As you probably know, I'm as big a fan of GI Joe and other toys' marketing campaigns as much as the products themselves. I also dig catalogs and toy ads. That's why I'm totally jazzed about a new book project on Kickstarter. Philip Reed has produced similar books covering general action figures, Star Wars, Transformers and even carrying cases over
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Any pop culture phenom worth its salt gives rise to all manner of ancillary product. From toys to bedsheets and board games, there’s no end to the ways in which a property can capitalize on success. Sometimes cross promotion of tchotchkes merges with the fads of the day to produce something unique. The 90s saw trading cards come to the
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By Past Nastification The A-Team was a logical choice for Galoob. The same kids who bought GI Joe toys and watched the GI Joe cartoon surely idolized NBC’s campy-but-virtuous soldiers of fortune. Galoob was obviously trying to shoehorn some A-Team toys into kid’s GI Joe adventures and grab a buck. Fair enough. The 1:18 scale line featured mediocre figures,
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By KansasBrawler If there was one Sky Patrol member I was a little concerned about the GIJCC making, it was Altitude. The vintage altitude figure used Slipstream’s body as a base, and the modern Slipstream wasn’t all that great. Thankfully, the GIJCC decided to think a bit outside the box with him. The vintage elements are there, in a form,
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Tripwire isn’t the most exciting of GI Joe characters, but I found his figure useful in my battles. He functioned not only as a mine detector/bomb disposal specialist, but he also laid mines. Why else would they have included a mine-toting backpack? The card art was confusing to me as a kid. I thought his left arm position made it
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I have a lot of fun playing a bit of clean-up with card art images. The Adventure Team sets didn’t often offer a lot of real estate to show off product paintings, but the carded outfits gave up a little more package width to showcase the set. The paintings were often evocative, and certainly helped to fire one’s imagination. This
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Is that in reference to Heavy Duty or the Cobra CLAWS here? Regardless–never give up on that chokehold, kkds!
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By KansasBrawler When the GIJCC first announced the Sky Patrol theme, I was excited. However, I didn’t really know what they could do with the Cobra side of things. Yes, there were the two international Sky Patrol Cobras, but beyond that, I wasn’t quite sure what way they’d go for army builders. I think Night Vulture was the first army
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By Past Nastification Funskool usually had two approaches to its color schemes. The first was to keep figures about the same as their American releases. The second was to go random with gaudy and clashing colors guaranteed to create motion sickness. Those figures were fun not because they were good, but because they were outside the norm. But every
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Ideal’s Captain Action series of licensed super hero outfits would seem like a natural formula for success. Based on the razor and blades concept that made Barbie and GI Joe champions of the toy aisle, the Captain was a basic twelve inch doll who could be outfitted as any number of comic and/or TV heroes. The series didn’t last long,
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