Wow, looks like someone spent a little to much time in the Dreadnoks’ tanning bed. I haven’t seen such an inhuman pallor since the talking General Hawk or Jersey Shore. Now that I think of it, Hawk was from the same sub-line as Road Pig here. What was going on in the Hasbro factory? Was the color mixer asleep at
Read moreEvery collector has his or her own focus, or niche or reason for collecting. There has to be some impetus behind adults buying little plastic toys, right? For some it’s the packaging, for others it’s the storyline and marketing. What keeps me interested in the GI Joe brand, and with toy collecting in general, is just the look. Now I’m
Read moreWhere do Joes get their code names? Is it a meticulous process presided over by members of command, looking at a soldier’s personality back ground and accomplishments, and sometimes throwing in a pun here and there, or is it done on a peer basis, with the other Joes informally coming up with a nickname that just seems to stick? Sometimes
Read moreInsufferable. That’s the one word that describes for me the GI Joe animated movie’s portrayal of Falcon. Here’s a guy who’s a lieutenant, right? He should have been an all-business type, yes? No. He was Don freaking Johnson, and he was a slacker/hotshot who later helped save the day. Ugh. Oh, and he was also Duke’s younger half-brother. Talk about
Read moreYears ago, when I first got back into Joe collecting and saw this guy listed on the back of a 1991 cardback, I was both intrigued and confused. The idea of a football themed Joe seemed ridiculous, but the card art, even at the size of a postage stamp on the back of another figure’s package, sure did make him
Read moreAt the height of Joe’s popularity in the 80’s, there were tie-in products of all kinds. Basically, in the 80’s, before the internet even existed, there was a different version of Rule 34. Let’s call it Rule 13. What’s Rule 13? It’s the idea that anything you can conceive of as a tie-in product for a big 80’s property, it
Read moreIn honor of Thanksgiving Day in the US, I thought I’d serve up my own thick slice of deep-fried turkey, Joe A Day style. Think hard about the absolute worst Joe figure you’ve seen. Golobulus? The Fridge? Something from the 90’s, perhaps? Say, Robo-JOE? Or maybe it’s something from the 2002 T-crotch travesty, maybe Duke? Could it be the jaundiced
Read moreIf you asked me before I started this blog what one Joe figure was my favorite, I’d have thought a bit, then eventually would have gone for the usual; ’85 Snake Eyes, ’84 Storm Shadow or Firefly, etc. Now that I’m looking across the years as part of this crazy blog thing, I’d most likely have a really hard time
Read moreI normally try to be positive about these things, but a gentle word of warning–I’m having a real hard time with this one. Rapid Fire is the ultimate Joe copy-and-paste job, and an all around odd figure. First off, he was a total repaint of Super Trooper, the ridiculous 1988 mail-in. He was also the only figure to include a
Read moreI was out of Joe collecting in 1988, the year of the original Hit & Run’s release. As such, I didn’t have a strong connection with either the character or figure. In fact, I probably didn’t pick up his first version well into my Joe re-buying days of the 90’s. The paint scheme seemed boring and the camo pattern looked
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