The Power of Packaging: Snow Job (1983)

I can’t believe I’ve been so remiss to not yet share the card art for Snow Job. He’s one of my (many) faves from 1983, and one of the reasons why I got hooked on Joes that year. I don’t think I need to do much more gabbing at this point; I’ll just let the images speak for themselves. Although I do want to point out this is the first package image of what would become known as the Sunbow Rifle–the XMLR-3A laser rifle. 

3 comments

  • I like the wire connecting his gun to some unknown power source. I wonder if that was ever part of the figure or never made it beyond the artwork.

    • James From Miami

      I never noticed that before. So I googled, 1983 G.I. Joe Snow Job card art, and I saw a whole image of that card art, and saw that cable. Now I am wondering why did the folks that were designing this figure, and it’s accessories, decided to changed that. By the way, thank you very much for pointing that out to us over here.

  • ”Snow Job, along with the Polar Battle Bear Skimobile ,introduced in Marvel Comics G.I.Joe issue #11,made him very interesting to the early line ,during 1983.”

  • Look at that pose! Pure action, maybe with a dash of James Bond. When I got Snow Job, I pretty much always had him skiing into battle crouched with his laser rifle like this. Didn’t matter if it wasn’t snowing.

    • James From Miami

      Yeah. That image of Snow Job reminds me of the begining of A View To A Kill (and those two awesome songs, California Girls, and the other one played during the intro titles by Duran Duran). There is even a song in the soundtrack of that movie that is called, Snow Job (I swear, I’m not kidding). But here is the weird part, Snow Job came out in 1983, and that movie came out in 1985. Yeah, the 1980’s were freaking awesome like that.

  • Oh how I wish toylines were as well devised, beautifully illustrated, with great bios on the back and easily available via great disttibution….Hasbro, if you’re reading this…please bring back a JOE line like this to retail…

    Had the original. Now have the 25th version and the POC versions….great character.

  • This one is impressive. Besides having an action pose, it illustrates many of his accessories. One of Snow Job’s strengths as an arctic trooper is his accessories (like Blizzard). Iceberg wasn’t give much to work with. Avalanche too because he was Battle Force 2000 although he had other elements making him interesting (cow camouflage, Spaceballs helmet, 1950s raygun rifle).

    • James From Miami

      Yeah, that is the awful truth about the 1986 Iceberg figure (one of my most favorite G.I. Joe figures), no skis, or even snowshoes. Well, at least the 90’s version had that awesome snowboard. But it’s just too bad that the 1997 version was not released with it, though. A real shame, and a lost opportunity to release what could have been the best Iceberg figure of all of them. As for the Battle Force 2000, ever since I saw the commercials for them around 1987, where they appear fighting some Cobras in some cold snowy place, I have always considered all of those guys, and their vehicles, to be some different kind of snow Joes, and snow vehicles, that use other colors other than white for snow camo uniforms. So to me, they are all snow Joes.

  • James From Miami

    Thank you very much for showing both sides of the card. I find it really strange that of the figures released in 1983, both Destro, and Major Bludd (both labeled enemies, not Cobras, because they were not Cobra employees), had the information of their accessories printed on the side of their cards, but the Joes had theirs printed on the top of the cards below the blue stripe. I believe that was changed in 1984, if I’m not mistaking. Just like I commented on that rifle before, I still wish that the Hasbro folks had released a version of it in the colors from the cartoons, in some accessory pack with either ten, or twenty of them. That would have been awesome. But now that I’m thinking about it, why don’t they just do that today?

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