Monthly Archives: January 2018

1987 Knockdown, Battle Force 2000

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In terms of GI Joe subgroups, it feels to me that even the detested Cobra La is brought up in conversation more than the Battle Force 2000. It’s a weird lot of figures that I think most people would see as ARAH’s low point, and Knockdown is a figure who could represent a lot of what was wrong with this group of figures.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of strange and unpopular figures I’m a huge fan of. I love 90‘s figures, Ninja Force, Star Brigade, I even like Cobra La and most of the Battle Force 2000 figures. However, as a subset, the BF2000 figures often had a few of the problems you see in Knockdown here. Knockdown just suffers the worst from having so many problems and looking like a Flash Gordon reject on top of that.

Starting with the sculpt, Knockdown is an ugly figure. He has an awkwardly large torso, it isn’t as bad as certain 90‘s figures, but it looks ugly to me. The sculpt isn’t very detailed and generally just looks like a generic sci-fi action figure. The majority of this figure was never repainted later in the line, and I find that understandable given that I can’t see him being very useful for much else. As an interesting note, his head was later reused to make Super Trooper, Rapid Fire, and modified into Charbroil. At the very least, the head isn’t terrible and it works for him as well as the other characters.

Next up, his accessories. He comes with a gun, and a helmet. The helmet has a few paint applications and is rather detailed for a vintage Joe bucket. It’s still kinda ugly, but it’s an okay part for what it’s worth. Now, his gun on the other hand is an absolutely terrible part. It’s supposed to be an “experimental ground-to-air pistol”, but it’s not really good for anything. The handle is really thick regardless of if you get the normal or skinny variant, and he has trouble holding it. Besides that, the quality of the sculpt is just terrible. If you compare it to almost any other GI Joe weapon, it’s honestly hard to believe this part is from the same toy line. Most of the BF 2000 had lousy guns like this, and sadly Knockdown is no exception.

It’s probably obvious by now, but I don’t like Knockdown very much. The only reason I own him is because I acquired him in a lot. I can’t find a place for him in my collection other than as a contemporary with other BF2000 figures I like better, so to me, he’s a prop for photos. If I had a Sky-Sweeper, the vehicle he technically drives, I’d likely still opt for a more traditional vehicle driver over him.

With that all said, Knockdowns are really cheap if for some reason the figure strikes your fancy. Complete figures range in price from $3 to $7, but if you look around you can have a great example for the lower price with relative ease. My disdain for this figure aside, that’s a really low value for a vintage figure. Likely, it’s another reflection of the figure’s quality, but it’s hard to really be too serious on a figure that’s barely worth the price of a cup of coffee.

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Knockdown diorama by Dan Contrino

Knockdown diorama by Yorktownjoe

1993 Stalker, Arctic Commandos Mail-away

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Way back in 1993 just before the Joe line began to wear down, Hasbro released a fairly large amount of new figures as mail-away exclusives. A few, such as a ’91 General Hawk repaint were sold by themselves, while others were sold in sets of three to four figures, like this Stalker from the Arctic Commandos set.

The figure is a straight up repaint of ‘89 Stalker, and on the surface he doesn’t seem too interesting. ‘89 Stalker was already a really solid figure, so this guy doesn’t have much to improve upon. The main difference is that this figure replaces a lot of the green with more white, and the muddy camouflage pattern on the legs is more subdued. I rather like the change, as while ‘89 Stalker had an interesting palette, Arctic Commandos Stalker has one that’s more cohesive with the other cold-climate centric figures.

The parts for these mail-away sets were pretty sparse in general. This Stalker seemingly got the short end of the stick, coming with only a silver knife, the same one from V1 Shockwave. It’s a decent little part and Stalker can use it well enough, but it’s somewhat of a shame that he doesn’t retain any of the excellent gear from the ‘89 figure. Back when this guy came out I suppose the lack of decent weapons really didn’t matter much, since if you bought this mail-away, you presumably had some other recent figures who could share a gun or two.

Overall, the other 1993 mail-in figures were probably more interesting. But, this Stalker is a fun figure to have in a collection as both a novelty and an alternative to the 1989 figure. He’s niche and truly forgotten, so it makes him a fun and interesting collectible if you’re into that. He also benefits from being likely the best version of this mold color-wise, maybe second only to the 2007 Convention Rock ‘n Roll.

Just a few years ago all of the figures from this Arctic Commandos set weren’t too hard to find. Especially this Stalker, who some collectors ended up with in excess trying to army-build the Snow Serpent from the set. Times have changed though, and although he’s still relatively a bargain figure, none of the figures from this set are as common as they used to be. Excess stock of the 90‘s mail-aways were bought up by dealers at cheap prices and saturated the market for years. But like with Funskool figures, many once common figures are now hard to find as the GI Joe market is drying up. Still, Stalker here goes for as little as $4 to $10 when one does show up for auction. He’s a really nice collectable for that much.

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1993 Stalker Diorama by Outrider

1993 Stalker Diorama by Cyko

2002 Headman

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Although nothing seems more repetitive than 80‘s and 90‘s anti-drug messages, the DEF and Headhunters were some pretty cool toys to come from the era. They’re a bit corny, but also a real world topic that’s interesting to inject into a military toy line. In the 2000‘s however, anti-drug messages in children’s shows and product largely went away and even seemed to take somewhat more of a taboo status. So when Hasbro brought Headman back in the GI Joe vs. Cobra line, he was somewhat of a departure from his prior form to say the least.

The original Headman was a sweet figure. The black pin-stripped suit was a great look for a drug dealer, among other features I found that made the figure charming.There was little to do in the way of improving the original, and sadly the ‘02 Headman could be seen as quite the down grade. Now he wears a solid orange suit that looks quite a lot like The Mask, which I’d be a little insulted to know if that was really the inspiration for this figure.

There’s nothing much to say about the figure other than that. He’s Headman, but in orange. In all fairness I think certain details of the sculpt are a little easier to see in this color than in black, but that doesn’t really justify the poor color choice here. Oddly, his hair color has been changed to black as well, a design choice I still don’t quite understand.

HEADMAN started out robbing convenience stores, then learned the ropes of high-end thievery while serving time in prison. A hardened criminal, HEADMAN doesn’t think twice about removing anyone who gets in the way of his plans. He steals anything for the right price—government secrets, weapon system specifications, and priceless art treasures. His thefts have undermined the safety of countries and satisfied greedy private art collectors at the expense of museums around the world. He has managed to escape GENERAL TOMAHAWK time and again, but the relentless G.I. JOE commander has caused him to abandon some plans, losing money. He wants to remove the threatening general from his trail, once and for all.
“I am a master of crime who can steal anything, and never get caught.”

-Headman’s Filecard

The filecard’s from this era tend to be pretty worthless, and Headman’s is no exception. Interestingly, they’ve completely overhauled his character in this one. No longer is he a drug dealer and the leader of the Headhunters, but instead a robber and expert thief. The portrayal seems especially childish and simple, and even steps on the toes of a few other Cobras who already fill similar roles (Firefly and Zartan). Again, I suppose at this point drugs were a topic they simply preferred to avoid, but they could’ve found a more appropriate role for the Headman than one as blase as this.

Gijoe vs cobra hasbro headhunters def action figure vintage

They also really phoned in the accessories on this figure. Instead of his highly interesting G11 riffle, he now includes the grenade launcher and knife from the V1 Range Viper, as well as the pistol from ‘91 Dusty (the one they would eventually include with different figures more than twenty times.). What gets me about these accessories isn’t that they’re horribly generic, but that absolutely no thought was put into them for the character. A big, noisy grenade launcher for a guy who’s supposed to be a thief now?

Despite all of this, I like using this figure every now and then just because no one else really does that much. I’m also a big Headhunters fan, so he has appeal to me for that alone. But this isn’t a good figure and his value sixteen years later reflects that. Complete figures can be had for around $5, but if you look around, the sealed set with General Hawk (Tomahawk) can be had for almost as much.

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2002 Headman Links:

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Half the Battle

2004 Convention Buzzer

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Among the many Joecon sets that came and went, one of the most memorably lackluster was the 2004 set. Among the many figures FunPub could have made, they opted instead for some Dreadnok repaints that were at best, novelties. This Buzzer figure is a perfect example.

To preface this, I suppose I’m developing a habit of hating Joecon exclusives on this blog. I really don’t, at least not generally. But, most of the Joecon exclusives that inspire my comments are ones that I view as being somewhat flawed. This Convention Buzzer figure is flawed, but also represents one of the worst Joecon sets ever made.

The figure himself looks fine enough. It’s Buzzer, with the contemporary 2000‘s ARAH flesh color. He now is in mostly red, and has some camouflage on his pants. A modest, and different look for Buzzer. The problem that arises is that outside of looking different and being mildly limited in production, that’s all this figure has to offer: colors. Just colors. These colors aren’t based on some niche appearance he once had, or an old prototype, or even some bizarre foreign release. They are simply new colors applied to an old action figure to make a new, novelty collectible. The lack of any creativity here and forced nature of figures like this were something I had a great disdain for with FunPub’s Joe and Transformers exclusives.

With that said, Buzzer is still an excellent classic sculpt and I even find the colors to be attractive in a few ways. The flesh tone on this figure somehow seems more appropriate than his pastier vintage tone. As an Australian biker currently hanging out in the Florida Everglades, it seems right that his skin would be a bit darker. The red color coupled with the camouflage has a good urban appearance too, I think he’d look alright with the Alley Viper V6 to name one example.

With all that said, I can’t be the only one indifferent to this figure. I acquired my example sans accessories for a whopping $3. A weird example, but you rarely encounter anything from a convention that cheap. Even as of this writing, complete examples of this figure are easy to find under $20, if you hunt I’m sure you could even get this figure for less than $15. If you really want a Joecon exclusive, he’s not a bad option for that novelty. Beyond that, it’s a really shallow figure for a convention exclusive.

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Buzzer at Half the Battle

Funskool Flint

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With Christmas having recently passed,  I couldn’t help but find it necessary to talk about a Joe that was a Christmas present of mine. The funny thing is, prior to my teenage years I never really had any GI Joe items I got for Christmas. It wasn’t that I didn’t like GI Joe, but I never seemed to get any as presents. A combination of the DTC and 25th Anniversary lines brought me back into Joe hard around 2007, and in light of that my brother snagged me a Funskool Flint as a present the next year.

Despite the quality of Funskool figures and their cards, opening Flint up that morning was a fun and somewhat surreal feeling. Mind you, I’m a kid of the mid-90‘s, so I totally missed out on most of ARAH, but I still had this feeling of having just time traveled. Those ARAH cards were visually striking in a way that I feel was almost timeless.

The figure itself was also my first time owning a vintage Flint figure. This was just a bit before I began hunting down actual vintage figures off eBay, so I was really excited to have this figure in my collection. As a big fan of the Sunbow cartoon, I always desired having more figures in their classic appearances as opposed to many of the redesigns from the late 80‘s and 90‘s. That’s not to say Flint’s Eco-Warriors or Battle Corps toys weren’t any good, but to me as a kid they didn’t look enough like Flint. It really makes me regret having no prior knowledge of the Funskool figures, as I certainly would’ve bought a lot of them. I wanted things like this during the 2000‘s a lot more than Spy Troops and Valor vs Venom.

As for the figure itself, it’s a fairly decent representation of V1 Flint. So much so that I’ve been content with the figure for a whole decade and never bothered with a Hasbro Flint. The colors are very similar, and although the paint is notoriously messy on certain runs of Funskool figures, I seemingly lucked out and got a fairly clean looking Flint save for the gold paint.

Hasbro Gijoe ARAH Flint parts funskool action figure

In another nice event, Funskool Flint comes with parts that are remarkably similar to Hasbro’s. Mind you, the plastic is of course somewhat cheaper but visually they do the job rather well. Back in the 2000’s these figures were so cheap that an example like Flint or Scrap Iron was worth buying just for the parts at the humble $3 they ran. For a collector on a budget, this was a great way of getting good parts to give to a Hasbro figure.

I really loved getting this figure a decade ago, especially coupled with a few other Funskool items I got at the same time. Back then however, these figure were dirt cheap. As Funskool figures now routinely run between $10 to $20, I find it increasingly hard to say if they’re worth it most of the time. A few figures provide something unique, but with figure’s like Flint at today’s prices, you’re probably better off sticking with the American version.

Hasbro Gijoe ARAH Flint parts funskool action figure

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