2002 Roadblock
Mmm, nothin’ I love more than a good ol’ sloppy BJ- …’s exclusive repaint of a classic Joe mold! BJ’s Wholesale, how many of you have ever been to one of those stores?!?! If not for this 8-pack I probably wouldn’t know what that even was, which makes me somewhat glad I was too young to be around for the hassle of getting this crap when it was new. Anyways, here’s an ugly Roadblock toy I’ve photographed at least twice.
Color wise, Roadblock V8 here seems like he could have some promise, being that it is just the full ‘84 Roadblock mold in Cobra blue for the upper half. I’ve always thought the figure seems like it would have some decent custom potential, but really the appeal ends there. Because of the haphazard coloring, his torso is solid blue despite wearing a tank-top, so it looks really weird and there’s no real illusion that’s he’s wearing some kind of body-suit. His bare arms are painted like sleeves, though it doesn’t really bother me as much as his torso. As an added bit of fun, the lower half is made of marbled plastic, which also appears to be randomly yellowing on my copy like with many other figures from around that period.
The BJ’s 8-pack figures generally find their strength in their oddness, with figures like Firefly that don’t really serve a purpose, but also seem like something you’d never logically expect to get made. It’s similar to the weird Funskool releases, where there’s a lot of novelty value in having a purple Tripwire. Coming back around to Roadblock, a big problem with him is that he’s too bland to really have any appeal as an oddity, yet also too cheap and random to fit anywhere else in a collection. Because of this, he might be my least favorite figure from the set.
An alternate coloration was used on some early pre-production versions of this Roadblock, which switched the blue for a bright red. It definitely looks way worse, so I’m glad for the one we wound up with. If I had to guess, I assume someone must have gotten the colors mixed up at the factory, as there seems to be a pretty strong theme of red for the Cobras in the set.
The accessories included with the entire set strike me as somewhat comedic, which is a nice way of saying terrible. Roadblock here is loaded out with a SAW Viper machine gun (now featuring a Sound Attack tab on top), a silver V1 LAW uzi, and the ‘91 Dusty backpack in black, AKA, the most generic repaint-era backpack. The uzi is an alright weapon for tossing in a bin, but none of these parts are really exciting or memorable. Even if the SAW Viper gun wasn’t the Sound Attack version, it’s still a laughably oversized weapon that didn’t look good with the original figure, let alone V1 Roadblock’s sculpt.
So like many 2000‘s Joe items, what you pay for them has a lot more to do with your patience rather than what the figure’s actually worth. Dealers can get $20 for a complete figure with his filecard, but that’s probably a lot more than what the figure should go for at auction. Of course, there’s the aforementioned yellowing to look out for too, though any example you buy may be eventually prone to this. In better times eBay was saturated with all of the figures from this set, both domestically and from Chinese warehouses selling them for pennies.
It was not possible to buy this set at retail in the state of Indiana. There were no BJ’s there. And, the Fred Meyer stores that also carried them were all in the west. I had to buy it from Entertainment Earth (at full price) and then pay a huge shipping premium because of the huge honking box that the set comes in. Guys reported stacks of unsold sets at BJ’s warehouses sitting at a $12 clearance price. So, that sucked if you had no access to retail sets. But, it did bring down the prices of the individual figures, especially the Joes, for several years. I think I paid $1 or $2 for extra Dial Tones (the real highlight of the set) and this pre-dated the massive Asian overstock.
Hasbro kind of tried to get o-ring Joes made for collectors after the backlash against the JvC style. But, who could have looked at this set and thought it was a good product? I’ll even acquiesce on the colors. But, were I a parent whose kid opened up a diver figure on Christmas morning that didn’t include any underwater gear, I would have had a new brand of toys to avoid for future purchases.
My main memory of the set is that the filecards are on super thick cardboard. Even at the time, few people bothered to clip their extras because it was a pain. I suspect that many of the 2000’s era filecards are actually pretty hard to find these days. But, they were so generic that a lot of people probably have the wrong ones. But, they simply don’t care.
As for this figure, I have no freaking clue what they were going for. Some guys tried to make them into Cobra Troopers of some sort. But, the Roadblock body is pretty limiting. So, that idea never really went anywhere.
The funniest attempt to make these Cobras was one I saved and shared from an ebay auction, some half dozen of these with Tripwire heads, which someone pointed out looked to be Funskool Tripwire heads. (This was before factory customs were pumping out body parts, and there was some fan castings but not too common) Funny thing, which figure is worth more now? Funskool Tripwire.
I also got 2 sets off Entertainment Earth and only opened one. Yeah, too much on shipping. Very annoying.
Funny thing, you remember some early 2000’s survey Hasbro had for fans asking what sets they’d be interested it? It listed some 6 pack themes. That’s where half the line-up for the Urban Strike Division came from. But IIRC, there was a thing about 8 packs. Well, this wound up being the only 8 pack.
The BJ’s 8 Pack was a set I can recall not being to upset about missing due to it’s limited availability back in 2002 while at retail. After the first two RAHC waves in 2000/2001 I was paying a little less attention to GI Joes as I was focused a bit more on the social aspects of college. I vaguely remember hearing about the set and seeing pictures of it but never feeling that it was a necessity or being overly impressed with the figures. For me GI Joe in 2002 was a bit of a letdown – The RAHC collection was great as was the Night Rhino but alot of the GI Joe Vs Cobra figures and vehicles released as Hasbro was testing out new figure and vehicle construction left alot to be desired. I don’t fault Hasbro for that because over the subsequent few years using the new tooling and and construction they released some really cool stuff. That first year was just trial and error.
Fast forward to 2017 and I ended up buying the set on ebay for a good price and my initial reaction to it was underwhelming, similar to how my 20 year old self viewed the set back in 2002. This Roadblock figure did not make much sense to me, he always felt a little lazily done since Hasbro essentially painted his skin blue on the torso and arms. I did find uses for some of the other figures offered in this set (Undertow serves as a driver for my Piranha) and certainly feel that this Roadblock is the weak link in the set. I am pretty sure I took him apart and made a custom figure that is in one of my bins.
I give you credit for being able to write several paragraphs about this figure. He was not remarkable in any way and was downgrade from the original use of the mold, the TF mold and the cool double blast figure released a year prior.