Head: ARAH Zandar
Chest/Back: ARAH Monkeywrench
Arms: ARAH Gung Ho V???
Waist, legs: NS Dr. Mindbender (silly costume)


Character:

Dynamite was a team member in the short-lived Sgt. Savage and The Screaming Eagles run. This is the first of my Screaming Eagle customs. I've already made a custom of General Blitz. Fortunately, there aren't that many Screaming Eagles and only two IRON Army villains. I'll probably just stick mostly to the Hasbro toys and not the cartoon (except for Steel Raven).

Sgt. Savage & The Screaming Eagles was an experiment in shifting scales while maintaing a good guy vs bad guy motiff. A lazy and embarrassing bastardization of the Captain America storyline, the toyline at least featured nice Joe Kubert artwork on the packaging. The figures tried to bring GI Joe back to more military designs, albeit ones that were 50 years out of date at the time. The figures also featured very detailed facial sculpts.

Design:

The Kubert artwork doesn't truly look much the figure. Kubert did his thing and the toy designers did theirs. The Zandar head was a good starting point for its headband. The Monkeywrench chest has a strong diagonal strap across the chest- that it has grenades instead of pouches doesn't really matter. The large muscular arms were needed to downplay the oversized noggin. The Dr. Mindbender waist has some very Kubert-looking pouches, and lots of them.

As for the strange Dr. Mindbender legs... they just seemed right, even with the short thighs and long shins. The oversized feet, like the large arms, help balance out the pumpkin head.

Colors & Paint:

WWII-esque colors, as seen on the artwork and the Hasbro figure. The Zandar head is an iconic one, but shifting the skin tone and adding a mustache/five o'clock shadow sell it as another character. Likewise, the trick to many ARAH head sculpts is to paint the eyes where they should be, not necessarily where they were actually sculpted. The pockets on the jacket were dully sculpted and disappeared after painting, so some edge painting brought them back. Some edge painting was also necessary between the red undershirt and green fatigue shirt. The red and green were the same tone, so the thin dark green line helps them break from each other.

Sculpting & Modifying:

The grenade was removed from the arm and replaced with a pouch. Most of the chains around the chest/back were sculpted over by pouches. The mouth of the glove is sculpted. The bottom of the chest/back was tapered to better fit the waist. The bloused trousers were sculpted below the knees, although they should have been sculpted a bit lower.

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