Here’s a mash-up I never would have imagined until I saw it–the Plague Invasor. It’s the sort of idea at which Black Major excels. Adapting the International exclusive Cobra Invasor concept to the 2000s era Plague sub-team is a brilliant step. When I first spotted this figure I assumed it was a Desert Scorpion type trooper, but the insignia tells
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By KansasBrawler Everyone really loved the Night Force con set a few years ago from the GIJCC, but I wasn’t totally sold on it. I thought it was cool, but I also thought that it was a little lame that those characters were all getting released in color schemes that came from a relatively hard-to- find set of exclusive figures
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By Past Nastification 1987 was a great year for GI Joe. It arguably gave us the last wave of strong characters (or it could be that this was the last year I was solidly into toys). Among these characters was Psyche-Out, the team’s deceptive warfare specialist. That figure was classic, but its lime green quilted short sleeve shirt, could have
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Now this is a play tent I can get behind (if not into). While many kids’ tents simply went the usual route of printing images of the characters and their accoutrements all over their surface, the best play tents took the moniker more literally. Whether re-creating a place like Castle Grayskull or a vehicle like the APC here, an in-universe
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By KansasBrawler Part of what I loved about the Joe line as a kid was the wide range of specialties that characters had. Sure, there was some overlap between guys like Grunt and Footloose (though the original Grunt was before my time), but generally speaking, there weren’t too many duplicated specialists. When it came to specialties, one of the more
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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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Waitaminit. This is the Python Patrol officer? Isn’t this the Cobra Trooper mold? Did somebody mix up character names a la 4-LOM and Zuckuss? Or are we witnessing the first-ever recorded GI Joe Mandela Effect? I could have sworn I saw this figure in Toys R Us back in the day as a regular trooper. The only explanation is we’re currently
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Pathfinder found his path to the modern GI Joe releases twice in the early 2000s. he was included first with the 2001 AWE Striker sans weapons. I assume he was chosen due to his uniform, as its nicely nondescript when given a subdued paint job. I do miss the orange and green camp however. No nice pants this time around.
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By KansasBrawler I think every Joe fan out there has that one figure that makes them realize the brand is doing something special. I don’t know what that figure would have been for me in the vintage line, but during the relaunch era it was probably Barrel Roll. That figure was the perfect combination of design and character and it
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Buying a GI Joe vehicle in the 80s and 90s was akin to the experience of a plastic model kit. Not only did you have to put the vehicle together, there was also the fun of removing parts from a plastic sprue, and placing tiny decals on the finished build. What fun! Once the 2000s rolled around, the building experience
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