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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The Cobra Officer goes way way back to the beginnings of the relaunched 1980s GI Joe line. Though the differences between it and the Cobra soldier seemed small to me as a kid, I now see how unique that figure appears next to his rank and file comrade. Such was not the case with this officer, available as part of
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Let’s hear it for new characters! I find it exciting when a new Joe or Cobra shows up on the scene, as it takes me back to the first few years of the RAH line, when every year held the promise of something new and different. I’m glad that the Joe line in the 2000’s wasn’t a slavish tribute to
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By Past Nastification This toy is why I love antique malls and road trips. The randomness of finding things that I probably never would have otherwise stumbled across, even on eBay. But there it was, sitting on the floor of an antique mall, calling to me. Making me wish I would build a customized city or town just to showcase
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The Air Commandos just didn’t get enough play during their time on the pegs. Joe’s mid-80s heyday of cartoon tie-ins had fizzled into the DIC series, and many of the sub-groups didn’t get a lot of coverage in the Marvel comic. It fell to the Impel trading card set to play up the figures in these teams, and you couldn’t
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By KansasBrawler There are not a lot of figures in my collection that actually make me sad inside. Sometimes, there may be a bad figure, but I can usually find at least one redeeming quality. Unfortunately, 25th Anniversary Lt. Falcon isn’t one of those figures. That’s a big shame because I liked KansasBrother’s 1987 Falcon—so much, in fact, that I
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Become a GI Joe expert! How many of you had the first GI Joe Yearbook (or pined for it) back in the day? I was lucky enough to find it at the local newsstand, and devoured it. Along with a reprint of the first issue, we got some unique peeks behind the scenes and at the future of the storylines.
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Tunnel Rat is a character who benefits from the odd proportions of the new sculpt years. Portrayed as a shorter fellow, his figure is appropriately sized, at least in terms of height. Such things weren’t possible in the 80s-90s, with its more standard and consistent builds, Sgt. Slaughter and Big Boa notwithstanding. T-Rat seems even more suited to his MOS
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By Flag Points Don Don returns with another nice set of dio shots, this time featuring the most photogenic GI Joe backdrop of all–the USS Flagg.
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By KansasBrawler Sometimes, it’s hard to improve on a classic, but other times, a character’s original design isn’t the best. Hawk (then a colonel) was first released in 1982 alongside the rest of his team as the operator of the Mobile Missile System. However, due to a combination of being a vehicle driver and sharing a lot of his look
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