About mwnekoman

Blogger, toy collector, balding, lactose intolerant. I think that's an excellent description of myself.

1988 Duke (Tiger Force)

Posted on January 15, 2024 by mwnekoman

1988 Duke (Tiger Force)

Tiger Force Duke is two things I like, being that I like Duke and I like Tiger Force. Yet, strangely enough I don’t know if I feel that much of a connection to the figure besides it being the tiger-pajamas Duke who mostly only comes out once a summer to play with his other tiger-print friends I like more. Which has it’s appeals, given that the original Tiger Force is a very strong set of figures, so just having a Duke to match them isn’t a bad thing.

Objectively, I think there’s a case that can be made that Duke is the third weakest figure of the set. The worst figure is probably Frostbite, just because he’s the one that makes the least sense, and second would be Bazooka, since keeping the football jersey and losing the colors doesn’t really hold much appeal. Duke loses a lot for the scant paint on his head, with V1 Duke making the head work with his painted teeth and a separate color for his hair. Tiger Force Duke changes his hair color to brown, presumably to save on money since it matches with the color on his belts and bandolier. He also has these weird peachy-tan pants that are a shade that doesn’t really match with any of the other Tiger Force Figures. Most of the other figures share a color or two between them that works nicely towards making the Tiger Force look like a cohesive team, but Duke’s pants don’t match with anything. It could look worse, but I’ve always felt he looks a tad bit inferior when you sit him next to Flint.

It’s a good looking figure despite all that though, and I’m probably the odd one for not holding him in such a high regard. The olive green shirt is a nice shade that still perfectly fits with the heavy use of green from early in the line. The brown details and peachy pants also do nicely to make him look less monotonous and show more detail than the original figure, which is a big plus. If he had more orange or yellow on him, he’d probably be a lot less popular, and I don’t know if I’d really like that either. The worst thing he probably has going for him though, is that I always compare him to Flint, and while this is a good figure, that one’s a great figure.

The Duke mold went through a lot of changes up to the Tiger Force release. I’m going to assume something must’ve go awry with the arms early on, since late-release Dukes from Hasbro and Takara both swapped over to V1 Grunt arms (Probably when they sent the Doc mold to Plastirama?). Tiger Force Duke (and later, Chinese Duke) has Hit & Run arms, which works pretty well as a substitute, though I’m not sure I’ve seen a shirt like that with elastic cuffs before. The Tiger Force release also benefits from only using the sharper Duke head, compared to the original which had both this version of the sculpt and a doughy, soft looking version early on.

For parts, you get the same kit of fun gear from V1 Duke: a tan helmet, a green backpack, an M-32 Pulverizer and a pair of binoculars in dark grey. The green backpack is really nice and because it’s a common color, it also pairs decently with a few other figures. The helmet’s the same color as his pants, so it’s also unique to him and not easily mistaken for any other version of the casting.

Tiger Force Duke’s run around $25 for a mint complete figure. You’ll find some examples that swap the gun and binoculars for similar black versions though, so that’s something to look out for (mine’s usually pictured with alternate parts, since my only copy of his gun has a broken barrel). It’s a lot for a figure, but just a year or so ago Tiger Force anything would be hitting north of $70, so it doesn’t seem to bad to me now.

1988 Duke (Tiger Force) Links:

Attica Gazette

Half the Battle

3D Joes

1985 Ripper

Posted on January 8, 2024 by mwnekoman

1985 Ripper

I’ve always been fine with Dreadnoks, but something that surprises me about my own interest in recent years, is how much the appeal of the Dreadnoks have grown on me. There’s a limit to that, and a few good reasons my interests have taken me there. Because of that, I’m sometimes prone to think that Ripper might (Might!) be my favorite figure from 1985, the same year with classics like the Snow Serpent, Flint and the Crimson Guard. He’s not perfect, but he’s also a lot of fun for reasons, so here’s my best attempt at articulating that.

One thing Joe blogging has really made apparent to me, is just how far and few between Cobras are in GI Joe. It’s a standard toy marketing kind of thing, because good-guys always sell a little better than bad-guys. Still, it means that if I spend every other week looking at a Joe, then a Cobra, I’ll run out of unique Cobras to write about way faster than Joes. Troop-builders and the umpteenth bootleg Latrine Viper in Tiger Force colors gets pretty repetitive to talk about too, so unique Cobras become even more valuable in my collection. So just by virtue of not being a faceless Cobra, this is the first thing that highlights the appeal of a figure like Ripper.

Another thing I like about Ripper, is that he’s a perfectly disposable thug. A lot of the Cobras like Firefly or Wild Weasel are just too cool and competent to have stumbling around and losing all the time, otherwise how could you take them seriously? Dreadnoks like Ripper are kind of like a Viper who just has a face. The human element of the character makes him more of a fun lens to explore Cobra through, and he’s not owned by the organization so much that he always has to follow orders like a good little robot. It gives him a life of his own, yet he’s very far from a Marry-Sue kind of character.

Ripper has a really good sculpt: simple and to the point like his contemporaries. His head is a little large and caricatured looking, but it’s still sharply detailed and expressive. Buzzer and Torch might have slightly better proportions, but the wrinkles in Ripper’s face and the texture on his hair make him seem more detailed than the other two. The paint applications also do a good job of making him more distinct and interesting. Bright blue and green aren’t a common color combo, and the added camouflage on his shirt makes the figure seem even more detailed. Then you have some of that wonderfully fragile Hasbro gold to highlight his necklace, armband, brass knuckles and knife.

For parts, you get a rifle, jaws of life, his backpack and a hose. The jaws are his distinctive Dreadnok weapon, and if it was his only weapon it’d certainly knock him down a peg, but the added bonus of a rifle is probably one of the best elements of the figure. Having a gun lets him fight in battles like a normal figure, which you can’t say for Buzzer or Torch. His rifle is a modified version of Snow Job’s, which also gives it the added benefit of being easy to hold and scaled quite nicely. The jaws of life is a mildly fun contraption too, mainly for the fact that it stores on his back when he’s not using it. When in use, it’s pretty unwieldy, but it’s possible for him to get a two-handed pose with it.

A big shame about V1 Ripper, is that we never got a cartoon accurate repaint despite the potential for that to be an unique and attractive figure. After Hasbro’s release, he went to Funskool where they made a normal one and the uber-rare purple-shirt version. Then there was a crappy Joecon repaint based on the purple-shirt one, and finally a comic-pack release, that was bland and uninteresting besides the nice black accessories it came with. Admittedly, there’s not much you could do with Ripper’s sculpt besides making different looking Rippers, but it’s always a little vexing to contemplate some cool recolors that will never be a thing now.

Ripper is still a really cheap figure, on a good day you can get one for around $13 complete with mint gold paint. I think I’m mostly alone in liking him a lot, as he’s always been a cheap acquisition and he’s only marginally more expensive now than he might’ve been ten years ago, despite my dollar only being worth half as much. In some ways, I think that’s somewhat of a testament to the fact that Dreadnok fans are relatively a vocal minority, as I still have to get into a knife fight for a broken V1 Dusty or Iron Grenadier to paint, but nice Ripper’s continue to run cheap despite being prominent in both the comics and cartoon, and a figure from Joe’s zenith year.

1985 Ripper Links:

2009 Rockslide (Past and Present)

Posted on December 28, 2023 by mwnekoman

2009 Rockslide (Past and Present)

Well guys, I made it almost a whole year of posting on the blog without missing a week (that I can remember). That was until this week though, when I got some kind of fairly bad sinus infection that had me away from doing… much of anything. So with not quite the photos I wanted for one post and not many options for others, I was left asking myself what toys I realistically don’t feel like taking new photos of: the 2009 Rockslide fit the bill almost perfectly.

The Rockslide, formerly known as the Polar Battle Bear, is really a fantastic toy. So when I say I don’t feel like taking new pictures of it, it’s not because I dislike it; rather, it’s just because I’m a boy of the deep south. Outside of a freak stint of snow I got in the 2010‘s, it almost never snows here. So I don’t get to use arctic vehicles very much, and trying to find some method of making fake snow with copious amounts of white powder never turns out the same. Plus if I put that in the yard, the local homeless population might mistake it for free smack.

Hasbro making a skimobile in 1983 was a pretty bold choice, especially given that the only figure that really went with it was Snow Job. It has a nice size to it and is fairly reasonable looking, which is a staple of the early line, but I always do appreciate it. The rotating skis, and linked chin-guns add a good bit of fun to something that could otherwise get tired pretty quickly. It’s easy to take little things like that and the removable engine cover for granted, but when you compare it to a similar item like the LCV Recon Sled, you can see how a niche vehicle like this provides a decent amount of play value, whereas the Recon Sled gets boring… as soon as you touch it.

Of course, this post isn’t about the ‘83 Polar Battle Bear, it’s about the ‘09 Rockslide. So, here’s some weird tidbits about this release: First, the boxart is a new asset for the set, not vintage art. And instead of showing the included Snow Job figure, it shows what’s pretty clearly V1 Frostbite driving it. I assume this is probably an artifact of a canned 25th Anniversary release, since I remember there being computer listings for an entire wave of vehicles we never saw in any capacity. Other than that, it’s basically an unchanged ‘83 Polar Battle Bear, as even the foot-pegs are left in the vintage size. Like with the Snow Job included, the white is a slightly cooler tone than the original, which frankly I like the look of a bit. Also, I think the date stamp was 2002 on the bottom, from that time they gave it a big dumb missile launcher.

Oh yeah, another weird thing about this release is that it’s part of the Past and Present series. Hasbro had planned a full lineup of figures that would be released as Target exclusives (if memory serves), which would give you an original ARAH figure (represented by a 2004 comic-pack repaint) and the present version, which would be an unchanged copy of a ROC Joe. This exciting (not!) little idea never came to fruition after the entire ROC line failed at retail, this set especially. Nothing of value was really lost, though I always thought it was funny that Hasbro had stuff like this planned, but then just a year or so later all of the original o-ring tools fell into a black hole or something.

So the whole boxed set now fetches around $45 to $50, though I assume the, uhhh, “ARAH Rockslide”? -The old one, would probably go for much less on it’s own, but good luck finding one. This is one of those items that was pretty nifty when it came out as being a way of getting a very old vehicle in new, clean white plastic. Most of that appeal is gone now though, since it’s way harder and more expensive to get one of these than a nice vintage PBB.

2012 Inferno BAT (The Black Major)

Posted on December 18, 2023 by mwnekoman

2012 Inferno BAT (The Black Major)

Another week of “just not feelin’ it”, so another random Cobra recolor. Here’s The Black Major’s Inferno BAT, a figure I like an awful lot, but never did as much with that I once dreamed possible. With that said, I think this is the most memorable BAT custom he made, partly because it’s just a lot of fun to see a figure like the BAT decked out in solid orange. Also, I think he’s the Inferno BAT, but I’m going off my often hazy memory, so that may have not been the original name.

As a part of the early waves of Black Major figures, this wave of BATs all feature some mold oddities newer renditions lack. Namely, old TBM figures were designed to be incompatible with other vintage Joes, so the backpack pegs are twice as big and the extra hands for the BAT aren’t compatible with V1 BATs. I always hated this about these older figures, as it seems like something that was done in the vein hopes of pacifying the hobby-mafia, and as that didn’t work it was later phased out. Personally though, I always hate taking a loss just to appease people that hate me having fun in the first place.

The orange color is nice and deep. It’s very close to the reddish-orange of the V1 Alley Viper, which even a lot of Hasbro figures have failed to perfectly emulate. Other than that, it’s a very simple, no-thrills kind of recolor, keeping most of the 1986 BAT’s basic paint masks and not adding anything to it. The only thing I really dislike about the deco is the silver paint, which covers the orange plastic very poorly compared to other colors like blue. I always thought it was weird he skipped over doing a crimson BAT, but I think orange ones are a lot more useful than a robot in elite ceremony colors.

For accessories, you get the standard kit of ‘86 BAT parts, just modified in ways to make them unique as mentioned before. So that includes the backpack, and four removable appendages (a flamethrower, a claw, a gun, and a hand) The BAT hands have a tendency to fit too tight or too loose in the backpack, so a few copies broke right away, while others remained just fine. Nothing a pin vice and some rods can’t fix, but who knows if I’ll ever feel like doing that.

I think I mentioned in an older post that the quality on these were okay. I mostly stand by that, but these orange BATs do remind me that the lot wasn’t great either – “mid”, to use some modern jargon. Ill-fitting pegs make the arms break easy, and of course they have some stance/tolerance issues with their o-rings. There’s enough there to be worth griping about, but then I remember how much cheaper these older bootlegs were: a whole lot of 5 BATs only ran something like $25. The world’s a much different place almost twelve years later, so you can’t make cheap toys like that any more. Still, it was so much more fun and easy to overlook fairly serious flaws just for how cheap this stuff used to be. 1 o-ring figure in 2023, from either Hasbro or anyone else, costs me as much as 5 did back in 2012.

If you’re in the market for one of these, good luck, because I don’t remember the last time I’ve seen one for sale. At the very least I don’t see many TBM BATs running high premiums, so it shouldn’t cost a lot when you find one, it’s just that you’ll have to hunt for a while. A lot of these old customs tend to disappear like that, especially as they enter crypts like my personal dwelling, where I buy a lot, but never sell. Of course, there’s a newer 23‘ BAT in Alley Viper colors with the camo, but the orange isn’t as orange and purty as my figure here, you should be jealous.

1992 Roadblock

Posted on December 11, 2023 by mwnekoman

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.

1992 Roadblock Links:

Forgotten Figures

Forgotten Figures (Rarities Post)

Half the Battle

3D Joes

2016 Cobra Trooper (Techno Viper Colors) (The Black Major)

Posted on December 4, 2023 by mwnekoman

2016 Cobra Trooper (Techno Viper colors)

I’m feeling pretty burnt-out on Joe this week, and I think my solution for that going forward is that I’ll just write about one of the many color variations that The Black Major has put out over time. Will it solve my burnout? Probably not, but while I’m in a frump, it gives me a chance just to cover some of these repaints in detail. I can’t make an interesting blog post about the Cobra Trooper or the Night Viper seven or eight times over again, but I think it’s worthwhile to dump some content on these for the sake of posterity.

The 2016 run of TBM Cobra Troopers was really a good lot. His first wave of figures from around ‘09 put a bigger focus on realistic, environmentally themed colors; the 2016 figures instead go for some punchy colors inspired by various facets of the brand. It’s flavored a bit by contemporary trends, but each set of figures did a good job of exploring the various kinds of Cobra Trooper repaints we needed, that Hasbro never gave us. In this figure’s case, his colors are lifted off the ‘87 Techno Viper.

Seeing the original Cobra rendered in the “Cobra Purple” that’s synonymous with the line’s later years seems bizarre yet oddly enjoyable. Mind you, it’s just a tad more pink than the Techno Viper’s purple, but it looks pretty close when they aren’t side by side. You could use him as a Techno Viper in training, or even use him to represent an ordinary trooper from the later years of the organization. Maybe Cobra adopted purple as their color after the end of the Cobra Civil War, to represent a new identity. Or not, my Department of Destruction Cobra Handbook didn’t elaborate on the meaning of purple uniforms.

When this figure came out I thought I’d never get tired of Cobra Trooper repaints. To a mild extent, I have. After this set of Cobras TBM really explored every avenue he could with the sculpt, and while a few useful looking repaints came out later down the line, a lot of the ones he did last year just didn’t resonate with me. They aren’t bad, but at current pricing I’d rather just bolster my existing collection with a few more troops here and there, rather than get another one-off recolor. Of course I get that there’s always demand for more troopers, so I don’t fault the later ones for existing; I just personally got my fill.

Another oddity of the 2016 TBM figures is that most of them include painted weapons. I think this was mostly just because of the mold layouts, but thanks to it you do get some particularly exotic pieces. This figure includes the classic Dargunov and the Officer’s AK-47, as well as a V1 Viper backpack and figure stand all in bright silver, the same tone used for the figure’s face-mask and knee pads. The silver AK is incredibly cool. The details of the sculpt pop with the metallic paint, plus it makes a great compliment for so many other figures. Lampreys, of course Techno Vipers, and Ripper all look pretty natural with it.

You can still get these for somewhere between $20 to $25, which isn’t bad for some obscure bootlegs that are around 7 years old now. Some of the “factory customs” have gotten a little pricey over time, especially when they’re not too weird like this figure. When they were new these repaints sat around for a while at something like $7 a piece, but those days are long gone now, just like the spending power of the dollar.

1992 Eco Striker

Posted on November 28, 2023 by mwnekoman

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.

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

Posted on November 20, 2023 by mwnekoman

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

2001 Sure Fire

Posted on November 13, 2023 by mwnekoman

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

1983 Black Major (Action Force)

Posted on November 6, 2023 by mwnekoman

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

The Viper Pit

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1988 Duke (Tiger Force)

1988 Duke (Tiger Force)

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1985 Ripper

1985 Ripper

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2009 Rockslide (Past and Present)

2009 Rockslide (Past and Present)

2012 Inferno BAT (The Black Major)

2012 Inferno BAT (The Black Major)

1992 Roadblock

1992 Roadblock

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2016 Cobra Trooper (Techno Viper Colors) (The Black Major)

2016 Cobra Trooper (Techno Viper colors)

1992 Eco Striker

1992 Eco Striker

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

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2001 Sure Fire

2001 Sure Fire

2001 Sure Fire Links:

1983 Black Major (Action Force)

1983 Black Major

1983 Black Major Links: