At New York Comic Con, The Beat caught up with G.I. Joe Product Designer Lenny Panzeca and G.I. Joe Master Model from Hasbro to talk about the G.I. Joe Classified line, including announcements made at the convention.
Julian Lytle for The Beat: At San Diego Comic-Con, we talked about Pythona being exclusive for this fall. What else can you say about her?
Lenny Panzeca: She’s awesome, to say the least. She never got a figure in the ’80s, so I’m like, we need to make this. She needs to come to the line.
She comes with some awesome stuff. She comes with a four-headed moray eel that’ll wrap around her arm, and she can hold it as if she’s casting it like she did in the movie. She has a soft-split cape. The cape is actually heat-pressed to make it look like manta ray skin. She also comes with all of her deep-sea tech creatures, the quahogs. And if you guys remember, the Quahog opened up, and there was a projection in there.
G.I. Joe Classified Fall Convention Exclusive figure Cobra-La Pythona.We added that little tick creature that just sprays the dust in the Cobra Troopers’ faces. I think my favorite accessory is this sea creature that can hug faces. Just like in the show, she threw it at a couple of Cobra Troopers and grabbed it on their faces. So it will grab other classified figures’ faces, and it will hold.
And she also has her alternate head, which is calmer. I like the teeth-bearing face; I think it’s more intense. She didn’t really show that in that cartoon, but we wanted to embellish that.
Her name’s Pythona. She is a snake lady. Her figure itself is completely washed out, with a pale look. So Tony did an amazing job. You want to talk a little bit about that?
Tony Colella: Yeah, she’s molded in a slight metallic, too. There’s a pearlescent to the darker purple-pink as well as a full body wash, which is a crazy amount of paint that we were able to get the vendor to execute.
The two portraits that we were able to make for her head were incredible. I think they put a lot of nice subtle details around the eyes, around the blushings. We got some freckling in there.
And it’s just a great way to expand the Cobra-La. As you guys know, we’ve already done Nemesis Immortal. We’ve got Pythona now. And then at the panel, we announced the Cobra-La Guard. And he looks ridiculous. He’s got all sorts of power-up upgrades. He’s a deluxe item.
Cobra-La TrooperPanzeca: And he’s not a small figure; he’ll be about 6.6″ tall. Pretty big.
Colella: Imposing. He’s wearing armor.
Panzeca: Yeah, so Pythona has that and the acid fingernails. And then, of course, she comes with a gem that she uses to pay Zartan to do some work for her in the movie. So as you can see, it’s pretty bright, it almost glows. It’s a color treatment we do called the edge glow. So when the light catches it right, it looks like it’s a radiating glowing effect.
We’re really pumped about her. It’s a really unique figure, and I think it brings that unique flavor that only G.I. Joe can do.
Colella: And then she’s available at New York Comic Con. She’s available now for Pulse Premium members online at Hasbro Pulse. And then she’ll be available at MCM and then Lucca as well. She’s our fall convention exclusive.
Lytle: You guys talked about the Cobra Lodge trooper. And I noticed that you also had upgrades, so when they get bigger or they get more mutated, they have bigger wings. Bigger blades are coming out of their hands. What went into thinking about bringing those characters to life?
Panzeca: For me, Cobra La and the G.I. Joe movie were such an impactful experience. I’ve always loved it. I loved Alien movies. I loved Predator movies. And they always kind of like harken to it a little bit. It’s a cool opportunity to get into ’80s sci-fi, like that gross, intense, textural, everything’s wet for some reason kind of sci-fi. With Hasbro Pulse, we’re able to give you that full experience. It’s fun to kind of dive into that and explore, expand that world.
Lytle: A favorite character of mine from the movie that was teased earlier in the week was Big Lob. What should we know about his Classified figure?
G.I. Joe Classified Big LobPanzeca: It’s incredible. We needed to do him justice. He’s a 7″ tall figure. He towers over the other figures. He required a brand new mold. For Classified, we’ve got to do them right.
We updated him a little bit. We cleaned up his fade. We gave him new shoes. We also included a basketball because I know people are going to pose him doing a slam dunk and stuff.
Lytle: Lifeline was featured heavily at the panel. What can you tell us about him?
Panzeca: Lifeline’s pretty rad. I’ve been wanting to do them for a while. It’s just a nice pop of color. Joe’s are very green, gray, and brown. So it’s nice to get that pop of red.
Also, we needed our pacifist. He has a pistol, and we do take all of our original designs from the old school figure, and then go from there. And on the original box art figure, it had a pistol. You can remove it if you don’t want him to have it.
We did push the boundaries a little bit on this figure. It comes with a backpack. It has all the EKG reader stuff on the back for checking people’s life vitals. The suitcase opens up, and then you can take the rebreather, plug it in, and you can give oxygen to figures. Also, he comes with a saline bag (not a real one) that will clamp onto the elbow, and it looks like he’s giving fluids to the Joes.
The helmet does come off. We gave him multiple goggles so they wouldn’t stretch them on the helmet. And of course, he’s got the really cool green, gold-rimmed glasses. As a kid, I always loved that.
G.I. Joe Classified LifelineLytle: And finally, there’s the new HISS tank you announced.
Panzeca: The Arctic Assault is going to be a pre-order. We don’t have a pricing listing yet; that’ll come soon. But essentially, we are inspired by the 25th anniversary.
I don’t know if you guys remember the Arctic HISS tank. It’s all white. It has kind of a cool digital camo on there that’s reminiscent of snow falling. It has removable baskets on the side and a removable sculpted tarp, as well as quad rockets and removable heavy armament machine guns that the figures can hold.
It’ll come with a snow serpent as a pilot, but it’s a different snow serpent. It’s mixed with a HISS Tank Driver’s helmet. It’s really cool looking. So we’re excited to get him in the light. It’s fun to go into the different color iterations of the HISS Tank because there were so many when we were kids.
Lytle: Will it be priced similarly to the previous HasLab release, or will it cost less?
Colella: It’s a lower price point. It does not have the electronics that the original had. We still want to keep that HasLab release as a very special thing that people can be proud of and not feel like we’re just re-releasing it. So this has a different paint job and no electronics in it, just to make it different.
Lytle: I noticed that you said this is going to be made to order. That’s something that I know the Marvel Legends team has pivoted to as they stop doing HasLabs. Is this something you guys plan to do more of?
Colella: Yeah, I think as we saw the success of what Marvel Legends is doing with the Dragon Man, [X-Men ‘97] Sentinel, and now Apocalypse. Just a different business opportunity for us to explore and try a different way to sell these things. So we really enjoy getting that higher price point out there in this format.
G.I. Joe Classified Artic Assault HISS Tank vehicle with Snow SerpentPanzeca: Especially on a brand that is very vehicle-heavy. How can we have more opportunities to get you guys the larger to very large scale vehicles? Every large vehicle can’t be a HasLab. We’ve got to be able to get more HISS tanks out in different colorways.
And I can’t say other ones we might make in the future. But other vehicles that are a bit bigger than a Van or a bit bigger than an Airstriker, but they don’t have to be a [HasLab crowdfunding] campaign.
Colella: And with the pre-order, you will not be charged until this ships. So you will put your credit card information for the pre-order, but you won’t get charged until whenever this thing’s going to ship.
Lytle: Thank you for your time.
Panzeca and Colella: Oh, of course. It was a pleasure.
Lifeline and Big Lob are available to pre-order now on Hasbro Pulse and other retail sites.
Stay tuned to The Beat for more coverage from NYCC ’25.
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