There just aren’t enough monsters in GI Joe for my tastes. I know that wishing for more crazy elements in the brand is not among the popular opinion of a majority of the fandom, but I don’t mind being weird. The Adventure Team I suppose is more suited to the concept than the Real American Hero, and although not monsters,
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By KansasBrawler Sometimes the Joe line surprises you. I’m honestly a bit tired of seeing repainted Snow Cats. I’ve never really liked that vehicle, yet I have three of them now. The Wolfhound was a clearance impulse buy (seriously, I think I got it for five bucks somewhere during a post-Christmas inventory sell down), the HAVOC was a brilliant cross-sell
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By KansasBrawler I think every Joe fan out there has that one figure that makes them realize the brand is doing something special. I don’t know what that figure would have been for me in the vintage line, but during the relaunch era it was probably Barrel Roll. That figure was the perfect combination of design and character and it
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I wasn’t exposed much to the Condor until I began collecting again in the 90s. I recall seeing it fleetingly in Toys R Us ads at its time of release (yes, I was peeking at the Sunday paper toy adverts in my teens). Later, I discovered the Operation Dragonfire miniseries and found the Condor in a prominent scene featuring Serpentor
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I must confess that as a thirty-something grown-ass man, I woke up early one Saturday morning in 2006 to catch the premiere of the Sigma 6 cartoon on 4KidsTV. To say that it wasn’t aimed at me is a vast understatement. Heck, I felt out of place just turning the channel to 4Kids. At the time, I felt I could
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By KansasBrawler Part of what made me love the Kre-O line so much was that it referenced just about every facet of the Joe brand’s history. We got some great callbacks to the Adventure Team years, we got Bulletman, and of course we got a lot of A Real American Hero Joes. However, for me, what was even better is
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The Night Raven was such an impressive toy, it really didn’t need an amazing piece of box art to help sell it. The clean painting is even more striking. Here’s hoping Hasbro sees fit to supporting the release of great toy art like this. It’s fantastic to see the fans take the initiative when it comes to this sort of
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By KansasBrawler Ninja Force is a pretty controversial part of Joe history. To help offset the losses in market share that the Joe brand was suffering due to the rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (a brand Kirk Bozigian said Hasbro passed on back in the day), Hasbro decided to focus on the ninja thing a bit more and
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My most vivid memory of the Stinger goes back to a friend’s birthday party back in the summer of 1984. At the time, I had amassed a few early figures and some of the first and second series vehicles, including the original VAMP. My friend made out like a bandit for this birthday; the VAMP Mark II and Stinger were
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By KansasBrawler I don’t know why, but I’ve always been a little fascinated by battle damaged figures. I always wished Hasbro had dabbled in battle damage, especially since they had the B.A.T., which they could damage without making parents uncomfortable since it was a robot. I got my wish with the Defense of Cobra Island set and I was very
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