The Power of Packaging: 1985 Quick Kick

Quick Kick gets some grief for his look, particularly when folks take his specialty out of context, or more often, when discussing his first appearance in the Sunbow cartoon. What good is a shoeless and shirtless martial artist in a military setting, they might ask. It’s also easy to point out the oddness of his being so attired in the snow during his ‘toon intro. To answer, I’d like to mention he’s an action figure, so relax; and in the cartoon, he was left in the lurch while shooting a Frozen Fudgees commercial.

Even if I hadn’t seen the cartoon, I would have picked this figure off shelves just because of his cart art. Look at the action! It’s like GI Joe meets a Shaw Bros. film. Having been exposed to Saturday afternoon kung fu flicks, I was primed for Quick Kick to take on Storm Shadow in my backyard battles.

7 comments

  • Always a fav as a kid. Impossible for me to find BITD.

  • ”If Quick -Kick did not join the Joes, he would have made it in Hollywood as a voice impersonater.”

  • Kids are fickle little *censored*. I was. I didn’t like Quick-Kick that much. I thought Slaughter was stupid. I passed up the Thunder Machine for over a year because I thought Thrasher looked kinda dumb. I like them all now to some degree.

    Which goes to Hasbro knew what they were doing, by NOT making every Joe realistic and in olive drab. Kids are also fickle enough to get bored with the same looking army guys every year.

  • The art is fantastic, maybe even channeling Bruce Lee a little, and the filecard is chock-full of interesting characterization. Quick Kick had some great moments in the comics, too; and he wasn’t always barefooted. But the cartoon really went over-the-top with him being a goofy hero, and it’s hard to shake that.

  • Spiritofthebeachhead

    Always loved him too from the get go. Fit in with Bruce Lee, 80s ninja, Double Dragon etc. One of my top tier figs. Also as an adult married to. Korean and having lived in LA the card bio is amazing – only Hama would write that! Bravo

  • Back in the day me and my friend would look at all the guys and split up the figures that we were going to buy (we practically lived together), and since Storm Shadow was my friends martial artist mine was Quick Kick. We got into the figures followed by the comic and then of course the tv show, so the characteristics of our guys were between the card bio and the comic very rarely the tv show (except for Shipwreck). So my Quick Kick was used as the bio stated silent weapons and his common enemy was Storm Shadow. Ah, the good old days.

  • I never liked this figure as a kid. Mostly, though, that was because my friend loved the figure and made him so over the top that I overcompensated by never using him at all. That still colors my view of the character today.

    But, like A-Man said, without figures like this, the Joe line would be really super boring and there’s no something for pretty much everyone.

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