The Night Raven was such an impressive toy, it really didn’t need an amazing piece of box art to help sell it. The clean painting is even more striking. Here’s hoping Hasbro sees fit to supporting the release of great toy art like this. It’s fantastic to see the fans take the initiative when it comes to this sort of
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If there’s one thing you can’t accuse the later Funskool releases of, it’s drabness. The colors ran pretty wild and wooly near the end of their time with the GI Joe license. Of course, I’m not complaining, because I have a streak in me that prefers polychromatic playthings. Wild Weasel is I think famous in collectors’ minds because of both
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By KansasBrawler Ninja Force is a pretty controversial part of Joe history. To help offset the losses in market share that the Joe brand was suffering due to the rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (a brand Kirk Bozigian said Hasbro passed on back in the day), Hasbro decided to focus on the ninja thing a bit more and
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I couldn’t be a proper geek without commemorating the 50th anniversary of Star Trek today. 50 years–wow. It seems like just yesterday I was playing Interplay’s 25th anniversary PC game on the family’s Packard Bell 386SX. Anyway, how can you pay homage to Trek and stay (tangentially) on-topic with GI Joe? Easy–just add zombies. In 2011, you couldn’t swing a
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As we’ve often covered on this blog, GI Joe has not been without its imitators over the years. While it’s easy to see such things as me-too cash grabs by competing toy manufacturers, I am impressed when the imitations carve out their own niche. I am particularly fond of the subjects that get weird. Such was the case of Big
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My most vivid memory of the Stinger goes back to a friend’s birthday party back in the summer of 1984. At the time, I had amassed a few early figures and some of the first and second series vehicles, including the original VAMP. My friend made out like a bandit for this birthday; the VAMP Mark II and Stinger were
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I often wonder why Hasbro didn’t take more opportunities to throw in bad puns with code names. I know the obvious thought goes to Sgt. Slaughter, but that’s not a proper pun, just a colorful alliteration. No, I’m talking about putting some thought of relationship into the character’s rank and surname. This is the kind of stuff you begin to
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The Sonic Fighters repaints are an interesting lot. Straddling the years of 1990 and 1991, they seem to be of two worlds. Based on older molds, the figures bring back memories of what came before. Equipped with enormous noise-making backpacks and a few strange color choices, they serve as a kind of herald of what was to come. Gimmicks, sub-teams
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By KansasBrawler I don’t know why, but I’ve always been a little fascinated by battle damaged figures. I always wished Hasbro had dabbled in battle damage, especially since they had the B.A.T., which they could damage without making parents uncomfortable since it was a robot. I got my wish with the Defense of Cobra Island set and I was very
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I’ll just leave this right here. Do I really need to say anything?
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