Gear: The Sniper brings a lot of gear, considering he has to carry it all by himself. A backpack or bag would have been a plus for the scope and other gear. But that is something you can add yourself, or just hook the extras onto the jumpsuit. The very modern water bag goes into a flap on the back of the suit. With the plastic tubing, the Sniper can drink water whenever he wants to without moving at all (thanks to Thor Jones for that technical tip!).
Overall: Putting the Ghillie material onto the jumpsuit was therapeutic! It took several hours, and was a lot of fun to do while watching television over the Thanksgiving holidays! This is an outfit that you should enjoy putting together. It was like knitting a sweater and it felt good once it was done. However, if you are impatient, this outfit will be very frustrating to finish.
Price: About $37.50 delivered from most online dealers. This is an interesting, interactive collectible action figure.
GRADE: A+
Blue Box Elite U.S. Marine Corps Sniper
Packaging: The front of the box has a nice photo of the 12" Marine Corps Sniper action figure with a lot of build-up regarding the role of the sniper in warfare. Fun copy to read. The front inside cover of the box has some of the gear on a card which is inserted into the box. It would be hard to remove this card without ripping the box, but I imagine someone probably knows how. Part of the fun is taking the collectible out of the box! The window section shows the figure, the sniper rifle, and the ghillie camouflage material, a boonie cap, global positioning satellite compass, water bag, and a pistol.
Headsculpt: A face that sort of looks like a young James Arness (Gunsmoke) with Camouflage paint. The paint aps are very well done. The Sniper's face is very clean cut. A good job on sculpting and paint application.
Ghillie Material: The best feature of the Blue Box Elite Marine Corps Sniper is the Ghillie material which the collector must add on manually! Unlike the Hasbro version, which had confetti-style fabric strips added onto a jumpsuit, this Ghillie suit has the netting sewn into the outfit and then the Ghillie rope strips are added in manually. See the photos above: Starting from the left, is the Sniper with only a little bit of Ghillie on his boonie cap, and held by my wonderful assistant and #1 daughter (only one). The middle photo shows the Sniper with the right outer side of the Ghillie material added. The third photo shows the Sniper after all of the Ghillie material has been expended! He sort of looks like the Sasquatch or Yeti from behind. I guess in a field or among trees the Sniper would look like a patch of dry grass. Should the Ghillie material be painted Camouflage?? Perhaps in real life there are more than one kind.
