1987 Psyche-Out
As I looked through prospective candidates for this blog post, I came up with nothing I really felt like writing about. Really, I have several Cobras that I fancy for a rant right now, but I wrote about the Crimson Guard Immortal last week, and if I do Cobras back to back, I’ll run out of ones to write about too quickly. It would’ve been a good reason to skip posting at all, but as I skimmed through my photos looking for some Joe I have at least two pictures of to write about, I realized Psyche-Out fit the bill.
“But in that second picture, he’s just in the corner! Shouldn’t I find some other use for Psyche-Out and post about him then?” I thought to myself, but that’s the thing: I’ve owned this figure for closer to a decade now, and I’ve only thought to use him twice. I never hated Psyche-Out, not enough to verbally declare it anyways, but the figure is just downright boring. More so the character, but the toy doesn’t do much to really make his specialty seem more compelling.
For a while, I thought that maybe the colors were something I found off putting about Psyche-Out. I wound up getting the Night Force version a few years after this one, but that still didn’t help me want to use him any. Opposite to that thought, I think the colors are one of Psyche-Out’s strong points. Sure, his shirt is a pretty bright shade of green, but at least it looks nice, and it contrasts nicely with his dark grey pants and red highlights. Some of his colors match up pretty well with ‘86 Roadblock, and Cross-Country, and the bright green’s not to far off from Sci-Fi. So contrary to the assumption that the colors are bad, he actually pairs up pretty well with a few contemporaries.
Still, as an action figure his specialties are just too boring for me. Yeah, psychological warfare is real, and often involves some sinister stuff (Some of which we experience in our everyday lives!) but what does he do that’s actually fun? From the comics, all I remember was his appearance in Sierra Gordo, where he stood there with an M-16, a role where he would’ve been interchangeable with anyone else.
His accessories go along with his weirdness. You get a pistol, two clip-on dishes for his wrist, a backpack, and a handheld… uh… Radio… Paranoia… Inducer, thingy. I guess he points his radar dishes at Cobras and makes them worry if they turned the stove off before going to battle or something. The whole set-up is okay, but with all of his gear on he looks incredibly dorky; it reminds me of the things people used to make with those old AOL disks you used to get in the mail every other day. His pistol is nice, nothing special, but an option in my armory of GI Joe sidearms. Looking at it, I get the sneaking feeling that it’s based on a real pistol, but knowing how odd some of these Joe guns are, it’s probably something so obscure I’d never be able to identify it. Speaking of that pistol, I didn’t comment on his sculpt: on his chest, there’s an empty pistol holster, which I thought was a nice little reference to the part he comes with.
You can get a mint complete Psyche Out for $12 pretty often, which isn’t much considering the fact that all of his dish-equipment is made of two pieces that can come off, in addition to his head antenna. So all in all, he has nine parts that could rather easily get lost. In that way, I could see him being a much more expensive figure, but that would be if he really served any purpose. In many ways, he’s really the Joe equivalent of Raptor: A well executed figure somewhat wasted by a boring and outlandish idea.
I didn’t like Psyche-Out when I first saw him and skipped him until some time in 1988 when I’d gotten one of all the good figures available from 87-88. Once I had him, he was not that bad for a neon green quilted shirt dude.
He adds something different to the team, a counter to Mindbender and Crystal Ball.
But personally, I have a negative view of psychologists. So I cannot like the character.