By KansasBrawler If you told me that Hasbro was going to give Heavy Duty some attention again, I probably would have laughed at you. Don’t get me wrong, I have very strong memories of Heavy Duty. He’s one of the few Joes I have strong memories of getting as a kid and his crazy weapon system was one of my
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The HISS tank! I almost can’t believe I haven’t covered Cobra’s most famous and versatile ground vehicle after lo these almost eight years. It’s cliche to put this forth, but what can you say about this toy? I can think of a few things, and some are no quite sunshine memories and rainbow nostalgia. The HISS was for me, until
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Silver Pads Grand Slam as he’s more commonly known, is still one of my all-time favorite GI Joe figures. Despite the hundreds of figures released over the years, he’s still in my top five. If I were to be honest though, I would have preferred a different head. The Grunt/Zap mold is just so distinct, and it doesn’t match the
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Wild Bill is one of those figures that not only looks different in his cartoon incarnation, but in his original comic appearance as well. Maybe that’s because he’s usually pictured sitting in the pilot seat of a helicopter rather than running about with his teammates. As a kid, my Wild Bill figure pretty much stayed in the Dragonfly. Being an
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Apologies for the less than pristine figure, but that’s how these guys are often found. The Viper Pilot is of course the standard original Cobra trooper mold, with a silver sigil in place of red. Something about the silver paint used for the chest emblem just doesn’t hold up to play over the years. Like the HISS driver I posted
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By Past Nastification Why, Hasbro, why? Heavy Duty started off right in 1991, a mixed bag year for GI Joe. The character’s initial figure featured a good design with realistic coloring. When Heavy Duty returned in 1993, things weren’t so good. This wasn’t just a Star Brigade figure, it was further specified as an Armor Tech figure. As someone who
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By KansasBrawler It seems like every FSS wave has a controversial figure. However, FSS 6.0 seemed pretty controversy free. Everyone was pretty solidly behind the character choices and even the pre- release discussions of figure construction were fairly drama free. Unfortunately, drama reared is fabulous head when the mystery thirteenth figure showed up on our doorsteps. The clues led everyone
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I lost my grandmother last week, and it’s been a difficult time to do the usual stuff of life, much less photograph and write about toys. That’s why most of the writing from week’s posts have been cribbed from entries written years ago. Today I was going to post Falcon glider Grunt, not realizing until I pulled up the old
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Cover Girl’s figure doesn’t quite live up to her code name or to the reputation put forth in her file card as a stunning beauty. However, consider this is a figure produced in 1983, when female action figures weren’t all that prevalent, and the production techniques of the time didn’t lend themselves to the kind of detail and realism that
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There aren’t many GI Joe figures that made it through to this day from my original childhood collection. I was much more conscientious with Star Wars in that respect, maintaining all of my original toys. The Joes and Cobras unfortunately fell by the wayside, for the most part. I had thought that the only figures that survived the teenage-years purge
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