When I was picking and choosing which vehicles to make my mainstay vehicles, the AWE striker made the cut over all the other off-road wheeled vehicles.
Why the AWE?
Well, I had the Desert Fox, a Hammer (heavily used find), a Brawler, a Badger, a (well-played with) original VAMP, and a Tiger Paw, to name most of the options in my hand. When it came down to it, everything else seemed either specialized or heavy. Like the Brawler, that was a vehicle with a footprint as big as the equalizer. A nice "humvee" with Joe style, but more of a truck. The VAMP, on the other hand, was too small. It was a two seater, and really worked best with just the '82-'85 figures, and it had a twin gun on the back.
I liked the Badger quite a bit, but it was very much more a solo-figure mission vehicle when it was by itself. It said all assault, to me.
The AWE is pretty simple, but it gets 1-4 figures around, has a (imagination-wise) fairly powerful cannon on top, and is simple enough of a machine that I could see it running like a Volkswagen Beetle under the most adverse terrain punishments. I liked that I could physically get to the toy engine, too, and remove it if need be. And while the running boards with figure foot pegs are good for people-figures, the raised well walls were great for rifle storage.
So, overall, where other vehicles could haul more figures, more weapons, bigger weapons, TOW vehicles, and had more action features, the AWE striker is go-anywhere simplicity at its best to me.
About HQ icebreaker
- icebreaker
- This is a very random bunch of thoughts based from my collecting of GIJOE: A real American hero figures and vehicles. Contained here are memories, experiences, recent thoughts, completely random thoughts, and other random things on top of that. While one company has made, and makes, our shared interests, we all add into that interest with our own creativity. You, the reader, will find many, many, excellent sites among the links to see what other GIJoe fans are doing, hit them up! For GIJOE stuff that is more random in topic, you'll find it here.