Shock the Trooper

Shock Trooper is a fantastic design and paint scheme.  The cap, the shades, the long boots and silver uniform with crimson strip is an inspired concept character.  Like some futuristic, hybridised military policeman, he packs an AK-47 and looks uber-menacing, just the man to flank the sinister General Mamba and his R.I.O.T. death squads.

Coldly displaying that psychotic, "I’m-programmed-to-kill" look, you wonder whether there’s a heart beating beneath the shiny suit of silver so fashionably provisioned by the R.I.O.T. uniforms department.  The grey skin conjures an image of some re-animated ghoul, and un-dead corpse of a mass-murderer, revived just to mindlessly pump lead into the Eagle Force and its allies.  I wouldn't be at all surprised if he knelt down over a victim and proceeded to gorge on the flesh like something out of a Lucio Fulci movie.

He’s also significant as the only army builder of the Mego Eagle Force line; that generic character you can collect by the fistfuls for dioramas and battle scenes, or, just to ensure you’ve got a few spares when the dog buries him or chews off his head.  Of course, being Eagle Force, Shock Trooper is a die-cast metal maniac up to his collar, so he's virtually indestructible.  The moulded rubber head his only weakness and like all Eagle Force figures, susceptible to the paint wear which mostly affects the boots of this particular character.  The specimen pictured has fared quite well in comparison to many of his peers, displaying the scars of his valor, without having been totally abused.

Insofar as variants, I’ve seen pale and pink hands, but nothing more dramatic; he’s typical of an army-builder character in that regard; put him in a lineup  irrespective of his COO variety, and he won't ruin the photo shoot with some random "odd man out" appearance. 

My only gripe with the Eagle Force line is that they never evolved into a conventional 3 ¾ line, because it’s easy to see just how impressive an outfit of Shock Troopers would look, articulated on larger scale.  Vale Mego, vale Eagle Force, long live zombie Shock Troopers. 

Shock Trooper | 1981 | Mego | Eagle Force