Iron Man Stealth Operations Suit Walmart Exclusive

Slower, but more heavily armored than the IRON MAN armor, Stealth Operations Suit boasts a much broader array of weapons, from repulsor rays to rocket launchers. Jim Rhodes pilots it on missions too sensitive for the high profile Iron Man to tackle.

Incredibly detailed action figure, based on the movie character, features launching gatling blast and snap-on weapons!

Release March 2008
MSRP 9.99USD
Only Available at Walmart

Another exclusive figure to review - this time the Walmart Stealth Operations Suit! Due to some personal/political beliefs, I don’t personally shop at Walmart, which means with all the exclusive figures Hasbro has licensed to them in the last year or so unfortunately I end up missing out on a almost all of them - MP Starscream immediately comes to mind as one that I was especially interested in getting but did not. Boo. However, thanks to some last-minute interventions down here at Murdershow HQ, I woke up this morning to find a package on my porch, and guess what was inside?

The Stealth Operations Suit, or War Machine as he’s known in the funny-books, is worn by Tony Starks bodyguard/assistant/pal, Jim Rhodes, whenever there is a problem ol’ Shellhead can’t take care of himself. As stated on the bio on the back of the package, War Machine comes stocked with more weapons and armor than other versions, and is basically a walking tank. The Stealth Operations Suit has a ton of accessories too, packaged with a gatling gun, and missile launcher attached to his back, as well as two smaller wrist-gun accessories - he’s fully stocked and ready for war!

This suit is essentially just a repaint of the Mark 03 armor (and the Mark 02 armor as well), just like the Target Exclusive was, so there’s really no differences between any of the toys other than minor and cosmetic ones. So instead of an in-depth review of the mold, I’ll just stick to the differences at hand.

With all the attached weaponry, War Machine is pretty formidable. The gun and missile launcher cause him to be a little back-heavy, but with some adjustments to the waist hinge you can easily compensate for that. The wrist-attached guns seemed to have a bit of a problem staying in place, or at least staying in one place. Without pegs or slots, they’re basically just big bracelets, and tend to move around a bit and settle towards the thinner wrist section of the arm, which looks far less intimidating than it should. The missile and gun both have button activated firing abilities, although the gatling gun seemed to pack more punch than the missile launcher did. One thing that did bother me about this, was the lack of movement the head is allowed when the gun/launcher were both in the upright position. Doesn’t seem like it’d ever be a good idea to run around with them up if you were really Jim Rhodes, liable to get run over by a bus because he couldn’t look both ways before crossing the street, ya know?

As you can see, the only major difference between this mold and the other Mark 03 versions, is there are hinges placed into the shoulder area to allow the gun/missile launcher to fold back and forth. That’s actually kinda cool, although he looks pretty weird when you take the pieces off as I have in the two pictures above. I do like the fact that there is more to this version than a simple repaint though, and at least can somewhat justify the exclusivity of the figure.

The biggest problem with this figure, and I suppose maybe there is some irony in that it’s on the Walmart exclusive, but the silver paint apps on this figure are very poorly done and just look awful. In fact, from what I heard, every Stealth Operations Suit suffers from this problem - thin/messy coats of silver that barey cover the black plastic underneath. It looks as if someone over-handled the figure before the paint had fully dried, and I bet if I was a forensics guy, I could easily find fingerprints impressed into the paint now. The biggest complaint I’ve seen from the whole Iron Man line of figures so far has been based around paint apps, and this is just an especially revealing figure to showcase how bad it is. Certainly an easy problem to fix with some silver touch-up, since it’s an easy color to match - but I’m at least partially skilled in painting figures, someone with less talent or desire might just be disgusted with this guy altogether and pass it up. So if you are going to buy this figure, you should dig through the stock to find the best-looking one for sure.

Overall, the figure is pretty cool, certainly as cool as all the other Mark 03’s. I’m not partial to black repaints of figures, but the extra accessories as well as the hinges to move them up and down actually makes this one worth it. From what I hear, we’re due for about 5 or 6 different repaints of the Mark 03 armor, and I can only imagine they are going to get sillier as they go (I heard a rumor about the Silverstri/Civil War/Captain America color-scheme being released even!), so this will probably be where I get off the bus for this line. Still though, considering the detail and complexity of the mold, I really couldn’t fault anyone who bought the various different versions of the armor at all. Hopefully Hasbro releases this version wide at some point - that way everyone can get one, whether they shop at Walmart or not!