By KansasBrawler As much as I love Kre-O, sometimes the choices they make with their sets are a little strange. Case in point, the Thunderwave Jet Boat set. While it’s probably the second-weakest set, I wanted it because Cutter is one of my favorite Joes. It’s obvious the Thunderwave Jet Boat set was a refugee from the unsuccessful Battleship line
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By Flag Points Dave Two experiences I had fueled the crazy thoughts I was having as I drove home to see the new puppy my family picked up while I was away. I couldn’t stop replaying comments the remarkably-prolific Ron Rudat made while looking at a modern sculpt located just above a Gung-Ho Marine Dress Blues 2-up on the Hasbro
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By Flag Points Dave GI Joe has always been a “local” thing to me. I grew up in the Catskill Mountains of New York, played with the toys in my woods, my streams and my fields with my good buddies for hours. Like many others, I imagined myself in the role of my favorite character(s) while playing with neighborhood friends,
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By KansasBrawler Growing up, I always wanted the original B.A.T. figure. It came out just a little before my time in the Joe brand, but it was still shown on the cardbacks of some of the earlier figures I managed to find. However, for whatever reason, the original B.A.T. eluded me. I had the 1991 version and I really do
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By KansasBrawler While I may not have had the Air Commandos figures growing up, I’ve always been fascinated by obscure Joes, and that definitely describes that particular subset. Personally, I always liked Skymate the best, so when I saw that he was a souvenir figure at Joe Con 2016, I was really excited. He’s by no means a household name
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By Past Nastification The further away from it we get, the more quality I find in the New Sculpt era. This isn’t a whitewashing of the badness, but a taking in of the good despite the bad. Ripper made his NS debut in 2002. Unlike many of the NS figures, this one has no real proportion issues. It smoothly bridges
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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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By Past Nastification Introduced as a Target exclusive for the Rise of Cobra line, the 2009 Grand Slam is my favorite version of the character. The previous 25A-style Grand Slam had silver colored pads instead of this one’s metallic ice blue ones. The silver pad Grand Slam also shared a head with 25A Flash, making it a head-to-toe repaint. The
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By KansasBrawler Going into Joe Con 2016, I had some pretty strong ideas about what the souvenir sets were going to be. However, I was almost completely off base compared to what the GIJCC actually did. The one exclusive that I really didn’t have any idea how they were going to handle was the annual parachute drop figure. My best
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By Past Nastification Slice and Dice were the early 90’s Cobra ninja team of the ARAH run. That is to say they were the mid-quality ninja team. If you needed a ninja team that could probably accomplish their mission, Slice and Dice were it. Their introduction in the late Marvel run wasn’t fully fleshed out, and poorly drawn. It gave
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