What does the Honey Trap Army have to do with G.I. Joe? Back to that in a minute.
If you’re not already familiar with Gentle Giant, it’s the toy company that creates several specialty collectible toys and busts. Most are for the serious collector and not something kids will likely ever get their hands on with the company’s large-sized classic Star Wars line offering action figures at $75 and up. And Gentle Giant handles several franchises, from Star Wars to Marvel to Harry Potter to The Hobbit.
Previously at borg.com we revealed some convention-exclusive figures and the retro-edition, giant rocket-firing Boba Fett may be the coolest large-sized series action figure ever made. This past week Gentle Giant revealed its first 2013 San Diego Comic-Con exclusive figure, from its Honey Trap Army line: Whisper, variant:
And the limited-to-100 figures edition sold out almost immediately at a whopping $669 per figure. What’s the Honey Trap Army? You won’t find a lot of information about them, other than we saw an excellent display of the four initial character figures at last year’s Comic-Con and artist Kevin Dart either created the comic art that inspired the toy line or was inspired by the toy line to draw the characters. But there is a video with 1960s music and art design to introduce the toy line:
Here are the other four figures revealed at Comic-Con last year (we assume these figures will be released later):
And here are Kevin Dart’s figure designs from a series of four postcards you could get at Comic-Con last year:
While the Whisper exclusive figure is definitely about sex appeal, you can’t deny that her scuba spy accessories are some of the coolest features to be included with an action figure since G.I. Joe. In fact my first (or second?) thought when I saw this figure was the G.I. Joe Atomic Man Adventure series “Secret Mission to Spy Island” accessory set from the early 1970s. When spy films like The Guns of Navarone and even James Bond’s Dr. No and Thunderball were big with aqua-spies, the toy industry took note. (Whisper is purportedly based on Claudine Auger’s Domino from Thunderball). Imagine playing in the backyard with your classic 12-inch G.I. Joe action figures and Whisper showed up? (OK, the Honey Trap Army figures are “statues” aka not articulated, but who knows about what fun Gentle Giant could have with a future action figure line?).
Which brings us back to G.I. Joe. So far there is no Honey Trap Army comic book, no Honey Trap Army universe. So why not license the line to IDW Publishing, who currently publishes several monthly G.I. Joe books? Bring Whisper, Derby, Kat-ya and Lucky over and make them some operative spy team? At a minimum, one of the independent publishers–Dynamite, IDW, Image, Dark Horse, or even Aspen–someone needs to get some concept story proposals in the hands of Gentle Giant pronto. This would be a fun series to write and I know of some artists, like Phil Noto, Cliff Chiang, Matt Hollingsworth, Mike Mayhew, or Ant Lucia, who would do justice to these character designs!
C.J. Bunce
Editor
borg
