I’ve always had a thing for GI Joe pilot figures. Ace, although he spent a lot of time in the cockpit of his Skystriker, was a favorite of mine as a kid. Years later, when I began to collect the 1960s GI Joes, I gravitated toward the Scramble Pilot and even the Air Police. At the same time (the mid
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We’re going back to the 70s tonight, a time of…interesting grooming habits. In this entry, there’s no Joe fuzz to be found, only paint. Now this is how you do a beard on the cheap. Remember those infomercials from the 90s that peddled spray-on hair for guys who were balding? It comes to my mind when I see this figure’s
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I’m pretty late to the party when it comes to the classic Adventure Team figures. Although I was old enough to see them a couple of times as a kid (through older neighbor friends) I didn’t have an older brother to hand down his Joes for everyday play. For that reason, I had little experience with or attachment to them.
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Remember the book and record sets of days gone by? I sure do. I can recall the veritable library of sets that my grade school maintained: everything from standard kids’ sing-along fare to then-current releases like The Black Hole and Star Wars. The GI Joe Adventure Team releases were a few years before my time, but they’re fun nevertheless. Youtube
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What do you do when you’re trying to breathe new life and interest into a product? Anything you can, of course. For Hasbro’s GI Joe brand over the years, that’s meant venturing into hitherto unknown areas of science fiction, fantasy, and even super heroics. It only stands to reason that a product whose existence has been fairly omnipresent over the
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Not according to View-Master. Who knew?
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I’m back from vacation, and I’ve got a special feature. I spent some time interviewing Jim Beard, author of a Kindle Worlds GI Joe novella based in the Adventure Team era of the 1970s. The novella is a real page turner written in a pulp adventure style and it’s sure to please fans of GI Joe as well as bringing
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The Intruders as a concept have been a mystery to me. I’d heard them called, according to commercials “Strong Men From Another World” and described by collectors as alien cavemen with advanced technology. Since I hadn’t seen packaging for the figures, I had no idea how (or if) the toy line had explained the methods by which these weird, diminutive
Read moreDoctor Venom–there’s so much to say about the guy. I guess the thing that most old school Joe comic and toy fans found themselves saying back in the 80’s was–where’s his action figure? While he may not have been the most exciting looking character in the comic (older guy in white lab coat), there’s no denying the impact he had
Read moreI don’t have much recollection of 12 inch GI Joes from my youth. I was of an age at which the bigger guys were phased out before I reached a level at which I wasn’t simply chewing or throwing all my toys. Consequently, my parents didn’t buy me many toys with arms or legs that could be pulled off, or
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