A couple weeks back I checked out the Walmart Exclusive Night Force Night Pursuit Cycle, a repaint of the RAM Cycle, and Night Force Shockwave. I mentioned that I’m not really collecting the Night Force and Tiger Force variants, but in a moment of weakness I not only grabbed that one, but also preordered Target’s Tiger Force repaint of the Cobra Ferret ATV with Wreckage. I’m hoping that this will be a couple of isolated incidents, but only time will tell! In this case, I was mainly driven by the desire to give the JOEs their own ATV and to get a pretty cool homage to one of those Toys R Us Exclusive 5-packs from the early 00’s.

You get the same style box as we saw with the Cobra Ferret. It’s nearly fully enclosed, but does have a window to show off the figure, as well as the Tiger Force logo, and some fantastic renders of the toy in action. If you have the Cobra Ferret, you know exactly what to expect inside the box in terms of assembly requirements. It all goes together easy and the only thing to watch out for is lining those tread patterns up right. The extra parts and accessories come in tissue bags inside a cardboard footlocker, and it’s neat that we get to keep seeing these every now and then, despite the return to window boxes for the figures. Let’s start with Wreckage!

Dillon Moreno, aka. Wreckage is a demolitions and jungle warfare expert and was first introduced as part of a 2003 TRU Exclusive Tiger Force 5-pack. Back then he was a straight repaint of Firefly and here he looks to be a straight repaint of Classified’s Firefly 2.0. And holy shit is this guy cool looking! I’m not usually a big fan of the Tiger Force decos, but it sure looks awesome here, probably because the tiger stripes aren’t bright yellow and rather subdued. The fatigues are mostly black and the stripes are sort of a copper-brown. Like Firefly, this guy has a ton of gear strapped to him, including a chest harness, belt and two leg rigs, all of which are cast in a coppery-brown similar to the striping. The boots and gloves match the gear, and you get some orange paint applications for his turtleneck as well as some additional hits like the knife sheath on his right arm, pouches on his body rig, and explosive charges on his leg. His left shoulder has a crisp Tiger Force logo printed on it, and there’s some silver for the various zippers.

The head features a full mask with a cutout for the eyes. He’s got some dark shading around his peepers and some pretty creepy graphics to mimic a skull for the rest of his face. When I checked out Night Force Shockwave, I commented about how he looked like some kind of maniac, and that goes double for Wreckage here.

The VAMP/Night Pursuit Cycle helmet makes yet another appearance. It seems like Hasbro really wants to get their money’s worth out of it. Still, it fits in well with his set and the repaint looks cool. I love the sculpt, especially the mounted camera, and we get some nice touches of character here with the angry teeth art on the sides and the kill marks scored out above the visor.

The backpack is the same as Firefly 2.0’s and that includes the mines that peg into the sides and the detonator that plugs into the back. I thought I got short-changed the detonator, which is why it’s not pictured, but I did eventually find it in one of the bags. The backpack still has the tab on the bottom for Firefly’s RC car delivery system, but the car is not included here. I dig the design and sculpt of this backpack a lot, and it certainly makes sense to repurpose it here for Wreckage.

For weapons, you get a combat knife, an automatic pistol, and a sub-machine gun. The magazine can be removed from the SMG and there’s one suppressor to share between the SMG and pistol. There’s a peg on the backpack to stow the SMG, allowing Wreckage to carry all of his weapons and leave both hands free to drive the Tiger Paw… so let’s check out his ride!

As expected, the Tiger Paw is a straight re-deco of the Ferret with all the ostentatious flare of the Tiger Force design. The frame and seat are black, the back half of the body is yellow, gradually becomes orange in the middle, and ends up white at the front. There’s black tiger striping in the middle and a tiger face motif stenciled on the front. The wheels are now bright orange. Some of the lettering carries over, like the Caution on the exhaust pipes and Cobra is replaced with ATV on the wheels, and there’s a Tiger Force logo behind the seat.

The removable cannon has a red receiver and black barrel, the steering column and instrument panel are red with black handlebars, and the front turret is red. All of the red parts are brighter and flashier than what we saw on the Ferret. The side missiles appear to be identical to what we got with the Ferret and they’re still gummy and have a tendency to get knocked off. Still, all in all this is as great a toy as it was the first time. It’s fun to roll into battle and the independent suspension is impressive.

And Wreckage looks damn good driving it, especially with the helmet as it tends to match the ATV deco more than his fatigues does. Obviously there’s still room for two on the Tiger Paw, and conveniently I do own one other Tiger Force figure and that’s Recondo, so at least Wreckage won’t have to go on sorties alone.

If I had my choice, I would have preferred getting a more traditional military green recolor of the Ferret for the JOEs. I’m just not that big a fan of the Tiger Force decos and this ATV hasn’t changed my mind about it. I am, however, still glad I picked it up, particularly because Wreckage turned out so good. It’s awesome to get a Classified version of him and he brings back some nostalgic memories of hunting new GI JOE figures at Toys R Us every Friday after work. Who knows? Maybe if the Tiger Force RAM Cycle drops in price any more, I’ll pick that up to have a matched set.