1992 Roadblock
Also known as the recall Roadblock, this one’s famous for it’s missile launcher deemed too powerful to be left in the hands of children. What it should be famous for, however, is being the best looking Roadblock toy ever made. For a guy who’s competing to have the most toys released in the vintage line, Roadblock did pretty well with almost every toy of him being a good one.
Roadblock V4 is serious business. The design is very down-to-earth and even somewhat more similar to the modern “operator” look more in the vein of Classified or an FPS game. He looks to be wearing a ribbed sweater vest over a black shirt, which looks a little nerdy, but I’ll let it pass just for the nice texturing provided on the sculpt. The brightest color featured here is the blue on his pants, which really isn’t a weird color for commando slacks (though, it would’ve been slick if they were marbled plastic like Cross Country). For years this was my favorite Roadblock toy, and honestly it might still be despite my love for the ‘84 and ‘86 figures.
The sharpness of the sculpt here is peak ARAH perfection. Everything is rendered with crisp detailing you didn’t see just a few years earlier, and really didn’t see again until roughly 2010 or so. I do like 2000‘s GI Joes, but the Nu-Sculpt era and 25th Anniversary figures still tended to look pretty doughy until the POC line for the most part. It’s something I feel the ‘91 through ‘94 line really doesn’t get enough credit for, as the overall quality here was probably the best Joe would be for at least the next 15 years.
So there’s two sets of accessories for this Roadblock: the original recalled ones, and a new set that came with ones on a Battle Corps card in 1993. For the recall set, you got an extremely large LMG with what looks like a night-scope, a rotor-launching missile launcher and a new knife. For the Battle Corps release, you just got a ho-hum repack of the Cross Country/Snow Storm (and later Shipwreck) parts, which included V1 Hit&Run’s carbine and knife, V1 Shockwave’s pistol, Bullhorn’s Steyr AUG, two missiles and a stand all in black, along with a blue launcher, exactly like Cross Country.
The recall accessories show back up in a few odd places, but not as many or as nice as one would hope. Funskool Roadblock, Blaster and Red Dog have the LMG in black. The knife later would show up with 1993 Guile in black, neon red with Long Arm and in neon yellow-green with LAW. So some options are out there to get the knife. Also be aware that Guile’s knife looks very similar to the recall one, but is shinier.
This mold was brought back for a couple of nice repaints too. There’s a recolor of the figure that came out later in ‘93 in more typical colors, followed by a Funskool release that mimicked the original ‘92 figure. Hasbro seemingly got the mold back around ‘04, and then put out two more in the TRU sets, one in the Anti-Venom Task Force, and a similar one in the Heavy Assault Squad. I feel like there was some untapped potential in this sculpt for a new Crankcase, since the sweater-shirt combo looks kinda similar. Some brighter winter colors might’ve been nice too, since oddly this mold was almost only featured in dark colors.
Roadblock’s with the Battle Corps accessories tend to hit between $15 to $20, while Roadblock’s with the recall accessories trend towards $400! Ultimately, this toy was released to mass retail and shouldn’t really be that rare. Alas, you attach the word “recall” to something and some nerd will wet himself over the idea of having a special Roadblock that’s better-er than someone else’s. If the LMG and knife never showed up again, I could understand the novelty of wanting the see the rare parts, but similar ones were released with common figures. Anyways, paying $400 for a common toy is dumb, but this Roadblock rules so he deserves having a big number next to him.
“I feel like there was some untapped potential in this sculpt for a new Crankcase, since the sweater-shirt combo looks kinda similar.”
Dial-Tone too. 👍
As always, great pics, especially with your urban backdrop. I’m not sure this is the BEST Roadblock–I’m very partial towards the original, and the repaints of this one–but he’s definitely up there. I was very excited about the 92s coming out and tried to get them all systematically, but I couldn’t ever find this one at retail and only got him years later at a flea market. I didn’t know about the recall but obviously that was why.
I think his MG is a Browning .30 cal, like an M1919A4 off its tripod. Yet it’s bigger than his original .50 cal.! And also a lot chunkier than the contemporaneous Talking Stalker’s M1919A6. They played pretty fast and loose with scale.
I probably saw the recall version in late 1991 but was more interested in the new guys Big Bear and Flak Viper, having no idea a recall was coming. Figured I’d grab the rest of wave 1 later…and I did, except Roadblock. Why he was gone was a mystery at the time. No internet, spotty toy magazines at most.
It was kind of funny, because with Roadblock recalled it really reduced the variety in basic figure cases, as only six 1991 releases were carried forward in the US (and Canada, I guess).
Good head sculpt. But I dunno know about the earring. His head almost looks like a story book genie with that side.
Supposedly, there were 80K of these Roadblocks made…which is 30K more than the large head Zarana. And, those Zaranas are much easier to find than this Roadblock.
So, I think there were 80K figures made. But, most of them were actually released on the 1993 cardback: without the recalled gear. Which means both the ’92 and ’93 versions of this mold are probably short-produced in comparison with the other figures from their respective years.