Overview

We aren't quite sure of the official name for this guy because he didn't have one. We've heard Convention Paratrooper, Paratrooper Dusty, and other variations on that. We're going to go with Convention Paratrooper for the sake of the review.

It was a freebie, more or less, and you get a parachute and a backpack-- all other accessories are no longer here. Still, it's a nice looking piece.

Figure

While "repaint" is a four-letter word in the toy world, hasbro has proven there are ways to repaint a toy and make it look good, and this is arguably one of those times.

The Convention Paratrooper is Dusty, but minus the dust-- or the dirt, if you look at the 2000 release below.

Rather than being made of several different colors, he's basically green-- he's many greens, actually, and he was also given a number of added paint ops that you usually don't see on these figures. I mean, painted laces? That's craziness.

As we bought the 2000 Dusty & Law & Order set, we dug it up and decided to see how it compared. The short answer: it's favorable.

It's a little odd to think the mold was originally decorated as a desert commando, because now that he's in more muted colors, he looks darned near perfect. The green version of the figure has no flag on his sleeve, but you can see he has a lot of other paint ops. For example, boot laces, a painted gun and holster, and other parts of his uniform are actually painted and not just left molded or paint wiped. This is a fine example of going the extra mile, and this is the kind of thing you pay for when you go to a convention.

Accessories

Not a lot. But what's here is good.

A big mylar parachute (really works) came with this set as well as a green backpack which is connected to it via strings. No weapons were included. The parachute has a big Toys "R" Us logo on it (not shown) and is a heck of a neat toy. Some Wal-Mart exclusive parachute packs not unlike this one were planed for Spy Troops but were yanked from release for reasons unknown.

Packaging

A bag. No file card, no writing to identify what it is, nothing.

Convention exclusive packaging expectations are usually low when it comes to Hasbro things that don't involve a long time ago or a galaxy far, far away. To keep costs down, packaging prices need to drop, and as you can see, drop they did.

Fin

Legend has it that roughly 1,000 of these were produced and a chunk of them were nabbed by kids during a "parachute drop" during the 2002 G.I. Joe convention-- kids saw figures fly off the side of a hotel and nabbed 'em. So there may be a cache of these waiting to come to market some day, but on the whole these don't seem to come up for sale all that often as of this review.

Should you buy this toy? Well, we're not sure. We did, but we were buying convention toys when we were selling off other items from our trading stash because we liked them. It's neat and a great example of how Hasbro can make a repaint really interesting. However, you can get the same figure in slightly different colors for a fraction of the cost, and those other releases even have an actual name. We like it, but we can't recommend it to you unless you're either a junkie for this stuff, or if you have the means to buy these without batting an eye. They can be had fairly cheaply, though, as far as limited toy prices go.

Text and photos by Adam Pawlus
Review posted on March 29 2005
Sample purchased in March 2005 on eBay