GI Joe 1985 Product Catalog – Part 5
As the old commercial said: here it is–the USS Flagg. Arguably the grandest playset ever made, and at least the biggest, the Flagg was the toy I think every kid in 1985 pined for the most. How could you not, based on this picture? The USS Flagg is impressive, if only considering its place in toy history, and the monumental achievement it was in terms of its scale. The thing also had to be a big nose thumbing to Kenner, since Hasbro had been in competition with those toys from a galaxy far, far away since 1982.
In the interest of full disclosure, I have to admit some disappointment when I finally acquired a Flagg. I never realized how the hull functions simply as a stand for the rest of the toy. I think my disappointment is due somewhat to this catalog shot. While the photos showcase the play features of the huge deck, and some of the tower interior, the facade-like hull isn’t shown in a reverse angle. I’m sure that was done with good reason, but finding a lack of play areas below decks (aside from the rear hull) was somewhat of a shock. Maybe it’s a trick of the angle of the photograph, but the hull also looks to be taller than the final product. I guess that my young mind imagined an entire series of rooms underneath, much like what was pictured in the bridge inset photo.
Like other items in the catalogs over the years, this is a prototype, and the differences in the final product are a natural occurrence in the world of toy design and manufacturing. I wonder what ever became of the ship used in this shot. At least the Flagg wasn’t relegated to floating in an otherworldly pond–wait, it doesn’t float anyway. Man, that was a bummer too. I suppose I should stop the gripes and save them for an actual Flagg write-up someday.
It’s been an interesting trip traveling through another GI Joe catalog, and judging by the comments over the past few days, it’s served as a jumping off point for some great thoughts and memories. In the end, the Flagg still makes for the most impressive display piece in a GI Joe collection, and it certainly was the star of the show in the 1985 catalog.
Oh, by the way, the GI Joe HQ is also up there in the corner.
As you’ll probably be able to guess, we didn’t get the Flagg here in the UK.
I’ve seen one inn the plastic precisely ONCE as a competition prize in a store, just like the Defiant.
Anyway thanks for posting these: I love seeing old toy catalogues, especially ones from abroad which were prized by us in the UK as there was always something we didn’t have in them! Be it Star Wars, TF or GI Joe every foreign catalogue had some surprise in it!
As a kid, i had no idea that the Flagg was an actual product. I remember one of my freinds telling me that there was “a realy big G.I.Joe boat” but i didnt beleive him as he supposedly had the Rocklords playset and Autobot city. When i was sixteen, i noticed the Flagg in an issue of Toyfare. So it turns out, my freind wasnt lying about it [unlike the other two items]
The Flagg is certainly a marvel. Nothing has ever come close to competing with it in size or scale.
My friends used to gripe that it couldn’t float, and my answer was always- what are you going to, take it in the bath with you? Put it in your parents car and take it to the lake?
It was always intended as a stationary floor/table display toy, nothing more than that.
Hey look, the USS Flagg is actually sailing on blue ‘water’ now, not a lake of green goo. I also notice Keel-Haul is merely the Admiral here.
Something I wonder is, for a sense of scale, how small the triple-changer Transformer (from 1986) Broadside is compared to the USS Flagg. Broadside turned into an aircraft carrier (a very pathetic one at that). Just wondering how paltry he might look in scale compared to the real deal (if battleships were made out of plastic).
@ Skymate
Yeah, the Flagg, Defiant, and for Transformers, Fortress Maximus, were all real.
@Little Boa
Broadside [well my one atleast] is a tad shorter than a TV remote so that seems to make him a bit overshadowed by the flagg. Broadside also has a sticker that has “86” printed on it. I wonder if this is meant to be a “98”; indictacting that he and the Flagg are part of the same floatilla maybe?
Also, with my freind; he claimed he had the Autobot city seen in the ’86 film. It also turns out he was lying about the rocklord playset too as it was never released.
As Bogart once said of a different collectible, it’s “the stuff that dreams are made of.”
Someday, someday, someday…
The U.S.S. Flagg is the Queen of the toys.
@ Skymate
I believe the 86 on Broadside was in reference to the year he was released in, 1986.
I actually used to have one of these in semi-complete conditions (missing the voicebox thingamajig and a few other miscellaneous doo-dads) as well as the Terror Drome. Ended up selling both due to a combined lack of space to display those monsters and a need for cash in preparation for university.
I never did get the U.S.S. Flagg, but in ’87 my parents surprised me with the Defiant shuttle complex. That is a pretty awesome toy, too, though it’s more sci-fi than the more “grounded” Flagg. Also looking back I, and I’m sure others, have to wonder how our parents did it!
The most amazing facet of a toy of this size was that it epitomised, along with the Defiant, Terrordrome, MCC, and even their direct boys toy market competitors in the MOTU line with their amazingly gargantuan Eternia playset, that the 1980s were the zenith of boys toys. Especially in terms of sales and how this in turn led to bigger, more audacious investment into product designs. We’ll never have a period like that ever again due to kids play patterns having changed, toys being far more cheaply and crudely manufactured, bad marketing, worser still, crap distribution, the vile scalping opportunists who hawk the choice items and mark prices up by treble on things like ebay….That and the fact that current versions of said toy lines are unfocused, run by seemingly unimaginative people who clearly don’t understand or appreciate what they have as a brand in terms of legacy and what they can do with it all….Because of things like this, and most of all, bad sales and lack of investment…we’ll never see the likes of the USS Flagg ever again on store shelves…