Funskool Flint

With Christmas having recently passed,  I couldn’t help but find it necessary to talk about a Joe that was a Christmas present of mine. The funny thing is, prior to my teenage years I never really had any GI Joe items I got for Christmas. It wasn’t that I didn’t like GI Joe, but I never seemed to get any as presents. A combination of the DTC and 25th Anniversary lines brought me back into Joe hard around 2007, and in light of that my brother snagged me a Funskool Flint as a present the next year.

Despite the quality of Funskool figures and their cards, opening Flint up that morning was a fun and somewhat surreal feeling. Mind you, I’m a kid of the mid-90‘s, so I totally missed out on most of ARAH, but I still had this feeling of having just time traveled. Those ARAH cards were visually striking in a way that I feel was almost timeless.

The figure itself was also my first time owning a vintage Flint figure. This was just a bit before I began hunting down actual vintage figures off eBay, so I was really excited to have this figure in my collection. As a big fan of the Sunbow cartoon, I always desired having more figures in their classic appearances as opposed to many of the redesigns from the late 80‘s and 90‘s. That’s not to say Flint’s Eco-Warriors or Battle Corps toys weren’t any good, but to me as a kid they didn’t look enough like Flint. It really makes me regret having no prior knowledge of the Funskool figures, as I certainly would’ve bought a lot of them. I wanted things like this during the 2000‘s a lot more than Spy Troops and Valor vs Venom.

As for the figure itself, it’s a fairly decent representation of V1 Flint. So much so that I’ve been content with the figure for a whole decade and never bothered with a Hasbro Flint. The colors are very similar, and although the paint is notoriously messy on certain runs of Funskool figures, I seemingly lucked out and got a fairly clean looking Flint save for the gold paint.

Hasbro Gijoe ARAH Flint parts funskool action figure

In another nice event, Funskool Flint comes with parts that are remarkably similar to Hasbro’s. Mind you, the plastic is of course somewhat cheaper but visually they do the job rather well. Back in the 2000’s these figures were so cheap that an example like Flint or Scrap Iron was worth buying just for the parts at the humble $3 they ran. For a collector on a budget, this was a great way of getting good parts to give to a Hasbro figure.

I really loved getting this figure a decade ago, especially coupled with a few other Funskool items I got at the same time. Back then however, these figure were dirt cheap. As Funskool figures now routinely run between $10 to $20, I find it increasingly hard to say if they’re worth it most of the time. A few figures provide something unique, but with figure’s like Flint at today’s prices, you’re probably better off sticking with the American version.

Hasbro Gijoe ARAH Flint parts funskool action figure

Funskool Flint Links:

Funskool Flint Dio by The Dragon Fortress

Yo Joe!

Forgotten Figures

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3 Responses to Funskool Flint

  1. Mike T. says:

    You know this figure is a favorite of mine. Certain versions are just different enough from the American figure to be fun. Every time I got one of these figures, it was like it was 1985 again. I really miss cheap Funskool. There seems to be one last rush of Russian figures making their way into the market. But, even they are drying up.

  2. Nightforce Keith says:

    Not a bad looking figure, I like the slightly different camo on the legs.

    I’ve never owned a Funskool figure, but they have potential. And I love the personal touch in this one because it just goes to show that collecting is about more than dollar value, it’s about the feeling and individual story behind it.

    My memories of Christmas are actually overloaded with Joes, I’d say two of my top 3 Christmas presents ever were GI Joe toys (the Sky Striker and the Night Raven).

  3. djv says:

    I got the Russian Funskool Flint somewhat recently, and feel kind of like you do. He’s very good– so much so that I haven’t tracked down an American v1 just yet. I actually might go Tiger Force first. Flint is definitely one of my favorites, and I loved his Eco Warriors and Battle Corps versions growing up. I also like the 00s Night Force Flint. But it’s nice to have a “classic” looking Flint, even if the plastic is just a little shoddier.

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