this isn’t a troop transport, it’s a jeep. It’s a fast attack vehicle with a top speed of 140mph and a maximum range of 550 miles. I think it’s perfectly sized for the Classified line. But sure, you can have some JOEs hitch a ride on the running board and hanging off the grab bars and I think it still looks fine. One gripe I have is that I wish the running boards were a little larger and maybe had some pegs too.

The front bumper includes a working winch as well as two yellow toe hooks. I do wish the winch rope was black and it was a bit longer, but I may remedy that myself if I feel ambitious some day.

The hood includes a clip to attach the included entrenching tool, you also get a bundle. presumably full of tools or equipment, that attaches to the hood. It’s brown with individually painted black tie-down straps and a nice added bit of kit that wasn’t on the original VAMP. Finally there’s an environmental sensor that pegs in next to the equipment package. I always thought this thing was a laser gun or something, but I don’t think it was ever actually called out on the original blueprints. I really like the addition of an actual windshield, as well as the fact that it can hinge down. And if you want to see what she’s got under the hood, just lift it up to reveal the fully sculpted engine inside.

The backside includes a cage to hold two gas cans and there’s a rack on the outside of the cage to hold the included axe. Oh, and there’s a tow hitch on the back for the obligatory MMS that’ll be coming any month now. But, I’d really like to see the Twin Battle Gun released as well, because that’s what my childhood VAMP was always towing.

The interior is pretty spiffy with biscuit colored seats and a really detailed dashboard. A number of the controls are painted, you get printed graphics for all the display screens and instruments and the shifter on the center console actually slides forward and backward. And check out the sideview mirrors, which are actual mirrors… cool! The steering wheel turns, but it isn’t actually connected to the front wheels. There’s also a clip at the back of the driver’s cabin to hold an included fire extinguisher! The figures slide into the seats easily and there’s plenty of room for the figures in both seats. Alas, no seatbelts!

The pom-pom guns from the original toy have been replaced with a pair of turret mounted machineguns, and these can actually be broken down into two separate machine guns. The assembly can rotate 360-degrees and raise and lower to offer a wide radius of coverage. Each gun is belt fed from a pair of ammo cases that sit on the platform in front of the turret. These don’t actually secure into the plate, so I used a bit of poster putty to get them to stick and it seems to work really well. While the original VAMP was billed as having a crew of only one, it always had a passenger seat, and I imagine it helps to have someone on hand to control the machine gun, unless it had some kind of crazy sophisticated auto tracking system. I would have liked it if the dashboard design actually had a joystick or something to facilitate control of the guns, but I’ll just have to use my imagination on that front.

It’s crazy to think we got a VAMP before an AWE Striker, and yet here we are! The VAMP had a sticker price of $99 and was a Hasbro Pulse exclusive. I’ve seen some griping about the price, but if you figure Clutch as $25, as per the going price of the figures these days, I don’t think $75 is a big ask for what you’re getting here. And even as a pack-in figure, Clutch feels every bit as good as a single boxed release. As for the VAMP itself, I think the design perfectly straddles that line between classic vs modern update, and everything about it feels well thought out. The build quality is solid and this is a rugged toy capable of getting into all kinds of scrapes with Cobra. No, it’s not going to win any battles against the HasLab HISS, but then it wasn’t designed to, so as of now, Cobra is still going to dominate on the battlefield until there are Dragonflys filling the skies overhead.