Can you believe this is a page from a coloring book? From what I can tell, it came from the same Rise of Cobra book that featured a color by number page comprised of three colors, most of which were black. Makes sense though, when you consider the movie uniforms were done in black, off black and slightly less black.
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I make a lot of bones about the quality of GI Joe packaging from the 60s through the 90s. The 2000s relaunched series had its share of interesting marketing material, but the patterns of retail had changed in ways that precluded the need for large swaths of card art and cross-sell imagery. The Cobra Flight Pod goes way back, and
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By KansasBrawler I know a lot of people weren’t totally sold on Rise of Cobra’s interpretation of Cobra Commander. From an action figure standpoint, I’m right along with you. That figure wasn’t the greatest. What really confused me was that Cobra Commander came out in the first wave of figures, yet he barely showed up in the movie that way.
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Destro has always been a clothes horse and a man unafraid to outfit himself in outlandish outerwear. From his original 1980s look to the gold masked swashbuckler during his Iron Grenadier days to the infamous leopard print number, Destro stands out from the crowd. If I didn’t know better, I would think this figure started life in the Indiana Jones
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Ah yes, remember the training montage in Rise of Cobra? Wherein Duke not only bested Snake Eyes in hand-to-hand combat, but Brendan Fraser also cameo-ed by rolling up on a goofy three-wheeler. It was the oddest intro in GI Joe lore since Torpedo was met in the MASS Device to rousing cries of, “Hey, ‘Pedo!” Yikes. Anyways, feel free to
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By KansasBrawler I know some of the choices made in Rise of Cobra were pretty contentious. I didn’t love everything Hasbro and Paramount did either, however, I thought that, on balance, there was more good than bad there. One of the best decisions I think they made was tapping the Cobra Neo-Viper as the primary Cobra foot soldier. I have
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Your eyes do not deceive you. This is not clever PhotoShop chicanery or a bit of Fake News. It’s actual, really real honest-to-Hama, Storm Shadow Body Spray. Or, to be more exact, Cobra EDT Body Spray. EDT–that must be some cool military acronym, right? Like the manufacturer was going all-in on the mythos with this product. Nope. EDT just means
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What would an excursion in the horror angles of the GI Joe brand be without checking out a mad scientist/doctor? The 1980s had its share in the form of Drs. Venom and Mindbender. Both were iconic, each for his own different reasons. The Rise of Cobra film gave us its take on the evil genius bit with the blah-tastic “Doctor.”
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By KansasBrawler The Joe brand can only survive for so long on nostalgia. Sometimes, you need to inject some fresh blood into the line or take characters in a new direction. I think that’s part of why I liked Rise of Cobra so much. Yes, it wasn’t my Joes up there on the screen, but aside from Duke, I did
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By KansasBrawler Kids can be funny sometimes. I don’t mean in the lame Kids Say the Darndest Things way, but it’s interesting to watch how your opinion of a toy changes after seeing a kid’s eyes light up while they’re playing with it. I was talking with a couple of Hasbro design team folks near the “free play” area they’d
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