2003 Inferno B.A.T.

As time goes by, and there’s less and less G.I. Joe stuff to buy at reasonable prices, I’ve found myself purchasing figures that I’ve never owned, had a desire to own, or put any effort into owning. On one hand there’s some figures that are real duds, that I now have, but some that were fairly interesting and just never on my radar have also joined my collection. I’m not entirely sure where the Inferno B.A.T. actually lands on the scale, but I do find myself enjoying the figure.

The early 2000s G.I. Joe revival, has some fundamental flaws to it, but it was nice to see Hasbro put a legitimate effort into reviving G.I. Joe, without it being entirely an exercise in “The Good Old Days That Never Were”. Though I think a figure like this, that is translucent and a robot, would probably have been a better decision for a mass retail release, than that of a third of a collector’s oriented 6-pack, that you might not have even received, if you ordered it from The Store on 44. Hasbro was actually fairly cutting edge with some of the stuff they attempted during the 2000s Joe revival, but the corporate internet was in it’s infancy, and the Joe community wasn’t quite understood by Hasbro, so these experiments wound up not succeeding the way they could have.

1991 features some of the best quality designs and sculpting in the entire catalog of O-Ring figures. The quality of sculpting had improved year over year for 10 years at this point, and the designs hadn’t gotten out of hand at the point, due to the need to compete with the growing larger scale competition in the Action Figure line.  The 1991 B.A.T. is no exception, it retains numerous aspects of the original 1986 B.A.T., but streamlines them into a new take on the figure. It’s sleeker, and does not feature any of the sculpted on weaponry of the original. While it’s less detailed, I think the removal of the grenade and pistol is an interesting take on the evolution of the Battle Android Trooper. I like to think that the manufacturing of the B.A.T.s must’ve become cheaper and easier to do, so the need to provide them arms was deemed unnecessary.

Since I’d never owned this figure, I was actually quite surprised by how many paint apps the figure received. The copper and black colouring on the figure provide some contrast, and if you hold the figure up to a light source, it really glows, and the black bands on the thighs and the black visor really do a lot to provide some levels of what’s what.  Where the black really winds up being a strong design part, is it helps to cover up the big issue a lot of transparent figures have, and that’s the black O-Ring “guts” of the figure. The copper is nice as well, since it’s really unusual for a G.I. Joe colour, and matches well with both the red and black. It also works well because it’s a metallic colour on a robotic character.

This figure is an interesting idea, the translucent plastic is viable for a robotic character, and translucent red is probably the best look they could’ve gone with, and the overall theory on the Inferno B.A.T. being a B.A.T. that overheats to the point it glows red hot is a silly concept, but no sillier than mute commandos, or a USAF Pilot flying a Navy fighter jet. However, a reasonably bright, and gimmicky figure like the Inferno B.A.T. is probably a better example of something that’s going to appeal to kids (G.I. Joe’s then target market), then a lot of the actual retail releases. There were numerous examples of this, where a figure with probably more cross over appeal than a lot of retail releases, was squandered because of failures to understand what the early 2000s Collector wanted. I know Hasbro did wind up releasing a translucent figure or two as a retail figure later on in the G.I. Joe revival, but it was too late, and I still think the Valor vs. Venom line was too far gone, even for kids. It veered too far into fantasy, had action features that negatively impacted figures, and featured worse overall sculpts and designs.

The specialization of the Inferno B.A.T. is a novel take on the Robot Soldier. Rather than just be a mindless killing machine, the Inferno B.A.T. being a robot that heats up to the point of exploding. I figure that would a legitimately terrifying battlefield opponent. Seeing something glowing red rushing towards you is going to make you reconsider your path in life. It’s a neat concept and the execution of the figure is better than one would imagine, the figure kind of reminds me of a stove element glowing hot, which is kind of the way I think a robot designed to reach critical temperatures before exploding would wind up looking.

Robots in G.I. Joe are one of those strange barriers between fantasy and science fiction that can be somewhat of an issue for some collectors. On one hand Robots are a thing that do indeed exist. Not really to the level of the Battle Android Trooper, which is where some of the real issues arise. At the end of the day, I just think this is a figure that looks cool, and the existence of robots and how advanced they could be is something I’m not going to fret over. I’m more concerned with making this figure look like he’s running the same way David Byrne did in the Talking Heads music video for “Road To Nowhere”.

I picked this figure up because it was going to be “new” to me, and it was cheap. I wound up really liking this figure, because it was such a departure from what is the G.I. Joe norm to me, and I had a lot of fun with it. I don’t need more than one, and I’m certain that this is a figure that will not maintain much in the way of long term appeal to me, but it was a fun distraction, and sometimes with G.I. Joe, that’s all you can ask for.