1993 Iceberg

Posted on February 28, 2025 by mwnekoman

Something that always struck me as odd about the 1993 Joe line, is the sheer amount of figures released. At a glance, I’m pretty sure there’s more figures released in this year than any other year of the Joe line. There’s so many figures Hasbro even had room to crank out 3 arctic themed Joes in the Battle Corps line, with Snow Storm, Frostbite and Iceberg. I never really saw these figures as a set until now, as it never really occurred to me they came out at essentially the same time.

V2 Iceberg is a competent update to the original 1986 Iceberg. He has a few warts I’ll get to in a bit, but as a design this isn’t a very extreme looking figure for a 90’s release; in fact, he’s pretty mundane. The biggest issue I could see for him is the choice to give him a bright yellow ski-mask. It’s perfectly realistic (save for the color), but still kind of an odd choice to completely obscure his face. In Brazil they even went as far as to sell Pântano as a Cobra, and it’s a role the figure works as. Some people are obsessed with the idea that covering your face makes you a terrorist. I’m fine with masks to an extent,but it has to suit the character. For Iceberg, it’s kind of odd he would suddenly cover his face up when both of his files explicitly state how much he likes the cold.

There’s some belts of bullets sculpted to him now, which would be a cool touch with his original LMG, if only he still had an LMG. Inconsistencies like this always made me wonder how many last minute swaps Hasbro made with accessories. A few are pretty obvious, like Sonic Fighters (AKA Eco Warriors) Major Bludd having the Air Devil’s gun in his card art. Iceberg has all these bullets, but no gun they would be compatible with.

Otherwise, the sculpt is strong and the colors are well within reason. I like this Iceberg a lot, though I rarely have motive to use him outside of going for something odd on the rare occasion it snows. In a few areas his sculpt is probably a little stronger and sharper than the original figure’s, yet somehow he’s still not really all that exciting. To a certain extent, I think arctic Joes fall into a trap of feeling more samey than others, since ultimately it’s always going to be a mostly white figure in bulky clothes. Even older figures like Sub-Zero and Blizzard feel like they cover old ground.

Speaking of that Brazilian repaint, it looks like he got released over there and then the mold disappeared forever. A shame, since the head on a real Cobra might’ve looked pretty cool. The jacket is vague enough too that I could see the whole figure repainted into darker woodland colors like Big Ben’s and making for a decent figure. This Iceberg’s colors are already decent enough, so it’s not much of a loss though.

Iceberg does include some TOTALLY RAD accessories, like a JET POWERED SNOW BOARD! Yeah, although most of the parts are recycled sculpts, they made sure to toss in a brand new snow board, I guess since extreme-sports were just that popular at the time. His other accessories include a pistol and long-barrel uzi pulled from Blizzard, a machete (Muskrat) and a knife (Hit & Run), as well as the requisite missile launcher. It’s a little flimsy, but by far my favorite part of the figure is the snow board. When I was kid the snow Joes flew around everywhere on that thing, it was like the JUMP, just more radical.

A carded figure is worth about $30 and a loose complete V2 Iceberg will fetch about $13. Fairly standard pricing for a ’93 Battle Corps figure at this point, so it sounds about right. This Iceberg really isn’t a figure essential to a collection, but he’s well done and nice to have around. Though, he also doesn’t feel like he has a life much outside of background fodder in a photo.

1993 Iceberg Links:

Half the Battle

3D Joes

Joe A Day

1993 Snake Eyes

Posted on February 21, 2025 by mwnekoman

Snake Eyes is an odd character to me. I like him, I like thinking about the adventures he goes on. Though, there’s too much of him and honestly, any interpretation of him that disregards the goggles doesn’t appeal to me much. To me, the only real Snake Eyes designs are the original and the ’91 version. So with that out of the way, this Ninja Force version doesn’t have much of a leg to stand on, huh?

I should be sentimental and waxing nostalgia for him, as technically this was my first Snake Eyes and one of my first GI Joe toys. I was born right as GI Joe died, so most of the figures I had that weren’t my brothers were bought in ’96 and ’97 on clearance. Cheap left overs or not, I was delighted to have my own GI Joes as a kid, but the scenario somewhat oddly shaped my views on a few things. For me, almost the entirety of GI Joe was a blank slate, where I only knew a couple of characters, and the basic scenario of GI Joe vs Cobra. Over time an occasional Sunbow re-run, Street Fighter II, or a watching of our GI JOE:THE MOVIE recording would influence my world a bit. For the most part, I made up my own characters based on what figures interested me the most.

1993 Snake Eyes was not one of those figures I liked a lot; in fact, I barely remember playing with Spider-Spawn at all. So despite being baby’s-first Snake Eyes, I don’t really have any great memories of him. The Night Creeper and Bushido were far more captivating to me than this Snake Eyes ever was, probably because their sculpting made it a lot more clear what they were, whereas Ninja Force Snake Eyes doesn’t give someone much to go off of. Looking at him now, there’s a lot of detail here I can appreciate in the design, but as a kid the smooth mask and predominately black color didn’t make him very interesting.

Looking past that, the sculpt actually is fairly strong. There’s some nice texturing on his sweatshirt that highlights the body-armor he wears on top of it, without using paint. The smooth battle-mask is kind of an interesting riff on the original look… Though I still think it makes him look too much like Spawn. At a glance, he appears as though he’s covered in copious amounts of grenades like a stereotypical figure of his era, but most of those are small Nageteppo smoke grenades. His assortment of flares, smoke grenades and explosives seems a lot more natural and interesting, than something like Sonic Fighters Major Bludd. Of course, all of this is stifled by that fact that he has a spring-gimmick in both his hips and his arms. I try to look past these as highlighting them is repetitive, but Snake Eyes suffers a lot for how obtrusive his particular gimmick is.

Snake Eyes comes with three different swords (One from Ninja Force Storm Shadow, one from Dojo and a curved sword, which was new.), a knife (also new), two claws (’88 Stormie’s), nunchucks (from Nunchucks) and a figure stand, all cast in bright, powder blue plastic. Most weapons from the parts-tree era were just reused sculpts, so I find it odd that Snake Eyes came with two that were new. It’s not an amazing allotment of weapons either way; I wish he had a little blue pistol like the one holstered on his leg. The same set in yellow was included with Ninja Force Scarlet.

On a good day, you can still get 1993 Snake Eyes for around $5 loose, and $15 to $20 carded, with the carded examples proving to be the more common ones. “More common carded” is such a funny idiosyncrasy,as you really only see something like that happen with stuff people were hoarding in droves. In some ways this Snake Eyes is kind of an iconic figure, representing his last outfit in ARAH. Yet, he’s also a really bad figure for the action feature, so that’s probably reflected more in his pricing.

1993 Snake Eyes Links:

1991 Ice Sabre

Posted on February 13, 2025 by mwnekoman

Reviewing a vehicle where I don’t have all of the pieces, and proceeding to dump on it feels a little bad. For the Ice Sabre though, I don’t mind doing this, because the chin gun and missiles aren’t going to add that much to my experience. Also, between living in the south where I’ll never get more than a few inches of snow per decade, means I’m almost certain to never photograph this thing again for as long as I live here. So let’s get back into the swing of things by once again stating that 1991 was the worst year of GI Joe vehicles.

Among all of the GI Joe vehicle I’ve touched, none are as perplexing and unenjoyable to hold as the Ice Sabre. Armor Bot is unenjoyable to hold too, but it’s appeal is pretty straight forward. The Ice Sabre is not just cumbersome, it’s confusing as to what it’s actually supposed to be. There’s skis, and anti-air guns, and some weird ass rotating cockpit… and that’s basically all there is to it. It looks really busy, but as a premise there’s nothing too exciting going on here. Yet, without having a real interesting gimmick, the thing just flops around wildly if you try to pick it up. It tries to be something more than the WOLF or Ice Snake and fails pretty miserably at it.

The most prominent feature of the vehicle is the 3-man rotating cockpit. As the box describes it: “In seconds, the rotating, 3-man cockpit pivots to place a new, battle-hardened soldier at the controls-” or in other words, a complex mechanical system just for switching drivers. You dump 3 guys into the cockpit and two of them do nothing until one of them needs a nap, which is a pretty bizarre idea. As a toy, it plays worse than it sounds, as there’s nothing really going on in that cockpit. There’s a set of 3 rotating seats, and you can switch them around from the outside using the little orange knob on top. That’s it. Outside of the seats the interior is boring and almost totally devoid of details.

The missile-launcher on the back sucks too. It’s supposed to have some odd gimmick where you can fire a bunch of missiles at once with a little firing pin. I’ve never obtained this piece and don’t plan on it either. The launcher itself is shoddy and broke at one of the connectors just from a gentle touch years ago. There’s a lot of friction placed on the connector posts, which are also rather hallow, so there’s not a lot of integrity in the design.

A prototype exists with a significant number of differences compared to the production toy; so much so that Hasbro even updated the back of the box to reflect this. 3D Joes does a good job of documenting both versions of the box, so you can check that out to see what I mean. Besides a plethora of small changes, metal pins were removed from the front skis and the hinges where my missile launcher broke. Obviously removing the metal made the design much cheaper, and also could explain why those sections are stupidly flimsy.

For better or for worse, it also has a very, very long profile thanks to the skis. The vehicle is narrow and relatively flat, but is closer to 13-ish inches long (didn’t measure it, going by memory). So for something that holds a crew of 3 with 6 more dudes who can pile onto the foot-rails, it takes up a lot of space in return for relatively low play value. Really, this is the biggest flaw with the vehicle is that it really doesn’t do a whole lot. It doesn’t feel as insanely chintzy as the Rat or the Attack Cruiser, but most of it’s play value is focused into the missile launcher and rotating seats, both of which fall flat.

On a good day you can get an Ice Sabre for barely the price of shipping one, so around $10. It’s an obscure and unappealing vehicle like most of it’s contemporaries, so there’s not much demand for it outside of completionists and the oddball 90’s kid nostalgic for it. The one photographed here is my brother’s childhood toy, were it not for that I’d never touch this thing. It’s easily the worst arctic vehicle ever made, and a contender for worst ARAH vehicle. That’s a whopping indictment to make about a vehicle, but this one fails on almost every front. Even the MOBAT (and subsequent CAT), which is a pretty terrible toy, can always fall back on looking nice; whereas the Ice Sabre looks like it was made from refurbished carnival rides.

The Viper Pit

Monthly Archives: February 2025