By KansasBrawler I’ve never had any special affinity for Recondo. I never had him growing up so I don’t have any real memories of him and by the time Pursuit of Cobra Recondo came out, I’d only had the Assault on Cobra Island Recondo for a short time and he really hadn’t made an impression on me. Honestly, the strongest
Read moreBy KansasBrawler Ah, phantom waves…the bane of every collector’s existence. It always seems like some really good stuff gets shunted off into final, hard-to-find waves of toy lines. Be it the WarriorsThree from Thor, Kwinn and company from Retaliation or the great figures in the last wave of Pursuit of Cobra, it’s always maddening when Hasbro brings the heat in
Read moreBy KansasBrawler I’ve never been much of an army-builder. I’ve never really seen the point of assembling large quantities of identical looking figures. Intellectually, I understand the appeal…there have been some great shots in Joe dio-stories of Cobra Commander addressing a massive group of all the Cobra specialties before his big scheme takes off. Even Rob’s army-building post from a
Read moreBy KansasBrawler It’s hard to deny that once Cobra Commander finds a good look, he sticks with it. He doesn’t generally stray too far from the blue dictator suit and either a hood or a helmet. It makes sense that the first two 25th Anniversary Cobra Commander figures represented those looks. It’s his classic look, however, my inner kid was
Read moreBy KansasBrawler I have to credit Hasbro for their diabolical level of genius. It seems like every so often, they make a figure that I didn’t necessarily want because of its design but then they deck it out in a paint job that hits all my nostalgia buttons hard and I snap it up. A prime example of this is
Read moreby KansasBrawler I have fond memories of my brother’s Outback figure growing up. The figure was pretty simple, but at the same time, that look fit the Joe’s survival expert very well. When I first heard Outback was up for inclusion in the 25th Anniversary line, I was happy. He definitely deserved it. I wasn’t sure if he was the
Read moreby KansasBrawler I have to say, with the wide variety of store exclusives in the Rise of Cobra line, it’s really hard for me to pin down a favorite one. While I still can’t quite do that, I can say that I think Target probably got the best ones. The mini-vehicle and figure sets were incredibly cool and they really
Read more
by KansasBrawler In my opinion, the Cobra Armored Assault set was probably the best one out of the first wave of Kre-O product. It came with a great classic Joe character, a cool Cobra vehicle and a pair of Cobra blueshirts. While I’ve used the blueshirts on with a couple of other sets, I have yet to talk about the
Read moreby KansasBrawler Hands down, the figure I was most looking forward to out of the Defense of Cobra Island set was the Alley Viper. I have fond memories of that orange and blue urban assault trooper and Hasbro really ran with the ball there. However, and this surprises me most of all, that version of the Alley Viper didn’t make
Read moreby KansasBrawler Figures like Cutter are what really killed me about the 25th Anniversary line. I loved Cutter growing up (though my only version was the really awesome D.E.F. version). The figure I had was great and reading his filecard, I found out he and I shared a birthplace. That was really awesome to my kid brain and it’s still
Read more