Wow, that’s a mouthful of a post title. It’s fitting, considering that the Talking Battle Commanders spoke quite a bit, at least for the time. Hey, three lines of scratchy sampled audio was pretty amazing back then. The early 90s saw an explosion of this sort of feature, with many action figure lines sporting oversized talking backpacks. The Joes were
Read more
Now we’re getting into the catalog years that I surreptitiously followed as a burgeoning adult collector. First off, I’ll admit it–I bought 1989 Batman toys. Okay, maybe just Batman and Bob the Goon, but can you blame a kid collector turned teen comic geek? Getting into comics after dumping the toys of my youth actually led me right back into
Read more
I remember first seeing trace plates from ads for the Mighty Men and Monster Maker kit. The commercial (see it here) was burned in my brain. This GI Joe set, released in the 90s, and based on many of the DIC era figures, is along similar lines, although you build two parts of a scene rather than new characters. Now
Read more
From the 1991 Hasbro international catalog comes the Arctic Blast. I love the snowy background in this one. Very Wampa ice cave.
Read more
Let’s keep the Toy Fair catalog streak rolling with a few ninjas.
Read more
Yesterday’s post sparked quite a bit of convo, so here’s another page from the same year’s catalog. It’s the Street Fighter II assortment. While not as crazy a dio as the Mega Marines, there’s still some interesting things going on–such as pre-production differences from the final toys. Can you spot ’em all?
Read more
I yak every day, so tonight I’ll just let the image speak for itself…
Read more
We interrupt the usual daily post (don’t worry–a super fun Halloween feature is coming later today) to tell you about yet another cool Joe-related Kickstarter project. 3.75″ Joe: Creating G.I.Joe ®: A Real American Hero™ focuses on pre-production art as well as stories from the people who created the 1980s iteration of the brand. The project is the first volume
Read more
By Acer In 1994, 3.75″ G.I. Joe was on the way out, but Hasbro/Kenner sought to give many of the figure molds purpose in their upcoming lines based on the movie adaptations of Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat. In the case of the Street Fighter line, probably because of the then-popularity of the movie’s star Jean-Claude Van Damme, the toymaker
Read more
Rick Ranger is, well, a former Texas Ranger. Once a Ranger always a Ranger, I suppose. If you’re a CORPS! collector, it might be easy to confuse him with Jones, who wears a similar type of hat, and shares the same torso and arm molds. Rick looks like he’s also sharing a head with the existing Whipsaw figure, a sort
Read more