Monster AT Commander (and Air Adventurer)

 

Quite a few years ago, a guy named Craig Blankenship became well known in Adventure Team circles as the Club Hair for G.I. Joe founder.  He, if memory is correct, was the first guy to re-invent Adventure Team flocking and would offer excellent reflocking services.  He was also a collector, so he'd sometimes even do reflocking for trades.  Anyway, Craig, being a resourceful and creative guy, realized that you could flock lots of things.  Apparently, one day he was in a store and saw this monstrosity of a thing called a Men of Honor figure.  They were about 22" tall and dressed/equipped with various military equipment.  Craig was able to look past all that and see a hidden Adventure Team Commander behind the strange looking monstrosity of a figure. 

A bit of custom hair, a custom uniform, shoulder holster, AT dogtag, some paint on the boots and a lebel revolver, and Monster AT Commander was born.  He even has a reproduction 1:3 scale box.  I recently decided to add a little more firepower to him, and seeing that he has "Kung Fu Grip" he should have been outfitted with a scoped hunting rifle.  Those are hard to come by in 1:3 scale, but I did find a 1:3 scale plastic model of a M14 rifle with scope, which I built today.  It took a couple of hours because it has moving parts.  Lots of moving parts.  The trigger moves and is spring returned, the safety moves forward and back, the magazine locks in place and requires a lever press to remove.  It has removable rounds in the magazine, and the slide even pulls back, opening the bolt cover.  Pretty detailed and pretty difficult to put together with no written instructions, only pictures.  Anyway, this is the finished product and I'm quite happy with it.  I'll have to figure out a good leather sling for him at some point and he'll be all finished.

 

 

A little comparison by scale

Monster Commander with box, next to Vintage AT Commander with box, next to 3 3/4" GI Joe Collector's Club AT Commander

 

A little close-up of his new "piece"

 

 

 Almost done with the Air Adventurer

Just need to color his boots black and get his head flocked.  He has a 1:3 scale glock pistol in a custom leather holster that I built.

Finally got the team about complete


 


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