Ozone (1993)
When I came back to GI Joe collecting in the 90s, my collecting philosophy was very much one of picking and choosing. I was back into the brand, but wasn’t picking up each and every release. I saved that effort for the Toy Biz Marvel lines, at least for a while. Oops. Anyway, as I perused the Joe selection through the year, I simply picked what either stuck my fancy, or was based on characters I remembered from the 80s. So guys like Ozone were left on the pegs, at least until they were discounted or showed up at the Half Price Store. Looking back, I suppose I could have saved a few bucks by being a Joe completist in the 90s, but then again, most of these later figures were still cheap in the early 2000s. Some are still cheap today.
Ozone is just a straight-up repaint of his Eco Warriors release. In fact, he was released twice in ’93 as part of the Star Brigade subset. The other version, which trades out the grey uniform for a tan number, is nicely done, but I find the grey scheme more appropriately fits with the space motif. The tan version might make a nice replacement for the Eco Warrior team to those who don’t care for the original’s blue and yellow hues. My favorite repaint of the mold came in 1994, when it was done up in an all-over deep maroon with yellow highlights.
Before you call foul thinking that the figure was adapted to Star Brigade simply based on its uniform’s resemblance to a space suit, the file card solidly keeps Ozone in his ecological specialty, and simply extending his responsibilities to the final frontier, as it were. It’s actually quite well done, I think. He certainly makes more sense hanging about in space than old Roadblock.
Feeals like a M.A.S.K. Figure
I like the versions of the star brigade figures painted in white as they look more like astronauts than the garish other versions. Oh yes, and my namesake once fought Ozone when he had been turned into a giant grasshopper
This is a pretty good figure, and his helmet is a lot easier to find than the v1 (for some reason). I agree that this grey version fits Star Brigade well, and I think the tan one is more terrestrial oriented. Ozone when he’s not Eco-Warrioring.
I found this figure for $2 at a KB Outlet in the spring of 1995. I bought him due to the black weapons and removable helmet. As soon as I opened him up, though, I was really surprised at how much I liked him. At the time, I had no knowledge of the Eco Warriors figure, so this Ozone was brand new and only an astronaut to me. I had him pilot the Razorblade for many, many years.
The brown version from ’94 is the still the best. (And, one of the rarest figures in the vintage retail line as he was shotpacked in the series 2 Star Brigade cases. It’s rumored there are 10,000 of the Lunartix aliens, so Ozone exists in numbers around ~7500 if the alien number is accurate.) But, this version still has relevance to me since it was one of the tail end retail figures I found as I scrounged through discount stores and clearance ailes for left over Joes in 1995 and 1996.
I think this would be the only Star Brigade Ozone I would want.
@Letal
I’m guessing all those aliens were kept in the U.S. I never saw any of them in my neck of the woods [rural Australia]
Yeah, I can see the MASK resemblance too.
Mighty convenient his biohazard suit also protects him from the extreme temperatures of space. Good luck throwing those grenades in space though, LOL.
An excellent face sculpt!