Charbroil was one of my first ARAH figures. Looking back, his color scheme wasn't the prettiest. In fact that brown was downright ugly in my opinion. That's all changed with the new Charbroil.
Charbroil's body is a repaint of Resolute Duke's. His chestpiece, flamethrower, & backpack are repaints of 25th Blowtorch's. The head is hidden underneath a repainted helmet from Resolute 5-pack Duke. So how can this mishmash of two completely different figures combine to give me one of the best I've seen?
At his core Charbroil is nothing new, but this figure is a great testament to Hasbro's skill with paint apps. The paint apps on this Charbroil make him look flat incredible and show how some simple paint can completely change a figure. He's a very nice deep red color, with gray, black, silver, and bright yellow highlights. There are a ton of little details, too. The tanks on the backpack are painted gray against the red backpack, which not only looks very nice it keeps the backpack from looking kind of ridiculous like Blowtorch's does. The chestpiece has paint apps that resemble scorch marks. The helmet is given a bright yellow stripe running front to back across the top. The gray and black boots offset nicely against the red pants.
The only thing that I see as both a positive and a negative on this figure is the head underneath that repainted Duke helmet. Under the helmet is a plain head with a vac-metal chrome plating. This looks very nice combined with the helmet because the chrome makes it appear that Charbroil's helmet has a reflective visor. The positive is that it looks awesome. The negative is that an ARAH character that had a removable helmet now doesn't, and customizers are out another potentially nice-looking head sculpt to work some magic with.
Bottom line on Charbroil? He's a very, very nice looking figure that is going to become the main flamethrower in my Joeverse. I much prefer his outfit to Blowtorch's neat-looking but ridiculous bright yellow. Blowtorch's color scheme always seemed to me to say, "Hey Cobra troops, I'm carrying one of the most fearsome weapons available, and I also happen to have a tank of extremely volatile material strapped to my back! For your convenience, I've dressed in the absolute brightest thing I could find, so I'll be easier to pick out and snipe. Enjoy!" While Charbroil still has kind of a bright color scheme, it's much more subdued and easier on the eyes than Blowtorch's.
Charbroil was the only wave 4 figure that I was really interested in besides Night Adder (who was already sold out when I ordered CB & Rex). Kamakura & the others haven't really attracted me so we'll see if Charbroil and Night Adder end up being the stars of Wave 4 like I think they will.
