By KansasBrawler Growing up, I always loved the Cobra B.A.T. and though I missed out on the original version, the 1991 version quickly became one of my most used Cobra troopers. I’m sure part of that was the cartoon’s influence, but I just thought robots were cool and the interchangeable hand weapons really spoke to my kid brain. While I
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For the past several years, I’ve been choosing the club’s 12 inch yearly incentive figure. My interest was piqued first by the henchman figure that made its debut as a convention exclusive. Then the Man of Evil was released, and after the expected 50th anniversary figure, was later followed by weirdos like Dr. Isotope and Mike Power. This year, The
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By KansasBrawler Every now and then, the G.I. Joe Collectors’ Club really surprises me and 2014’s membership figure was a perfect example of that. Cross Country is somebody I’ve always kind of liked but since he was so closely affiliated with his vehicle, it didn’t surprise me that Hasbro never made a modern version of him. However, that didn’t preclude
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By KansasBrawler I’ve mentioned before that I’m not huge on international Joe variants. For some reason, they never really appealed to me. As such, I wasn’t expecting a lot from Calvin “Jammer” Mondale. I thought he’d be an interesting diversion, but at his core, he’s not the much different than the classic Stalker figure. I wasn’t mad or disappointed at
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By KansasBrawler After the incredibly weak sauce that was FSS 2.0 Red Pads Grand Slam, the mystery figure that was a repaint of something that was already released in FSS 2.0, the GIJCC had a lot to make up for. Fans were absolutely livid about his inclusion, especially after how great the mystery thirteenth figure was in the first Figure
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By KansasBrawler Everything the GIJCC did during 2016 pointed to the fact that they were sure they weren’t going to be in business next year. People had been asking for a Sky Patrol con set for years and the membership figure, Pythona, was a similarly constantly-requested figure. If they weren’t going to be back, they did a great job of
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By KansasBrawler Sometimes as a toy collector, you find you have to set rules for your collection so you don’t wind up breaking the bank in pursuit of your passion. However, as Joe Con taught me in 2009 (and again in 2016), sometimes those rules need to be bent. Once in a great while, the GIJCC winds up making something
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By KansasBrawler This figure is kind of a tough nut for me to crack. I don’t normally fall in line with parts of the Joe fandom that think X figure is unnecessary and has taken the spot of someone better, but I really don’t know what to make of the Ice Ninja Night Creeper the GIJCC did in FSS 4.
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By KansasBrawler Once again, I find myself talking about a figure that I think is great and is controversial even though it shouldn’t be. This time around, it’s Billy Kessler (sorry, GIJCC, I refuse to use the name “Billy Arboc” for him—it’s just not a good last name). When Billy was announced for FSS 4.0, there were a lot of
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By KansasBrawler Ninja Force is a pretty controversial part of Joe history. To help offset the losses in market share that the Joe brand was suffering due to the rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (a brand Kirk Bozigian said Hasbro passed on back in the day), Hasbro decided to focus on the ninja thing a bit more and
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