By Past Nastification The Medi-Vipers’ origin date waaaay back to the Marvel Comics run, where they popped up from time to time. They wore the old-fashioned head mirrors on their masked faces. If you’re wondering what a “head mirror” is, it’s the reflective circle on the metal band going around the Medi-Viper’s forwhead. Doctors used to wear them and I’m
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By KansasBrawler I’ve professed my love for the sci-fi elements of the G.I. Joe brand quite a few times before on this blog. With that context in mind, it should surprise no one here that I loved the ideas behind Rise of Cobra. While the execution of the film itself wasn’t great, the idea of Cobra using nanobots to cause
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By KansasBrawler Ever since I rediscovered the Joe brand in high school during the relaunch era, I’ve been strangely fascinated with a few vintage figures I didn’t have as a kid. Usually, my figure tastes tend to skew towards ones I had as a kid because I have strong memories of them and, for the most part (save Battle Corps
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By Past Nastification The fingerprint of Devil’s Due is all over this Zartan, although nothing on the packaging would indicate it. DD might have been denied any credit deserved for this design, but it made for a nice figure. It’s not a direct take on Zartan’s DD appearances, but more of a blending of them with elements of Zartan’s ARAH
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By KansasBrawler All right, loyal readers, I have a confession to make. I bought the 25th Anniversary Blowtorch and had buyer’s remorse pretty quickly. I don’t know why, but I just really didn’t like the figure once I got it out of the package. I think part of it was that the facemask on mine didn’t fit properly and made
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By KansasBrawler Overall, the 25th Anniversary line, while far from perfect, did a great job at referencing just about every facet of the small scale Joe brand’s history. One of the biggest surprises for me was the Cobra Night Watch set. I passed on the original set pretty easily when it first came out during the new sculpt era. I
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By KansasBrawler If you told me that Hasbro was going to give Heavy Duty some attention again, I probably would have laughed at you. Don’t get me wrong, I have very strong memories of Heavy Duty. He’s one of the few Joes I have strong memories of getting as a kid and his crazy weapon system was one of my
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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 It seems like every FSS wave has a controversial figure. However, FSS 6.0 seemed pretty controversy free. Everyone was pretty solidly behind the character choices and even the pre- release discussions of figure construction were fairly drama free. Unfortunately, drama reared is fabulous head when the mystery thirteenth figure showed up on our doorsteps. The clues led everyone
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By KansasBrawler As I’ve mentioned before, the Rise of Cobra troop builder set made a lot of changes to a lot of fan favorite Joes. However, Law wasn’t one of them. Yes, he was in fatigues instead of his more personalized uniform, but this modern Law really wasn’t all that different from the vintage figure. They were both MPs with
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