Hey everyone, Anything interesting happen while I was away? I’ve been off on a quest to learn the art of mold-making and casting. I’ve made and sold custom figures via Etsy and Instagram as ToyBuz. It’s been an enjoyable and fulfilling journey thus far, and I’ve been blessed to make a few bucks along the way. I thought I’d pop
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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 Sometimes when you want a certain character when you’re a kid, you wind up buying some pretty subpar figures. By the time 1993 rolled around, KansasBrother had had his version of Snake-Eyes for a while and I kind of wanted my own version. While at the Toys ‘R’ Us near my grandparents’ in the south suburbs of Chicago,
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By KansasBrawler Generally speaking, I don’t have strong memories of most of the trips to toy departments when I came home with Joes. However, I do remember the origins of ones that I got as presents for Christmas. In my household, we sort of had two Christmases. My father was a pastor (he’s now since retired) which meant traveling to
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I thought Star Brigade was a neat concept–combat astronauts. Joe has had a long history with the US space program, and the Real American Hero era had its share of space adventuring before things went all-out sci-fi in 1993. Though the figures were a mix of spacesuit-adjacent molds, at least Countdown made it into the mix. Countdown was one of
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You know what I love most about Desert Scorpion? Is it the amazing weapon complement? The unique uniform design? The cool, Snake Eyes-Esque mask? I appreciate all those great elements, but my favorite part of the figure is Unexplained Giant Scorpion. The accessory list printed next to the card bubble calls it a pet scorpion, but I prefer my name.
Read moreIt’s time to blast back to one of the first figures I covered when I started this craziness back in 2011. Back then, I was just grabbing whatever figure struck my fancy and setting up photos in front of my old Missile Command HQ. Such an innocent time. Nowadays of course I have a much more sophisticated method, wherein I
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Ace is one of those Joe characters you can almost always expect to show up in a new line. The team usually has a fighter aircraft of some sort, and who else can function as well as this guy as a pilot figure? Of course the original version is iconic, but the new sculpt and modern eras also featured Mr.
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It’s Turkey Day once again and time to break out a not-so-great Joe. Oh boy this one’s gonna hurt. Imagine if I told you two of the most special and popular first series GI Joe figure would be available again at retail, and even got you all excited with pre-sell photos of the toys in unique color schemes, then pulled
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Star Brigade! GI Joe and space travel have a long history, and even though the 90s flirtation with the final frontier was more based in sci-fi than fact, I appreciate the branching out of Joe into new themes. Unfortunately the end of the era came much too quickly, and the team was back solidly on Earth for its 2002 reboot.
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