2011 Unreleased Rescue Mech
GI Joe has a pretty lengthy history with giant robots. Usually, it’s never been popular and doesn’t end well, but the sci-fi theme has been there since Marvel #3 (Before the Snake Armor!). We saw robots in Star Brigade right when GI Joe got canceled, again in Valor vs Venom, and then they made a large mech for the 2.5-inch Sigma Six line. That mold was then retooled for a line of robots from the 2010 Pursuit of Cobra line, which ended with them getting canceled.
I like GI Joe having mech on the side, and personally I consider myself a fan of the design used for both the Sigma 6 and POC robots. However, in the case of the POC mech, the toys were particularly flawed, especially the Cobra Deviant. The main reason? It’s a giant robot with almost no decent weapons. It turned the toy into an instant dud that was clearanced just months after release, and unfortunately it looked as though they would have repeated that mistake with this release.
Of course, there was more wrong with the POC GI Joe mechs than just the Deviant’s lack of weapons. GI Joe was in the midst of a death spiral after the retail failure of the Rise of Cobra toys, so a pair of oddball GI Joe mechs that didn’t terribly resonate with the collectors at the time didn’t have good chances of succeeding at retail.
The Rescue Mech would’ve been almost entirely a repaint of the Cobra Deviant. It would have featured one arm attachment that was new, though just from pictures I’m not sure how it’s gimmick would’ve worked. The lack of new tooling would’ve rendered this release and it’s wave-mate Cobra mech very stale as the third and fourth takes on the mold after the Sigma 6 Iron Hammer.
Speaking of stale, the very concept of this toy is almost perplexing and redundant. An arctic rescue mech? Who were they going to sell this to? Sci-fi fans who are afraid of guns? To me, it seems very childish and random, especially given the more serious tone of the POC line. The only thing I can really assume is that it was a poor attempt to make the toy seem more unique among it’s three other recent color variations. The result is a nonsensical concept that serves little purpose.
As an added bonus, it’s known that the arctic Alpine figure that would’ve come with this toy couldn’t sit in the cockpit without taking the figure’s jacket off. That’s partly a problem with the Modern Era construction, but it’s ridiculous for a vehicle to include a driver who’s virtually incompatible with it.
It’s almost shocking how much the fate of the 2010 POC mechs resembles the 1994 Power Armor line. Both came in window boxes, with repaint drivers, and at a separate price-point to the rest of the vehicles. Then, both lines would have had two more toys come out the following year, but were then canceled instead.
If Hasbro ever resurrected this mold or brought back GI Joe robots of at least this quality, I’d probably buy them. If you wanted to make some repaints of this mold, there’s still a lot that could’ve been done with it. The Club could’ve easily made a Star Brigade Armor-Bot homage from it, or someone could’ve just put it in some standard Cobra colors and that would’ve been a lot more interesting. But instead, we only saw this mold rendered in ways that were bland or obtuse after the Steel Marauder, which is sad.
I don’t know what the left arm is supposed to be.
So this would’ve shipped with the Cobra Minotaur?
Both Cobra and JOE have the same base design, which is dull. I know the Stinger/VAMP thing is accepted, but at least that was based on a real world vehicle.
I actually liked the green G.I. Joe mech (Steel something?), this one looks ugly and useless. The COBRA one was supposed to be desert I think, I dunno, that POC era was good but a lot of it has been lost to the sands of time.
It’s a shame this was a repurposed Sigma Six vehicle, as especially in the POC era, the design team was cribbing a lot of their designs from action movies and such, so a Mech based off of a Goliath from Starcraft could’ve been sick as hell.