Confession time: I didn’t have a single 1986 Viper in my childhood collection. To be honest, I liked the original Cobra and Officer more. Despite my opinion about the figures at the time, I thought the card art was super cool.
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Wow, that’s a mouthful of a post title. It’s fitting, considering that the Talking Battle Commanders spoke quite a bit, at least for the time. Hey, three lines of scratchy sampled audio was pretty amazing back then. The early 90s saw an explosion of this sort of feature, with many action figure lines sporting oversized talking backpacks. The Joes were
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As the 1987 figures were showing up, I was on the cusp of losing interest in toys. However, one figure in particular seized my attention. A new, battle-ready Cobra Commander was just too cool to pass up. Here was the Commander as super villain. Being a comic book fan, I loved it. As such, he also survived my GI Joe
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First off, a bit of thanks is in order for this post. Regular commenter and super Joe-bud Scot AKA Cyko9 sent me this little surprise a few days ago. While I picked up quite a few of the blind bag packs, I never pulled the trigger on the multi-pack carded version. It’s certainly a unique type of packaging. The five
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Here at JAD, we love toy presentation as much as we love the products themselves. GI Joe in the 80s and 90s had some of the most eye-popping packaging for its product line. It’s no wonder that legions of kids were drawn to these things. I mean, what’s not to love here? I also have to admire Hasbro for being
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The international Shadow Ninjas sub-set received a different set of card art than its US counterpart. Where the domestic releases featured the same Snake Eyes/Storm Shadow character art, the international versions each had character specific shots like the standard line single figures. There are a couple of interesting elements to point out here. First off, Nunchuk is painted wearing a
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What can you say about a robotic soldier with changeable arm attachment weapons? Don’t think I need to say much. It’s the original and best BAT.
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It’s getting really close to Halloween, and I’m in a monstery/creaturey kind of mood. If you dig through the decades, there is actually a fair amount of creepy Joe-related subjects. It’s a shame though that Hasbro’s new action figure format didn’t get in on the mid-60s monster craze. Imagine 12 inch 60s Hasbro Universal Monsters complete with Basil Gogos box
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I was shooting photos last week, and grabbed up Recondo, thinking that I hadn’t covered him yet. Turns out I had. Not wanting to waste an opportunity to revisit one of the most iconic 80s Joes (for me at least) I thought I’d put up a scan of his card art. If this kind of product presentation isn’t more than
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Outback is to me one of the most compelling figures of 1987, the year in which I stopped collecting GI Joes. Other interests began to grab my attention, and toys fell be the wayside. That’s not to say that I wasn’t impressed with my last childhood hurrah for the toy line. Outback is a figure whose packaging art is just
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