Animal Patrol John Eagle (Lanard CORPS!)
Hasbro’s 80s and 90s GI Joes were no strangers to animal companionship. Wait, that didn’t sound appropriate. I meant animal partners. Okay, not good either. Animal sidekicks. That’s better, I think. From Freedom to Lamont, the small Joes have had a great history of being paired with members of the animal kingdom. I wonder how much of that is a callback to the days of the Adventure Team, and its frequent animal encounters.
Lanard’s Animal Patrol paired its usual band of highly trained operatives with animals–well, predators to be exact. That’s according to the handy-dandy backstory on the back of the card.
John Eagle was paired up with an eagle (‘natch) and a wolf. It always seemed to be that Mr. Eagle was one of the more prominent “faces” of the CORPS! line back in the day, and was packaged in several different deluxe figure offerings. But then again I could just be imagining things. The John Eagle figure isn’t much to write home about in terms of a redeco, and it features the same sort of color scheme and odd yin/yang symbol that decorated the line during the late 90s. Accessory wise, there’s an interesting collar/lease attachment that appears to be something new for the time. In all, these sets were a nice little pickup featuring a figure, a couple of animals and a few accessories.
That eagle–is it similar to the Joes’ eagle mold?
Careful with that incarnation of John Eagle. The plastic is a lot weaker and he breaks easily.
I don’t remember ever seeing these….
Don’t recall these…but that head is reminiscent of Joe’s Tunnel Rat, isn’t it?
Yeah, it does look alot like Tunnel Rat. Did he moonlight as a member of the Corps along with Freedom and Timber? o.O
Cool accessories & animals, but ho-hum figure. Is that a backpack full of extra arrows/bolts? That would’ve been very nice for Scarlett & Lady Jaye.
The wolf is perfect!