Stormer, all I can assume is that Hasbro needs to stretch the molds as far as they can in terms of reuse AND they need to make a quick buck to help do more for the future. I agree it seems pretty odd that there'll be 3 CCs, 3 SSs and several different type of troopers. We'll have:

Blue w/ black mask (Trooper)
Blue w/ silver logo (Officer)
Blue w/ red mask (Trooper)
Blue w/ jet pack (JetPackTrooper)
Gray w/ black gear (Stinger Driver)

Who knows what else.

It seems to me that if they want to stretch the use of the 25thA molds, they should just add gear when necessary, pull the repaint thing and frankenstein the parts into new figures. I'm sure there'd be a way to create a Falcon that way. ;) Certainly, Stalker is Snake Eyes with a different head and jungle camo, right?

And for the record, apparently, John Warden is NOT the head of GI Joe. He's a designer but from how it sounds, things have to go thru him for approval or something. I dunno. Sounds like some odd management and stuff going on.

I just have mixed feelings over the whole thing; they made such a big noise about giving us characters from the history of the line rather than move it forward with new characters/uniforms but they're going back on that already. It might not bug me as much if this new guy wasn't a frankensteined semi-new (head, kinda) figure. If they wanted to reuse that body, there was still the comic-style Officer or PP, or Night Watch. And really, who would have minded them including a basic Officer or Trooper (red logo) again?

Any way you cut it, though, I think they shot themselves in the foot by not doing an all-army builder set!