By KansasBrawler I’ve professed my love for the sci-fi elements of the G.I. Joe brand quite a few times before on this blog. With that context in mind, it should surprise no one here that I loved the ideas behind Rise of Cobra. While the execution of the film itself wasn’t great, the idea of Cobra using nanobots to cause
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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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By KansasBrawler When I look back on the Rise of Cobra line, I find it amazing at how many different store exclusives there were during that line. Wal-Mart got some exclusives, Toys ‘R’ Us got a few, Target got a pretty wide variety of them, and even K-Mart got in on the exclusive game. I don’t know about you, but
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By KansasBrawler While some folks may not have liked the movie, the Rise of Cobra line was very effective at what it did—getting screen-accurate action figures out quite quickly. However, some of my favorite pieces were the repaints. Without even trying, I amassed a pretty impressive army of Neo-Vipers and I’m fine with that. I really liked the movie’s take
Read moreBy KansasBrawler I love when new characters are introduced into the Joe brand. While Rise of Cobra was mostly about reinterpreting classic characters into a new aesthetic, the last wave of figures brought in some brand new characters. Though they weren’t all gems, from the moment I saw Night Adder I was hooked. Cobra’s never had a dog handler and
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Grab your drab crayons kids, because it’s time for another Rise of Cobra coloring book page. As much as I didn’t care for the film’s costume designs, I have to give props for the amount of tie-in merch that was around in 2009. Not great stuff, but available. Faint praise indeed.
Read moreBy KansasBrawler When the Resolute cartoon was first released, everyone went crazy over Snake Eyes. The character was well handled and his design was great. However, it initially looked like the Resolute Snake Eyes figure was going to fall victim to the line rebranding from the 25th Anniversary line to the Rise of Cobra line. That meant that the stolen
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Yes yes, it’s another Snake Eyes. He’s just darn hard to avoid if you’re going to talk about 1980s and beyond GI Joe for any length of time. Most of the time, his figures are black, black and black. Sure, sometimes grey is in the mix, and he famously broke out some blue duds in ’91, but for the most
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By KansasBrawler Every now and then, Hasbro releases a set that winds up being highly controversial. During the shift from Rise of Cobra over to Pursuit of Cobra, we got one of those sets. Hasbro released a pair of army builder packs (one Joe, one Cobra) as Toys ‘R’ Us exclusives. The Joe set had familiar names like Footloose, Law
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By Past Nastification This figure is in my collection, but I have no recollection of it. I discovered it the other day and it triggered absolutely no memories. Hasbro pumped out a ton of figures during the Rise of Cobra run, and this is one of them. The more I look at it, the more I like it. Like many
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