Part Sgt. Rock, part Challengers of the Unknown, Charlton Comics’ Fightin’ 5 debuted the same year as our favorite Movable Fighting Man, and presaged the kind of unique unit that would later grace toy aisles as Real American Heroes. Festooned in brightly colored uniforms and made up of operatives of various backgrounds including American, French-American, Israeli and even a professional
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Talking figures were a big deal in the early 90s. Not only did the Joes venture into this territory, but the knock-off market did as well. Toymax’s M-PACT line was heavy presence on toy shelves at stores like K-Mart and other discount retailers. Over the years, I’ve come across the figures’ accessories in random Joe lots, but hadn’t found any
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If Past Nastification can throw down Tina Fey and Amy Poehler action figures on a GI Joe blog, you darn well better believe I’m going to come correct with more crazy tangential toys. Witness the might of Arctic Assault Captain America. When I first spotted the fire and ice themed Cap and Red Skull Target exclusive set, I had to
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By Past Nastification My brain couldn’t process what my eyes were seeing. On a merchandise shelf display thing at a used book store- there they were. Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, in 1:18 scale!! Was this real? Surely I would’ve heard about these? Why didn’t I know these existed?! But they were real, even though I had never heard about
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First off: I’m a bad daily blogger. I’ve been missing days here and there due to the general stuff of life. My apologies. Second: this weekend I rediscovered an item that led me back on the path to collecting GI Joe toys. The time was the early 90s, and I was heavily into collecting Kenner Star Wars. I frequented local
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By Past Nastification This toy is why I love antique malls and road trips. The randomness of finding things that I probably never would have otherwise stumbled across, even on eBay. But there it was, sitting on the floor of an antique mall, calling to me. Making me wish I would build a customized city or town just to showcase
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By Past Nastification The internets doesn’t seem to know this guy’s proper name, but the ladies at the bar around the corner call him “The Plumber” because he’s known to be good at laying pipe. Obviously, this must mean that cheapskate bar-hopping women don’t want to pay full price for a professionally licensed and bonded plumber when this handsome devil
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It’s not often (until recent licenses like Kong and Rampage) toy maker Lanard gets topical. Back in 2011 they released a really unique set based on the amazing 2010 rescue story of trapped Chilean miners. This set is an interesting commemoration of the rescue effort, and from package to product, is certainly colorful. Much of the equipment and the included
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By Past Nastification Sometimes Hasbro does fun things with GI Joe molds. For its Incredible Hulk movie line, it used recolored GI Joe figures as part of the Hulkbuster team. Hulk, schmulk. To my eye, this is just a disguised GI Joe figure. This Hulkbuster utilized the 2004 Shipwreck mold, done in slate-colored plastic, topped off with a helmet. There
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If there’s one thing Lanard packs into its vehicles, play value is it. I can’t think of any other budget toy maker that gives kids as much bang for their buck. While such things may not be a collector’s cup of tea, little ones dig action features. The Havoc Chopper is a neat little one-man copter. The silhouette is similar
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