By KansasBrawler There are very few figures I’d consider missing from my childhood collection. However, the one glaring omission was the Crimson Guard. I thought that they looked so cool when I first saw them on a cardback but I never saw one at a store. Not having the Crimson Guard as a kid means I’m kind of that the
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By KansasBrawler When Resolute Cobra Commander was first released as a single carded figure, I wasn’t really that interested in him. Sure, he was a bit of a different than the standard Cobra Commander, but unlike Duke, I didn’t feel there enough changes to warrant adding him to my collection. After all, I already had a lot of Cobra Commander
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I don’t think any figure quite sums up the crazy possibilities (with maybe the exception of Lightning Mobutu) of what’s possible when a knock-off toy maker throws caution to the wind and goes all-out on a ridiculous concept. Witness Condor Strike, a baseball/-themed me-too corollary of 1980s GI Joe, produced years later in the 1990s. The most apt comparison I
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By KansasBrawler I’ve always been a big fan of the old-school Battle Stations and Battlefield Accessories. Heck, my very first Field Reports before I became a weekly blogger here were on the 1990 mail-away Battlefield Accessories. However, I never had many of them growing up. I thought they were cool, but I just don’t really remember ever seeing them in
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If there’s one thing Cobra does better than the Joes, it’s to come up with outlandish and ultimately dangerous vehicles. I salute them in this regard, as it takes a special kind of nuts to knowingly develop machinery that will do severe harm to life and limb of troops. Further, that said troops will look gloriously goofy in their final
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By KansasBrawler When I got back into Joe collecting during high school, YoJoe exposed me to a lot of interesting figures I didn’t know existed. Growing up in Kansas and South Dakota, there was some Joe stuff that just kind of slipped by me. I think that geography is what helped me find earlier figures like Lady Jaye that wound
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The early issues of the Marvel GI Joe comic in particular presented the characters with varying differences among their uniforms. Herb Trimpe, Mike Vosburg and others had an artistic license that isn’t seen much in the current era of highly focused marketing. That’s a shame, as I find the resulting anachronisms interesting. There’s not much heart to the modern adherence
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The Cobra Air Cav Trooper was part of the Red Lasers Army set first released at this year’s JoeCon. Cobra troops are nothing new within custom o-ring offerings. All the various factions of Cobra (and new variants) are out there if you look around. It’s actually pretty staggering to see the variety of just Black Major’s figures based on Cobra
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By KansasBrawler As you could already tell from the photos of what I purchased that I posted during my Joe Con After Action Reports, the GIJCC really managed to hit my nostalgia buttons with their choices for souvenir sets. When I went in 2009, I was really only interested in one set. However, in 2016, I snagged everything but the
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Ideal’s Captain Action series of licensed super hero outfits would seem like a natural formula for success. Based on the razor and blades concept that made Barbie and GI Joe champions of the toy aisle, the Captain was a basic twelve inch doll who could be outfitted as any number of comic and/or TV heroes. The series didn’t last long,
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