Torpedo was one of the first GI Joes I bought myself. After getting Cobra Commander in a school trade, and Flash from a trip to Wards with my dad, Torpedo was one of the new for 1983 figures that caught my eye. I picked him up at the same Wards from which I had acquired Flash. He immediately got regular
Read moreI’ve covered Action Force, GI Joe’s sort-of cousin from across the pond, several times. Up till now, the figures I’ve covered have been members of the Red Shadows, the UK exclusive enemies of the 80s Action Force team. Much like Cobra, the enemy forces were both a strange and terrifying lot, with shadowy leaders, robots and even a fishman. The
Read moreWill we ever get another mail-in figure in the modern era? Sure, the Rescue Doc mail-in offer was a nice little nod to the 80s, but I miss the figures made exclusively as mail-in offers. Hasbro in the 1990s went crazy with the number of mail-ins, though many were crazily hued. Without a large number of kids buying GI Joe,
Read moreTomax and Xamot were so fascinating to me in 1985 that I took the first opportunity I could to get to a store and buy the set. It was the same day that I had seen the commercial for their debut comic (during an episode of MASK, no less) and one of my buddies called to ask if I wanted
Read moreThe Slaughter’s Marauders figures are some of the strangest repaints in all the 82-94 series. While the large swaths of color, along with bright blue accents, made the figures stand out against other figures, the patterns themselves seemed rather pointless. Of all the Marauders however, Barbecue’s color scheme seems to lend itself well to the mold. Maybe it’s just the
Read moreKnockdown was the last GI Joe figure I purchased as a young kid collector. Should a kid be called a collector, by the way? I mean, I was buying these things to play with them in the dirt, not to keep them in their package, seal them in bulletproof Lucite and admire the finer points of their sculpts and designs.
Read more1987’s vehicle offerings encompassed a vast range of purposes and designs, from the functionally sublime to the utterly ridiculous. The Strategic Long-Range Artillery Machine (SLAM) manages to incorporate a little of both. As a vehicle, and it is a vehicle, since it has an engine, and even a tow hook, the SLAM looks a bit like a tank turret was
Read moreThe first Snake Eyes figure I purchased was a straight arm original. I bought it at a TG&Y close to my house, and I was excited to see an original Snake Eyes at a store. This was sometime in 1983, and the figure had eluded me to that point. I was initially a little disappointed in it, as I really
Read moreWe’re officially into summer here in the US, and it’s been getting really hot around my neck of the woods lately, so why not break out a figure photo that I took in the dead of winter and write about it? It’s kind of like eating an ice cream cone after playing basketball in the driveway all day in 104
Read moreHeavy Duty as a character got a lot of flak (no pun intended) from some fans from the 2000s onwards. The absence of Roadblock for the first year of the relaunch and his seeming replacement with a new heavy weapons specialist didn’t seem to sit right with many collectors. It was never much of a big deal to me. If
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