I’ve long thought that the Adventure Team’s chest winch accessory was one of the most irresponsibly designed pieces of equipment in the team’s history. It’s a debilitating back injury waiting to happen. When you strap this sucker on, you might as well have the work comp doc on standby. I mean, we wouldn’t see something this kind of egregious disregard for
Read more
As we’ve covered before, the battlefield accessories were great extras to add to your living room or backyard warfare. Hasbro spent as much effort in making and marketing these sets as they did their larger vehicle offerings. The Ammo Dump box art clearly shows all the bits in the kit, and even cross-sells Recondo in the process. Diabolical marketing strikes
Read more
Palitoy’s Action Force packaging is interesting in its straightforward design. There’s no explosion, character art or extraneous copy, just bold color and text. It’s basic and effective. When the line began to incorporate the US Joe concepts like Cobra and o-ring figure designs, small additions were made to the cards. The Commander’s card features a unique Cobra logo design, as
Read more
One of the things I really enjoy about the Adventure Team package art are the mixing of depictions of the product in both fictional and real-world settings. The Windboat illustrates Joe in his craft at the left, yet the right panel shows a kid hand assembling the toy. Better yet, a closer look at Joe on the windboat reveals that
Read more
One of my final childhood GI Joe purchases, Fast Draw was nevertheless a favorite figure. I guess I liked the out and out crazy angle of a human missile platform dressed as an oven mitt. The toy’s weapons were intricate, and there’s something fascinating about Joes with cool helmets. The card art really sells the action that you can imagine
Read more
Sometimes toy packages belie their contents. Being a Star Wars and 80s GI Joe kid, I didn’t get exposed to many action figure series that were in window boxes. As a result, opening a box and finding a toy that didn’t live up to its box art was a surprising experience. It was kind of like opening a Cracker Jacks
Read more
Special Force comes to us from Sungold, a company perhaps best known for the Galaxy Warriors series, a Masters of the Universe knock-off line that is now beloved for collectors of me-too cheapness. These days there’s a cottage industry of custom bootleg art toy offerings that take their cues from what were once the odd castoffs of the past. We live in
Read more
I wasn’t exposed much to the Condor until I began collecting again in the 90s. I recall seeing it fleetingly in Toys R Us ads at its time of release (yes, I was peeking at the Sunday paper toy adverts in my teens). Later, I discovered the Operation Dragonfire miniseries and found the Condor in a prominent scene featuring Serpentor
Read more
I’ve been on a kick lately of restoring packaging, particularly for 70s lines like Adventure Team and Big Jim. I’ve also been looking at knock-offs whose cards haven’t stood the test of time too well. Here’s the AT Jungle Survival set. I find these boxed outfit sets visually interesting even after you knock out the actual product. It makes for
Read more
As we’ve often covered on this blog, GI Joe has not been without its imitators over the years. While it’s easy to see such things as me-too cash grabs by competing toy manufacturers, I am impressed when the imitations carve out their own niche. I am particularly fond of the subjects that get weird. Such was the case of Big
Read more