1992 Eco Striker

Posted on November 28, 2023 by Nekoman

1992 Eco Striker

1991 was probably the worst year of Joe vehicles ever made, though 1992 wasn’t far off, mainly for continuing a lot of the gimmicks that didn’t really work out from the year before. That includes paper gliders (Air Commandos) and the flimsy Battle Copters, but the new ideas like a Flintstones car and a helicopter that didn’t fit GI Joe figures (Desert Apache) weren’t much better. So after all of that, the year’s Eco Warriors offering of the Eco Striker comes off pretty well by comparison, even if it was the first of many AWE Striker regurgitation to be.

If had to chose an old vehicle to give to the Eco Warrior Joes for their subline, I’m not sure I could’ve named a better one than the AWE Striker. It fits the theme, it rolls well, it can carry four figures, light-up front lights, a nicely detailed engine, it really was a toy from Joe’s best year. Which is probably why the Eco Striker stands out as the best toy from one of Joe’s worst years. Sometimes I forget how nice the AWE Striker was just for my strong preference to the VAMP, and also the fact that they really wore out the toy’s appeal with continual recolors and retools for the next thirty years. In 1992 though, it was still pretty fresh.

The bright blue and yellow colors of the Eco Striker make it look very much like a toy, though at least it’s a very attractive looking toy. Blue and yellow are colors that compliment each other very well, and there’s also a bevy of contemporary Joes that feature a lot of yellow and look good with it. The decals also add some hazard stripes to the sides, which I really love the look of even if the yellow loses some of it’s vibrance just from the poor quality of the stickers. Like all the vehicles from it’s era, it has super cheap, paper stickers as opposed to the vinyl kind used on older vehicles. That’s fairly egregious when you consider that it’s a toy where the main gimmick involves water.

As for the big and exciting new feature that the Eco Striker brings to the table: a squirt gun, like with the Septic Tank a year prior. The squirt cannon is easily the worst feature of the Septic Tank, just for being so cumbersome and not really having enough space for a figure to man it. The design of the AWE Striker lends itself to this gimmick much more. It still looks a little too big for the vehicle, but it doesn’t really hinder it’s function that much. As an added bonus, it’s pretty easy to get a decently matching black gun to replace it, so the Eco Striker can be rendered in it’s classic glory with a normal gun. Personally, I wish there were some more newly tooled bits to change it’s look a little more like with the Septic Tank, but this one functions well as it is, so I can’t be too picky.

If you’d believe it, there’s more than one Eco Striker: A new version was released as a 2014 Joecon exclusive, rendered from the Ninja Commando 4×4. I do like that they put together an Eco Warriors set for Joecon, though many of the choices were questionable, like usual. The Ninja Commando 4×4 is a pretty horrible rendition of the AWE Striker. The design removes a ton of parts and simplifies it to an extent that the Joecon version of the Eco Striker just looks like a vintage one that’s missing half of it’s parts. I really don’t know why that exclusive exists, but it’s there.

The last complete Eco Striker sold for a whopping $61, which is a lot more than I was expecting. You really don’t see complete copies for sale all that often, and incomplete ones don’t go for a lot less. I’m not sure I think it’s really worth that, but it is a very cool vehicle, and probably the most memorable repaint of the AWE Striker. If I’m ever in the market for another one, I’ll probably just buy a cheap junker and augment it with similar parts from other AWE Strikers.

1992 Eco Striker Links:

…Nothing besides Yo Joe!, so if you have some Eco Striker pics or a blog post hidden somewhere, feel free to link to it in the comments.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged 1992, AWE Striker, Eco Striker, Eco Warriors, Vehicles | 4 Comments

Funskool T.A.R.G.A.T.

Posted on November 20, 2023 by Nekoman

Funskool T.A.R.G.A.T.

So as I mentioned before I’m a big fan of the T.A.R.G.A.T. (or as I refer to him henceforth as the TARGAT). He features fun elements from the Alley Viper (flip down visor), he’s basically an astronaut, who’s also kinda like a jet-pack paratrooper kinda thing. Stretch your imagination a bit and you have a fun Cobra/Iron Grenadier that appears out of thin air and begins attacking, and unlike the Annihilator he doesn’t look terrible. Another thing to like about the TARGAT, is that he has a few cool repaints to collect, such as this Funskool figure.

I’m not sure to say that the Funskool TARGAT’s aged like wine, but one figure it has inevitably shown it’s appeal over is the Star Brigade TARGAT, whose color scheme it’s based on. Of course, the reason for this is because the Hasbro figure suffers from GPS, meaning that sooner or later the figure will fully turn to dust, whereas the Funskool figure replaces most of the gold with a copper-colored soft plastic. At a certain point, you’ll be hard pressed to find a V2 TARGAT with intact knee-pins, so a similar alternative is very much a welcomed thing.

I miss the depth of that gold color a little bit, though in many ways the Funskool version is absolutely better than the Star Brigade release. All of the orange details were replaced with yellow ones in most of the same spots. though you lose the painted details on his biceps. Although the head’s left purple, his purple paint applications have been replaced by more of a German Grey color, which looks pretty nice for the added variety, though the purple was quite good originally. He’s also kept the black on his grenades and gold on his visor, with the later color gaining the added benefit of some extra contrast, given that now the visor isn’t painted the same color as the entire figure. For the most part, everything’s pretty similar between the two figures, but different enough to make owning them both pretty fun. Except for the Hasbro one crumbling, that’s not any fun.

It used to entertain me to assign asinine roles to every repaint or variant that came into my possession. For the TARGAT, the original ‘89 release was the basic trooper, with the ‘93 version becoming the officers. The Funskool version became something that was ambiguously a unique character and another generic, and was the TARGAT flight instructor. He’s a senior operator among the Iron Grenadiers and an expert at using the complicated TARGAT flight gear, so he’s responsible for teaching the rest of them tactics and how to use this crap. I like this idea still and mostly associate the figure with that role, but it’s also somewhat frustrating to pigeonhole a figure I have into such a relatively niche role. With that in mind, I sometimes hesitate at creating new repaint characters, at the cost of being more hedonistic with owning recolors that serve no real purpose.

A major flaw of both this figure and the original Star Brigade release is the inclusion of generic 90‘s gear. I think the TARGAT works pretty well with ordinary guns, but the backpack was cool and a defining part of the figure. Included here is a Rock Viper PSG1, the Annihilator’s SMG, the V1 Iron Grenadier’s pistol and a missile-launcher (HEAT Viper, M. Bison, Night Creeper Leader and later Metal Head’s), plus missiles and a stand in eye-searing pink. There’s a lot of variants on the coloring of these, with the colors ranging from red to orange and some looking a little more florescent pink than others, though bright pink seems to be the most common color. I think PINK is probably the worst color you put Joe guns into, but as a novelty it makes him odd at the very least. Plus now you have some guns that might look nice with other pink-clad figures like Banzai- haven’t you always wanted that?

Fortunately this is still one of the more common and less popular Funskool releases, and with a little bit of patience you can get a Funskool TARGAT for around $15. If you’re a Star Brigade fan, he’s a nice alternative to Hasbro’s release, since you can still safely pose him and have a little bit of fun as opposed to sealing him in an acrylic case and waiting for gravity to finish him off. Though, it’s also reasonable to find this figure and the one it’s based on to be horribly garish, but I collect TARGATs so I’m forced to ignore such a notion.

Funskool T.A.R.G.A.T. Links:

The Dragon Fortress

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Funskool, Iron Grenadiers, Star Brigade, TARGAT | 3 Comments

2001 Sure Fire

Posted on November 13, 2023 by Nekoman

2001 Sure Fire

I’m not sure what to say about Sure Fire. Objectively, I think he’s a really good toy and I like him a lot. Yet at the same time he’s connected to a member of the GI Joe deep-state as a homage to David Lane, and that’s a one-way trip to the #GroanZone nobody needs. I slept on that factoid for many a years and enjoyed the figure more before I knew though, so perhaps in favor of having fun, I’ll mostly ignore that and just talk about why Sure Fire isn’t a bad time.

The ARAHC Joes outside of the ridiculously rare Serpentor wave have always floated around as some of the most worthless figures on the aftermarket. That’s not a knock against them, just an observation. When I was a kid, I only encountered them once, and the only set I ever saw was the Cobra Commander (Battle Armor) and Chameleon set. That came a little too soon after the ‘97 Cobra Command set, so I never wound up getting any figures from this line until the late 2000‘s, when their cheapness became more interesting as a way of bolstering my smaller collection from back then. Somewhere along the way I ended up with one of these Sure Fires.

For the most part, this figure is almost a total repaint of ‘92 Shockwave, just with a new head. The new head is… fairly undesirable. It’s not in that Big Brawler territory of sheer misery, but it has that cheap and generic look that the other sculpts from the time were prone to, in a way that I can only think to describe as feeling more Chap Mei and less GI Joe. None of this is really anything that ruins the figure though, as I feel like the figure comes across the strongest as an army-builder FBI mook rather than a real GI Joe. V3 Shockwave has slightly brighter colors that make him seem more in-line with his 90‘s-neon DEF buds, but Sure Fire is in this really dull navy-blue color that makes him seem like much more of a generic by comparison.

Gotta be honest though, for me a lot of the appeal of this figure comes from my view on Shockwave. I love commandos in balaclavas, so despite being a solid figure I can never like DEF Shockwave more than V1 Shockwave. When I want to see a bunch of 90‘s contemporaries at the same time, the DEF mold comes out. Most of the time though, ‘88 Shockwave is the only Shockwave for me. This leaves a pretty cool sculpt mostly unexplored in my Joe world, so Sure Fire helps me rectify that. The character’s complete junk, but when you put that aside he can become a much needed Joe-mook who’s not a Steel Brigade. Plus, just giving him some headgear from Marauder’s goes a long way towards making him fully generic.

I feel disappointed by the fact that I can make a “how’s the figure degrading now” paragraph apart of my standard format when I’m talking about 2000‘s Joes. Interestingly, V1 Sure Fire seems to be holding up pretty well 22 years to his release, which I honestly did not expect for something that features blue plastic. The next release of the mold (and character) is fairing less well with the greens on his legs in particular turning dark on many copies. It’s sort of interesting the way that discoloring is so random on these figures now, where certain releases will seemingly all turn uniformly bad at once, but then a repaint of that figure that may only be a few months newer or older is perfectly fine.

For accessories you get ‘91 Dusty’s pistol in black, ‘87 Law’s uzi in silver, and a solid black version of Law’s helmet too. These accessories are nice, especially if you deemed Sure Fire appropriate as an army-builder. The silver uzis are distinct and look nice to pass around, and the black helmet fits nicely on a good number of classic figures too. I really don’t know why the ‘91 Dusty pistol became the weapon of choice during the 2000‘s, but it’s usable and better than some alternatives. Really, these accessories aren’t anything to write home about, but they do the job nicely and reinforce the image I have in my head about him just being a generic.

He’s a little less common than the ‘02 repaint that can be found in excess abundance, but ‘01 Sure Fire is still only worth around $10, $15 if you feel lazy and just go for a BiN. Back in the day, you could get left overs from China for $3 a piece or so, I didn’t take much advantage of that, but in hindsight I wish I had seeing how thirsty I am for o-rings now.

2001 Sure Fire Links:

Half the Battle

Joe A Day

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged 2001, ARAHC, Sure Fire | 3 Comments

1983 Black Major (Action Force)

Posted on November 6, 2023 by Nekoman

1983 Black Major

Thinking about it, there’s only two things that come from Britain that I think I really like: the first being the USA, and the second being the Action Force toy line. I don’t think Action Force has the same enduring charm as GI Joe, but I think the fact that I’m even interested in a series of forty-year-old action figures from another country that I’d never heard of until I was mostly grown speaks to their quality. Or maybe I’m just a sucker for toy commandos with mostly realistic guns.

The Black Major is a pretty popular character with Joe fans, and also probably the most popular Red Shadows villain. I learned this by conducting a survey that consisted of one person, and I asked myself various questions, so now I can project whatever vague notions I have onto anyone else who’s apart of any group I associate with. Anyways, most of that popularity probably stems from his appearances in the Action Force comics, which did a good job of fleshing out his character. A lot of his popularity is also probably owed to being a figure that vaguely looks like some kind of Nazi. For a villain’s design, it’s a little on the nose, but at the same time it’s much less silly than the disco guy. The overall Red Shadows aesthetic is charming in the way that it mixes bits of Nazi Germany and a few Soviet visual cues.

The Black Major strikes me as a figure that’s full of imperfections, yet somehow by virtue of modern GI Joe’s sheer incompetence, remains the best figure ever made of the character. I don’t mind that he’s done in Kenner Star Wars style 5-POA, but given the relative popularity of the character you’d think at some point he’d have gotten his own, proper GI Joe figure. The only Black Major made after this one was the 2010 convention figure, an abominate mix of M. Bison, Thunder and Action Marine parts that resulted in a figure far too ugly to justify a few extra points of articulation.

Sadly given that the Black Major himself is a repaint of the Action Force Commander (and similarly, the Z-Force Commander), he doesn’t have all that sinister of a face. Instead he just looks like any friendly ol’ Action Force commando, which I don’t think really suits the character all that well. From what I understand, Action Force didn’t really have all that much of a budget, so the short line is filled with curiously recycled sculpts. Having a villain who looks like a normal person really isn’t such a bad thing though.

For accessories, the Black Major included the Cobra Officer’s AK-47, and a code sheet that corresponds with the Cyrillic-like letters on the Red Shadows vehicles. The figure’s pose makes a pistol a bit more of an appropriate weapon, which again, is probably a side-effect of being an Action Force Commander repaint. As it is, I think he looks weird with an AK since he has to hold it with his arm extended. The code-sheet’s also pretty neat, though it seems like the kind of thing that wouldn’t hold your imagination very long as a kid. As a cheap toss-in though, it’s a nice bonus.

Action Force figures aren’t worth a lot despite probably being a lot more scarce than GI Joe figures. A Black Major figure complete with his AK and code-sheet runs around $30 as a BiN, but incomplete figures in good shape can be had for around $10, and it’s pretty common to get him in lots too. Judging by how common he is, I don’t think it’d be a stretch to say he’s the most popular Red Shadow, which is reasonable given that he’s probably the coolest Red Shadow too.

1983 Black Major Links:

Forgotten Figures

Blood For the Baron

Joe A Day

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged 1983, Action Force, Black Major, Palitoy | 4 Comments

2010 Cobra Deviant

Posted on October 30, 2023 by Nekoman

2010 Cobra Deviant

In 2010 fresh after the retail disaster of GI Joe: Rise of Cobra, Hasbro had to drastically overhaul the GI Joe toy line. All traces from what would’ve tied Pursuit of Cobra back to the film’s toy line were removed, and instead we were presented with an original toy line that was a little bit closer to GI Joe’s roots, just by way of some extremely drab colors. To tie in with the line’s near-future aesthetic, Hasbro resurrected and modified the Sigma 6 Iron Hammer and produced a pair of new mecha for 1/18 scale- The Steel Marauder and the Cobra Deviant.

The too-serious-for-ninjas community will typically draw some ire from the idea of GI Joe having any kind of mecha. I can understand that line of thinking a little bit, since at it’s core, GI Joe is a military fantasy, not a mecha fantasy, so it’d be a mistake to have more than the occasional piloted mecha. Still, that’s been a thing with the brand going back the the SNAKE Armor in ‘84, and continued with Armor Bot and the Star Brigade Mecha too. I like mecha a lot, and I feel like the occasional inclusion of something like this breathes a lot of life into a brand that has had little to no imagination since 2003.

In 2010, I was 16 and had no money still. So trying to acquire the PoC toys was a struggle, besides that line’s abysmal distribution. Still, a pair of toys that were not hard to find were these mecha: at the modest price of $20 with an included driver, these failed hard and went straight to clearance after only a 6-month period at retail. In some ways I found myself happy about that, as thanks to that I was able to acquire a pair of Deviants that I otherwise wouldn’t have been able to afford. In other ways though, it also showed a solid rejection of GI Joe mecha by the line’s consumer base, since the rest of the toys performed fairly well besides these.

The Cobra Deviant is a weird toy. Aesthetically, it matches up with GI Joe really well, the cockpit design is mostly lifted from the Sky Hawk’s canopy, which goes a long way towards making this feel like a design that should exist in the GI Joe universe as opposed to just looking like something lifted out of Aliens or an 80‘s Kunio Okawara design. But what does it do? It’s only guns are a pair of turrets underneath it’s cockpit. Maybe that’s all it really needs, but taking the idea of a piloted, 1/18 scale robot toy and arming it only with a grappling hook and hammer is a feat of lameness only Hasbro could really accomplish.

With that said, the Cobra Deviant has a solid amount of play value and I find it fun to mess around with. Most GI Joe robots have had a history of not being very exciting (the SNAKE armor stands there, Armor-Bot falls apart, and the Star Brigade Power Fighters also just stand there), whereas the Cobra Deviant can pose a little and do a few things. The hammer arm is a very fun spring-loaded item, it feels powerful and is pretty satisfying to fire it. The grappling hook does… something. There’s enough cord to imagine it climbing a building with it, though I still just find it a very odd choice for a robot toy. The cockpit has ball-jointed control sticks and comfortably fits a classic o-ringer (more comfortably than it’s included Cyber Viper, in fact), the console area is detailed and looks pretty good. I feel like the size is another strong point, it’s really perfect for playing around with without feeling dinky (SNAKE Armor) or stupid and cumbersome (Armor-Bot).

Another neat feature is that the arms are modular between all of these mechs, so you can switch attachments or even plug additional arms into the ports on the side of them. It’s pretty cool and adds another element of play to these, though it’s mostly just an artifact from the Sigma 6 Iron Hammer. As far as I know, the grappling hook on the Deviant is new tooling, whereas the Hammer and both attachments for the Steel Marauder are just weapons from the Iron Hammer. Another new weapon would’ve been included with the Arctic Rescue mech and a different new attachment with Cobra Minotaur, but alas those never materialized. Because of that, the swappable arms are a mostly defunct gimmick.

A big weakness for the Cobra Deviant besides the odd weapons, is that it’s articulation still isn’t all that good. This is a big shame, as the toy has some very stout ball joints in it’s ankles, hips, waist and shoulders, but it just can’t make good use of them for it’s own design. There’s massive pipes on it’s thighs, which are probably the biggest hindrance to this thing being able to pose any; they block movement for both the legs and the arms. For the later that’s sadly not so much of an issue, as the grappling hook arm really serves no purpose to be aimed or moved all that much. Still, as the most detailed robot ever sold under the GI Joe brand, it’s quite a swing-and-a-miss type moment for it to have that much articulation and all of it be nearly redundant. At the very least the ankles give it a nice amount of stability, so it doesn’t topple over too easy.

Another small gripe I have about it, though also about most of the vehicles from the era, is that the stickers are shit. I almost completely forgot this until I noticed that I never applied all of them to one of my Deviants, but yeah, they don’t have enough glue and most of them fall off as soon as they’re applied. This was a common issue going back to at least 25th Anniversary in 2007, that being the stickers were a complete lottery as to if they’d stick or not. The issue was especially pronounced on vehicles like this, since it came with a considerable scroll of small decals.

The Cobra Deviant is not too hard to find, and fetches about $12 for the complete vehicle and $30 for a boxed one, loose ones with the Cyber Viper and paper-work tend to go for $30 too. Fortunately for the Deviant it doesn’t have a lot of parts that can get lost too easily, so besides the control sticks and the smoke-dispensers on the canopy you don’t have too much to worry about with one. I’ve been sitting on this draft since at least April or sometime thereabouts, and back then these were much harder to find and a little more expensive if memory serves, so the Joe market really seems to have sunk over the summer.

2010 Cobra Deviant Links:

Generals Joes

Parry Game Preserve

That Figures

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged 2010, Cobra Deviant, POC | 5 Comments

2004 Black Dragon Ninja

Posted on October 24, 2023 by Nekoman

2004 Black Dragon Ninja

The Ninja Cobra Strike Team set from 2004 should’ve probably been Hasbro’s second best 6-pack from the era. Sadly though, poor mold choices, bad accessories and most of all, absolute shit quality control takes what should have been a classic and downgrades it to a mere passing memory. The Black Dragon Ninja here would be great as a poor man’s Ninja Ku, but he barely works as that, though he’s still probably the best figure in the set.

I’m rather salty as to this figure at the moment, mainly because a portion of his heel cracked off while trying to photograph him recently. As someone who likes buying copious amounts of aging plastic, I’ve come to accept figures growing more brittle and yellowing as a part of life. Still, there’s a sense of resentment I have as to just how cheap the plastic was on this set. I’ve already had a Red Ninja Viper’s shoulder crumble for no reason, but now this figure is crumbling too. His heel just sort of exploded while trying to balance him on a peg, flying off into the void never to be found again. It was a weird kind of break, as normally I’m used to taking chances with figures that are way more notorious for being fragile (Slaughter’s Marauders, figures with GPS), but this almost exploded like the plastic was under constant stress.

Putting that aside, the Black Dragon Ninja is a pretty cool lookin’ little dude. Like with Argentina’s Ninja Ku, he uses the V1 Storm Shadow mold cast in solid black. Ninja Ku’s gold details have been swapped for white, brown and silver, so the Black Dragon Ninja is certainly more detailed, though the flesh tone and gold makes Ninja Ku still look far more attractive in my eyes. Oddly, the more monotone white and black of this figure makes me think more of Snake Eyes, maybe in an alternate world where SE joined Cobra as their ninja. That’s gimmicky enough I’m surprised it never happened.

I have some minor quibbles with how the figure looks, mainly stereotypical 2000‘s issues like the flesh-tone on his face being too peachy and the Cobra symbol on his chest being a bit too detailed, but really it’s an excellent looking figure. Truth be told, I think it’s my favorite figure from his set. In spite of all of that, is it enough to overcome the quality issues? This figure isn’t even as old as V1 Storm Shadow was when he came out, yet the plastic is already incredibly brittle. The Black Major ninjas from a few years back weren’t exactly the best quality figures he’s produced, but they already had a leg up on this guy for their paint jobs and accessories, at this point I’m not sure I’d buy any more Black Dragon Ninjas.

Accessories are weird on this one. A major flaw of the Ninja Cobra Strike Team, is that it’s a set themed around Storm Shadow repaints, yet you don’t get even one set of V1 Storm Shadow or V2 Storm Shadow parts. The Black Dragon Ninja has a bag from Agent Faces, the comic-pack M-16, and the 3-piece nunchuk from V3 Snake Eyes. I like the bag and the nunchuk isn’t a bad part, but the M-16 is random. A ninja with a gun can be okay, but why not a suppressed SMG? The M-16 was just lazy. It would’ve been nice if someone here had the original Storm Shadow gear, but hey, at least he doesn’t come with a tiny, non-functioning cupid bow like the Red Ninja.

Like many figures from the 2000‘s, you don’t see Black Dragon Ninjas for sale so often any more. These are usually sold incomplete, but I don’t think any of his accessories are complete (or desirable) so that really doesn’t matter. Last figure that popped up for auction, no accessories, only hit $10, which is a lot cheaper than some of the more insane BiN listings I see floating around. If I saw another one for around $10 I might be tempted to buy it, but if I never do, I won’t lose any sleep over it either.

2004 Black Dragon Ninja Links:

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged 2004, Black Dragon Ninja, TRU Exclusives, Valor vs Venom | 3 Comments

1998 Heavy Duty

Posted on October 16, 2023 by Nekoman

1998 Heavy Duty

The 1998 Joe line was small, but probably the best collection of post-1994 repaints ever made. The decos were elaborate and good looking on every figure released in the year, although that amounted to only a set of 15 figures. Among those was a repaint of the 90‘s Joe staple Heavy Duty, and what also amounts to probably the only decent toy of the character.

I remember at a time, Heavy Duty was a really unpopular character for being seen as a Roadblock replacement. I think Joe collectors that inhabited forums of the early 2000‘s made a big stink of this, but even as a kid who knew none of that, there was this dissuasion towards him for not being Roadblock, that I remember talking with my brother about back then. Over the years Joe would often times revisit similar themes by making characters that often overlapped with one another, like Wet-Suit and Torpedo or Breaker and Dial-Tone. I think Heavy Duty was meant to be that in the same way for Roadblock, it just doesn’t work because Roadblock arguably has the best personality in the franchise, whereas Heavy Duty is some Repeater-tier toss away character.

The sculpt on Heavy Duty screams of 90‘s attitude. He’s got a detailed backwards cap with “JOE” on the back and ripped of sleeves for some extra badness. Other than that, he looks like a normal ARAH sculpt with a few knives and grenades to go around. Nothing looks too crazy, though I think there’s something to be said for the sharpness of the sculpt; his face, muscles and a few other details represent some peak sculpting work.

As for this repaint specifically, he has some very fall-centric colors. They look realistic enough and seem distinct, but he does run into the issue of not really matching up with anything. I can forgive that if it’s a cool bootleg in digital-camo, but for a figure like this I tend to find it more limiting as he looks out of place with so much. The upside of this is that it’s a fantastic looking repaint that highlights this sculpt’s details much better than Heavy Duty V1 or the later Chuckles repaint. His pants even feature a four-color camo pattern, which isn’t as intricate as ‘97 Stalker’s, but it’s still rather detailed.

A real flaw of this figure is his accessories, he doesn’t come with any. Depending upon your feelings of V1 Heavy Duty’s gunner-rig, you might not mind that, but to not include anything is a tad frustrating. It’s even more weird when you consider the fact that he’s packaged with a vehicle, the MOBAT, which supports a crew of 1, and also includes Thunderwing. There’s an ‘86 Hawk backpack and a Big Bear AK-88 tossed in there, with some ambiguity as to who it goes to; I suppose you could say it’s Heavy Duty’s, but arming Joes with Warsaw Pact inspired weapons always seemed to me like the most random and low-effort choices for Joe guns. Weird pattern: They gave Grunt an AK the year prior too, so the Joes seemed to have adopted a number of Russian weapons into their armory.

1998 Heavy Duty is especially common and not all that expensive at around $13. This is probably because the set was rereleased in the ARAHC line with no changes, so Heavy Duty and the MOBAT he came packaged with stayed on store shelves a lot longer than other Joe items did during the same period. Of course, technically the only part he has to lose is a generic figure-stand, so that’s another element that erodes some of his value.

1998 Heavy Duty

Forgotten Figures

Half the Battle

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged 1998, Heavy Duty | 4 Comments

2007 Lt. Clay Moore

Posted on October 9, 2023 by Nekoman

2007 Lt. Clay Moore

Tank shenanigans aside, the best convention set ever made was probably the 2007 “Tanks for the Memories” set. I say that, because most of the convention sets strike me as boring retreads of old molds and concepts, likely chasing whatever was trendiest with collectors at the time. Whereas the 2007 set and to a lesser degree the 2003 set provided more new characters and concepts than just “An Iron Grenadier that looks different!” or “Road Pig, but in camo sweats!”. Case in point, Lt. Clay Moore is totally new and fresh, and is still the only toy of some guy who appeared for a minute and a half of a single Sunbow episode (Besides an ME figure I noticed after I wrote this, that totally looks like poo.).

Lt. Clay Moore isn’t a super important character or anything so fascinating that’s he’s better than Firefly or Zartan. As a figure though, what’s nice about him is that he represents something original, which stands out among a brand that’s been very inward looking for decades. It’s the same thing that makes characters like the equally poorly-named Shadow Tracker become instant hits, as neither of these identities are really all that captivating. Comparatively though, they’re a lot more interesting than the same limited roster of familiar names and faces in increasingly gaudy colors and outfits, or a newly invented army-builder that servers no real purpose.

With that said, I don’t have the most uses for Lt. Clay Moore. That’s not because he’s a bad figure, but rather, because he uses Balrog’s head, and I already use Balrog as a different Cobra. Clay Moore also loses some value in my collection for being a Shock Viper commander, and while I’m lucky enough to own a convention Clay Moore, I’m not lucky enough to own a single Shock Viper of either variety. For me, that doesn’t make him a figure without it’s uses, but it’s something that frustrates me when I want to use him. I see him as being a less skilled version of Major Bludd that Cobra keeps on file for when Bludd’s busy, hiding or otherwise unavailable. Just an elevated mook with a small amount of identity.

The toy’s made from the head of ‘93 Balrog with the full body of ‘94 Ice Cream Soldier. It’s a nice pairing of sculpts that has it’s advantages and disadvantages: I tend to find the larger Street Fighter head looks a lot more natural and at home with big-headed ‘86 figures, so Lt. Clay Moore matches up pretty nicely with some classic Vipers. The Ice Cream Soldier sculpt was also one that deserved some good repaints. It was already done in blue once before as the ‘02 Shock Viper, but as he leads those guys, I tend to find his colors to be more complimentary rather than repetitive. He also gets the advantage of looking a lot better than the Shock Viper, since that toy was slathered in a nasty looking wash, whereas Clay Moore has a nice and vibrant blue, mixed with some black and silver that makes him fit right in with a variety of Cobras.

If Lt. Clay Moore has a weakness, it’s probably his accessories. He includes a helmet (DTC Major Bludd’s), along with a grey gun and bazooka that was repurposed from General Blitz, from the ‘95 Sgt. Savage line. The nice thing is that the parts do make this feel like an entirely new figure. The less nice thing is that none of them are particularly good: his rifle is an FG 42. Despite being for a larger figure, it scales okay here too, but what’s irksome about the sculpt is the complete lack of a clip or magazine. The bazooka was a particularly odd choice too, given that most adult collectors cry at the very sight of a spring-loaded missile launcher, so it seems like a weird thing to include with an adult targeted toy (although it doesn’t look bad). Even the helmet is slightly flawed as it doesn’t really fit too tightly on his head, though some might prefer that to avoid paint-wear.

So when it comes to pricing Lt. Clay Moore… I really have no idea. Only one’s been up on eBay in the last three months, a listing from China that sold for $90, which was also incomplete. There’s no other Lt. Clay Moore’s that have been for sale, so it’s hard to figure out what one is really worth, but $50 to $90 would probably be about right. Complete ’07 Convention sets go for around $700, so that’s probably the smarter way to get one if you just happened to have $700 dollars laying around and nothing to do with it. Used to, this was a fairly cheap convention figure, hence why I own one at all. When he came out, it was a buyer’s market on top of being an o-ring figure when most people were “upgrading” to 25th Anniversary sculpts. The prices are finally starting to really drop on vintage stuff, but as this figure is hard to find now, I suspect he won’t get much cheaper any time soon.

2007 Lt. Clay Moore Links:

Forgotten Figures

Half the Battle

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged 2007, Joecon, Lt. Clay Moore, Tanks for the Memories | 5 Comments

1987 Dreadnok Cycle

Posted on October 2, 2023 by Nekoman

1987 Dreadnok Cycle

I think in a general sense, 1987 is a very underrated year when it comes to vehicles. Compared to ‘86, you have more fun and better looking vehicles from ‘87, and the only real loss is the Battle Stations, which ended after the Surveillance Port, LAW and Outpost Defender. After typing that, I do realize I’m saying that 1987, the year with the Buzz Boar and POGO is better than the year with the Tomahawk… But 1986 also had the LCV Recon Sled and a bunch of other offerings that were mediocre at best. The Dreadnok Cycle fits into this as a good example of something that isn’t great, but is also better than a lot of the more mid offerings from the year prior.

For a long time, the Dreadnok Cycle was the sort of thing I avoided, mainly because I always thought it looked like something from Whacky Races more than GI Joe. Boring as it is, I’ve usually preferred to imagine my ‘Noks hanging out in grungy civilian vehicles and ordinary Cobra hardware over their own proprietary items. So I never owned one of these until 2017 or so, and even then it was only because I was bored out of my mind and wanted a cheap GI Joe vehicle to pull me out of a slump.

As a gang of bikers (playing their tune), it was cool that Hasbro actually went and made some kind of bike for them, as were it not for the Dreadnok Cycle, the Dreadnoks would’ve never had a bike that wasn’t a recolored RAM. Choppers and custom bikes tend to be really strange looking, so it’s appearance really isn’t that questionable, besides the turret gun that looks a tad more cartoonish than I’d like. Something about the bike makes me think more of a bosozoku bike than a western chopper, I think in particular it’s the tall seat; western bikes usually have small seats while Japanese bikes I’m more used to seeing have tall seats like this. On an unrelated note I just wanted to type somewhere: An expelled Arashikage who became a Dreadnok seems like an idea that should’ve been done, make him a knock-off of Jagi from Fist of the North Star. Maybe as a custom one day…

Past how it looks, the Dreadnok Cycle presents a lot of play value for a medium-size vehicle. Besides it’s driver, it has a swiveling turret, that features what the blueprints call a “‘Blazing’ Shock-Dampened 106m Recoilless Rifle”, which is on it’s own swivel too. The front-wheel turns, and it also has a pair of missiles that seem pretty dangerous, though maybe not as much as the recoilless rifle. It’s good for what it is, though it’s pretty much impossible for a figure to use it’s handle-bars, partly because o-ring joes can’t pose that well, but mostly because the things are just positioned way too high up. The handles are also pretty hard to use on the recoilless rifle, but I’ll give that one a pass since I’m not really sure you’d hold and shoot that like a normal gun anyways.

If you have a lot of patience and some money to burn, there’s some cool recolors of the Dreadnok cycle to collect. Estrela released Ciclofera in 1993, which came in similar but still noticeably different colors. In ‘95 Hasbro released the vehicle again with a missile launcher as the Street Fighter Karate Chopper, before it finally got a convention repaint in ’04, as the Dreadnok Cycle, just in different colors. Buy ‘em all and you could assemble a nifty looking gang of Dreadnok bikes in different colors. At one point I had thought about doing this myself, until I realized it was a lot more trouble than I was willing to put in for the mold.

Dreadnok Cycles have had some very volatile pricing in recent years. When I bought mine less than a decade ago (I mentioned it, but I can’t remember what year exactly) I paid around $8 for it. Then the coof-collector saga happened, and the price sky-rocketed to a whopping $50, where it had been just a year or so ago. Now though, prices are quickly falling, and it’s more common that you can get a good one for less than $20. The red deflector shields on the turret seem to be the item that’s most often missing or broken (they don’t stay on good), but even if you get one missing those, you can find replacements with relative ease. It’s a good vehicle and I’m glad it’s coming back down to a more reasonable price now that the normies are going back to kayaking and prescription drug addiction or whatever they do when they’re not ruining toy collecting.

1987 Dreadnok Cycle Links

Diorama – Island Raid (Forgotten Figures)

3D Joes

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged 1987, Dreadnok Cycle, Dreadnoks | 3 Comments

1988 Spearhead & Max

Posted on September 25, 2023 by Nekoman

1988 Spearhead & Max

I’ve not put enough time lately into writing and taking photos. Part of that is because I’ve been going through tubs of childhood toys looking for lost vehicle parts, and usually finding everything except the one I’ve been looking for. In spite of that, I needed a Joe who I have at least two photos of this week to post about. Looking through my options, there’s quite a few figures that inspire some thought on my part, but I want to take a little more care while having fun with them; I needed someone to essentially be filler. In a lot of ways, that kind of sums up my feelings on Spearhead & Max.

So yeah, of the 1988 single-cards, Spearhead & Max is probably my least favorite release. To me, everything about him feels obligatory, forced and somewhat lackluster. Starting with his character, his filecard is just WEIRD:

Spearhead was the youngest and most successful insurance salesman in the Pacific North West. It was said that he could sell a term policy to a dead cow. Everybody like him, trusted him, and bought more insurance from him than they could afford. Spearhead denies that guilt was a factor in his decision to join the army—he simply felt that somebody had to do it.
“Some guys, they’re gonna lead a combat assault, right? They jump up and holler, ‘Follow me!’ and charge full tilt at a bunker—halfway there, they look back, and no one’s behind them! Of course not. The guy was a jerk. Spearhead could jump face first into a vat of rabid hyenas and fifteen guys would follow him. No hesitation. They’d jump SMILING. And of course, Spearhead’s mad cat, Max, is always a source of inspiration.”

He’s supposed to be really charismatic I guess? The text doesn’t really say anything interesting about him. It feels like some kind of joke I’m not getting, which may be the case, but even then his character just feels phoned-in. His secondary specialty is finance… Which I guess is unique, anyway.

The sculpt on this figure doesn’t do very much for me. His proportions feel really out of place and distinctly of lower quality than every other sculpt from ‘88. His head’s on the smaller end, his torso is super bulky, then his legs are really skinny looking. Kind of a shame he looks like a stern and cool trooper on the cart art, but the figure just has this ho-hum random dude kind of look to him.

The colors don’t really do him any favors, either. This entire year of figures was hurt by the more sparse paint applications, but among the few colors you’ll find on Spearhead is a heaping helping of orange camouflage. My current mentality for GI Joe is that if colors look good, then it’s enough reason to have them on a fantasy commando toy. With a similar looking figure, ‘92 Duke, he uses bright red for highlights, and it looks great against his light tan. A peachy tan with orange is both bright, and rather unappealing to me visually.

For accessories, you get his helmet, a rifle, sword, backpack and of course Max, his bobcat. The inclusion of a bobcat always came across to me as if they had a checklist of features to have in every year, and “good guy with pet” was one of them. His rifle looks like crap. For years I’ve had this figure and completely forgot I never bothered with getting his real gun, but I have other copies of the sculpt; I’m familiar enough with it to know I don’t really need it. It’s so cartoonish looking, why is the tip of the barrel so huge? It looks like some kind of weird suppressor. Then it has two magazines too: why? They look like different kinds of ammunition, but I can’t figure out what the second feed would be for. The only mildly cool thing is it has a strap, which adds a bit of play value. His sword is another mystery, it’s oddly kind of ornate like some sort of ethnic weapon.

A mint complete Spearhead & Max runs a solid $15, but even one imperfection often drops him down to being $6. He’s always been on the cheaper end, and because of that he does tend to make a fun addition to a turret, or just as buddy to go with someone cool like Shockwave or Repeater. All things considered, I don’t hate Spearhead (& Max), I just don’t really have any reason to like him, either.

1988 Spearhead & Max Links:

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged 1988, ARAH, Spearhead & Max | 4 Comments

1992 Eco Striker

1992 Eco Striker Links:

Funskool T.A.R.G.A.T.

Funskool T.A.R.G.A.T. Links:

2001 Sure Fire

2001 Sure Fire Links:

1983 Black Major

1983 Black Major Links:

2010 Cobra Deviant

2010 Cobra Deviant Links:

2004 Black Dragon Ninja

2004 Black Dragon Ninja Links:

1998 Heavy Duty

1998 Heavy Duty

2007 Lt. Clay Moore

2007 Lt. Clay Moore Links:

1987 Dreadnok Cycle

1987 Dreadnok Cycle Links

1988 Spearhead & Max

1988 Spearhead & Max Links:

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