1991 GI Joe Product Catalog: Part 3
More figures! And the first taste of vehicles! Are you excited? I am, because I’m not afraid to say that the Eco Warriors make me smile. Not in a funny way, but in a fun toy way. The kind of fun you can get when you squirt your toys with water. I took my Joes in the tub as a kid, and I think that still informs my fondness for the sub-team. Color-changing paint doesn’t hurt either. Can you imagine how cool a new set of color changing Joes would be with today’s improved thermochromatic paint (I think that’s the term?)
The figures one this page are…just paintings. While that fact would have been a disappointment to kids, it’s an interesting bit of history for fans years later. Thanks to the art that’s been unearthed by collectors, we know that these have their origins in pre-production figure designs. Things must have been fairly fluid with names as well, since Clean Sweep is listed here as Anti-Tox.
The Septic Tank is pictured with a different water-squirting gun than the final release version. Its elevating feature is unique for a HISS of the time, and would have been nice to see at retail. Gotta love the toxic sludge that’s pictured running down the armored cockpit canopy.
The first main line vehicle featured is the Battle Wagon, and those of you who are averse to the direction the 90s vehicles took should look away now. This is about as far as you can get from the early to mid 80s Joe heyday, at least in terms of Joe’s traditional edge-of-realism design and function. Here we’ve been taken right over the precipice into playland. For me, that’s not all bad as the vehicles are consistently becoming as action feature focused and colorful as the figures. The Battle Wagon fires off the kid neurons in my brain in part because it’s basically a giant, GI Joe-scaled Stomper truck–with a battery-powered missile launcher. If you can appreciate that, as well as the tinges of electric blue plastic on this bad boy, you might just fall in love with it.
That’s not the end of brightly colored rides for this year’s catalog. Stick around and we’ll see what else Cobra has cooked up, along with another impressively scaled Joe vehicle.
The Eco Warriors artwork is really top notch. If you can accept neon figures (and I can in their context) the Eco Warriors molds are decent enough, too. Clean Sweep would have been cool in a metallic hue as an airport firefighter. Plus, I always wanted an Eco Warrior Flint repaint in orange, a la a Rebel Pilot.
”The G. I. Joe Battle Wagon is the most impressive piece of military hardware the Hasbro Team could have come up with. It certainly looks like something, that should have been introduced with the 1st Series line, back in 1982, with a driver action figure, with a name , such as, ”Sledge Hammer.” Similar -looking to Grunt, or Zap.”
I hope there’s nothing wrong with leaving a comment on an older entry, but I just had to mention the sexual pose the Toxo-Viper is pulling off. And he’s firing his gun? Whoo, gettin’ kinda hot in here, isn’t it?