Head: ARAH Flint V3 cast
Helmeted head: ARAH Mega Viper cast
Chest/back, waist: ARAH Slipstream V1
Arms, legs: ARAH Ace V1


Design:

The Storm Eagle is a fairly decent vehicle that I was completely unaware of until recently. The toy is undersized. This is especially true for the cockpit, which can barely hold a figure of the era. It had some obnoxious yellow color splashes... and missiles mounted on top of the wings. But 20+ years later the vehicle as a whole looks pretty nice, warts and all. It was heavily based on the prototype Notthrup YF23, which was developed for the USAF. Although the YF23 was not put into production, Hasbro obviously saw its futuristic design was and funneled it into GI Joe lore as the Storm Eagle.

Like many of the vehicles late in the ARAH run, it was released without a driver figure. To remedy this, here is "Trust Fund", hobbled together from the pilot bodies of Ace and Slip Stream.

Without any pilot helmets that fit the Flint head, I used the Mega Viper head as a helmeted alternate. It's a pretty good all purpose pilot/underwater/chemical warfare head, even if it's obviously usually used for Cobra characters. It has hints of the helmet worn in the Clint Eastwood movie Firefox and the Scott Bernard Robotech helmet, and even predated the design used for the helmets in the movie Stealth. Like the Storm Eagle, I hadn't appreciated the quality of the sculpt until not too long ago.

Character:

The name implies that Trust Fund had been born with a silver spoon in his mouth and could have had a life of luxury. Instead, he walked away from his wealthy background and redefined himself by selflessly by serving his country.

Colors & Paint:

The designs of Ace and Slip Stream aren't even remotely close to each other. Instead of trying to sculpting folds into the Ace parts or filling the clothing folds of the Slipstream parts, I simply let the paint do the work. Although they used different colors, Ace and Slip Stream's color sets were basically two colors apiece. I started off this figure with khaki and brown, also a two color set. But the pieces just didn't click with each other. Adding a third color, rust, pulled everything together and distanced the pieces from their iconic original figures. Looking for spots to apply the rust color also revealed lots of small sculpted details on both Ace and Slip Stream that were hidden gems, like the second layer of padding on the Ace thighs. For the faceplate and techno details, metallic blue as a nod to the teal-blue cockpit canopy of the Storm Eagle.

Sculpting & Modifying:

The heads are cast. To make it easier to rotate the heads, the ball at the end of each neck has been narrowed. The heads plug into / pull out of the neck socket without having to disassemble the figure.

Thanks for looking.

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