Sometimes toy companies reuse molds in an effort to cut costs. This practice sometimes gets under the skin of toy collectors. I can understand why, particularly when a well-known character is used to portray another. It’s not bad when bits and pieces end up contributing to other figures, but when an entire toy gets a fresh paint job and new
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By KansasBrawler I know Rise of Cobra wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but I thought it was a fun Joe movie and the action figure line had a lot of hidden gems. If you could find her on the pegs (which was at least initially no easy task), Reactive Armor Scarlett was one of those gems in my opinion. She
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The Ferret remains one of my favorite small vehicles of the 80s GI Joe line. Once I saw it in the Marvel Comics commercial, and in the comic itself back in 1985, I had to have it. Something about a four-wheeler just brings back 80s memories, especially when a ninja is at the helm. From its portrayal in the various
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Developed by noted board game manufacturer Parker Brothers and licensed to Marvel comics as a method of cross-selling the toy, ROM was a marvel (pardon the pun) of toy features in the late 70s. While other toy companies had produced figures that stretched, pulsed and lit up, few integrated electronic effects as intricately as ROM. With flashing lights, and a
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We action figure geeks can be a cowardly, superstitious lot. We’re sometimes afraid of changes to the beloved properties of our youth. Clinging to established visions of characters only as we have known them, we often cheat ourselves of enjoying new interpretations of our time-tested favorites. Maybe we hold some sort of irrational fear that the changing of our childhood
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It’s been a while since I’ve refreshed things around here, and I thought I’d do a little WordPress spring cleaning/organizing. I’m still in the process of getting things laid out just right, but all the regular material is still here. My goal is to make the loads of daily content (almost four years’ worth!) more accessible beyond clicking through page
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Can a bit of beautifully rendered package art sell a less-than-great product? Heck, yes. Check out the card art for the 1987 versions of the Cobra Action Packs, the goofy little low price point items that featured (among other gimmicks) wind-up action. Of course, the packs were often outsized and some looked just too dang goofy on the figures, but
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The Iron Grenadiers version of the Enemy Weapons Supplier must have been quite popular in the Hasbro ranks during the first few years of the modern GI Joe era. This Destro mold was released five times in 2008. Those sort of numbers remind me what an amazing time collectors had during those reinvigorated Real American Hero homage years of 2007
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By KansasBrawler Growing up, I never really had that strong of an attachment to the playsets. I loved Joe vehicles, but the Joe playsets were just a little too big to pick up and play, and that’s what I preferred. My brother and I had joint custody of the 1991 Joe Headquarters, but that was about it for playsets and
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Customs have been a fascination of mine within toy collecting for some time. The first time I can remember customizing a toy myself was back in the 80s, when I asked my mother to make a set of arctic clothes for my ’82 Snake Eyes and ’83 Stalker. I had been so smitten with issue 2 of the Marvel comic
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