Mutt was one of my favorite figures back in ’84. Imagine my surprise seeing him as part of Slaughter’s Marauders. I confess to not understanding what these strange repaints were about when noticing them in 1989. Those old molds just looked strange hanging on the pegs. What was I doing in a toy store in ’89? The first Batman film
Read moreWild 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
Read moreCover 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
Read more1987 only produced one single carded Cobra army building trooper, the battlefield technician, or Techno-Viper. Some folks look at ’87 as the year things started to go downhill with the Real American Hero line, but I don’t agree. There was still a mix of Joe and Cobra personalities with new and different designs and specialties to keep things interesting. The
Read moreSome GI Joe figures are quite realistic and close to their actual military subject matter in terms of design. Others have been extrapolated out to the next generation of technology, the “five minutes in the future” that we hear about so much. Still others just make you scratch your head. I’ve been scratching mine since I first saw Lightfoot. Is
Read moreAs luck would have it, Storm Shadow had a new figure released the year after I stopped buying GI Joes. I had also stopped reading the comic, and had stopped buying comics altogether, so I was oblivious to this new look, and to his turn to the roster of the “good guys”. The first sight I had of his figure
Read moreThere are lesser known GI Joe characters that discussing from time to time seem like breaking new ground. Then there are the big guys that have been major players in the toy line, comics, and cartoons and whose ground has not only been broken, but entire homes, strip malls, and condos have been built upon it. Stalker belongs to the
Read moreImagine piloting a vehicle that puts so much stress on your body that you have out of body experiences. That is the most trippy thing I’ve read on a GI Joe file card. Talk about dangerous and a liability for your air forces. Once again, Cobra pushes the limits of safety for its troops, and puts itself at a combat
Read moreI don’t always have a good memory for the old days of toy buying as a kid, but I can still remember when I got the Water Mocassin. Near our neighborhood was a small shopping center, with a couple of larger stores. One of the stores was a local grocery store chain and the other a TG&Y, a department store
Read moreMuskrat’s file card paints a picture of a pretty interesting individual, and someone who seems like a unique presence to add to the team. Just reading his background reminds me of an old Jerry Reed song. It’s unfortunate that the 1988-1989 figures (including Muskrat) fell into a no man’s land of Joe animation, with only a few getting a moment in the
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