By KansasBrawler As I’ve mentioned before, the Rise of Cobra troop builder set made a lot of changes to a lot of fan favorite Joes. However, Law wasn’t one of them. Yes, he was in fatigues instead of his more personalized uniform, but this modern Law really wasn’t all that different from the vintage figure. They were both MPs with
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When I got my first couple of Joe figures I was having fun with toys that were something new and fresh after years of Star Wars fanaticism. It took the addition of the 1983 series to totally bring me around to being a Joe fan first and foremost. At a time when early looks at new product just couldn’t happen,
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If I needed to sum up what makes Major Bludd a great GI Joe villain with one word, it would be character. With the first year Cobra troops being nameless, faceless minions, the organization needed an injection of personality in its second outing. Major Bludd, as one of the major Cobra-associated agents of 1983, added some variety to the bad
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By Past Nastification One day, very soon, Rob is going to scold me. “Those aren’t action figures! They’re dolls!” he’ll exclaim as he tries to make me understand that Sweet Street figures have no place on a GI Joe action figure review site. “I already tolerated the review of those Tina Fey and Amy Pohler figures!” And he’d be right.
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By KansasBrawler Copperhead and I go way back, though strangely, my love of the Water Moccasin is fairly recent. That’s because the Copperhead I knew back in the day was KansasBrother’s Python Patrol version. I thought he was really cool but had I known he was first released with an equally cool vehicle, I would have thought he was even
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If you needed an all-around, useful anywhere trooper follow-up to Grunt, Airborne was your man. This cat could jump out of a perfectly good Dragonfly and pound the ground with the best of them. What’s not to love about the accessories, color and specialty here? Just compare that backpack and rifle to what came just one year before. Sleekly designed
Read moreWhat a winter it’s been here at JAD HQ! With snow storms, ice storms, sleet, freezing rain, graupel (look it up) and many, many snow days for the kids, Mother Nature has served up a winter that takes me back to my youth. We’re no strangers to snow in these parts, but it seems as the decades have gone by,
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The first and my favorite of all the Joe team’s combat divers, Torpedo brings forth all sorts of great childhood memories. First and foremost, a kid just couldn’t help but get this figure into the water, whether sink, tub, or pool. Unfortunately the aquatic adventures eventually wreaked havoc on the toy, as screws ultimately rusted, and in the case of
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The new for 1983 Joes are one of the most cohesive looking assortments in all the Real American Hero year’s. With sleek sculpts, an overall drab color scheme, and a wonderfully diverse group of specialties, Hasbro cemented what the previous year established, at least in this kid’s mind. It was the year that hooked me and pulled my toy-collecting heart
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By Past Nastification When GI Joe relaunched as “A Real American Hero” in 1982 and into 1983, there seemed to be two cardinal artistic rules about good guys and bad guys within the toy structure: 1. Good guys didn’t hide their faces (except for Snake-Eyes, of course). Figures like Tripwire and Snow Job, with only exposed partial faces, were frustrating.
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