Backyard Battles: GI Joe 1982-83 Part 1
By Jason Royalty Backyard Battles’ Jason is back with another great feature with Joes in the wild! Stay tuned for two more parts of this shoot coming soon!
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Retaliation Crimson Guard
By KansasBrawler I’ve always liked the Crimson Guard. The concept of elite Cobra operatives who are not only dangerous on the battlefield but dangerous inside the American home front as well is really cool. However, to me, the figure has always relegated him to the status of Cobra Commander’s bodyguard. That’s neat enough, but I’ve always thought the Crimson Guards
Read moreJoe Toys That Could Have Been: MASS Device Playsets
By Past Nastification We’ve looked at potential vehicles and action figures in Sunbow’s The MASS Device miniseries. Now let’s finish the series by looking at potential playsets. Cobra Castle: If you’re old enough to remember the wonderful Marx Toys Navarone playset, just scale it up in your mind. The Terror Drome is a great playset. However, it was designed to
Read moreFirefly (50th Anniversary)
By KansasBrawler By the end of the relaunch era, I was a bit tired of the vintage Firefly figure. I’d never had it as a kid, but I had at least three versions of it by the time that era of the Joe line had ended. It’s not a bad mold, but it had gotten awfully overexposed by the end
Read moreThe Power of (Restored) Packaging: Big Jim’s Zorak
The Big Jim series from Mattel is endlessly interesting to me. What started out in in the 70s as a toyline in a pure adventure/sports vein morphed into a spy series full of crazy characters (with some package art provided by Jack Kirby!) and continued well into the 80s with heavy sci-fi elements. If you dig into its history, you’ll
Read moreCaptivating Cover: Marvel GI Joe #16
When I was a kid reader of Marvel comics, my main source of comics were newsstands at 7-11 and QuickTrip. Because of the often spotty distribution of some titles, I often missed several issue stretches of my favorite series. My early GI Joe comic collection skipped from issues 2, to 7, then to 17. I narrowly missed the events in
Read moreJoe Toys That Could Have Been: MASS Device Figures Part 3
By Past Nastification Finishing up the figures that could have been generated from the iconic first GI Joe animated mini-series. There are some great ones in this group. Stay tuned for playsets coming soon! Cobra Space Trooper: Lazy Sunbow gave Star Wars’ Stormtroopers new helmets and slightly different colors and hoped no one would notice. I noticed, but I’d be
Read moreSDCC Cobra Eel and Night Landing Craft
By KansasBrawler While I had strong childhood ties to both parts of the Joe half of the Danger at the Docks set, everything on the Cobra side was basically new to me. I didn’t have either the Eel or the Night Landing Craft growing up. I was pretty excited to get my hands on these pieces for the first time.
Read more1994 JC Penney Catalog: Joes and Not-Joes
1994 was the end of the Real American Hero run as well as the 30th anniversary of the GI Joe brand. It was a fun year in the sense of revisiting the original Joes, but a bummer to see the little guys going away. Though Joes weren’t as plentiful as in previous years’ Christmas catalogs, they did appear that year.
Read more1978 Simpsons Catalog Page: Hall of Fame Bad Guy Toys!
This catalog page from the Canadian Simpsons department store may not have much in the way of GI Joe content, but it more than makes up for it by including a group shot of some of my favorite 70s toy baddies. Imagine a world where Bionic Bigfoot, Stretch Monster, Terron and Darkon joined forces! It’s a 70s supergroup of bad
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