Tag Archives: 1993

1993 Dinohunters Dinosaur

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1993 Dino-Hunters Tyrannosaurus Rex

I’ve wanted to do a joke for April Fools for several years now, but I’m not really keen on derailing my blog with irrelevant content from figure profiles. The best way I’ve concluded to do a joke without derailing the blog, is to profile something fairly absurd that fits with the theme here, and I don’t know of anything more comical and off-color than this plastic dinosaur. This tyrannosaurus is an odd piece, in that it feels like an accessory, but to whom? It barely counts as a figure on it’s own, but you can’t say it really belongs to anything besides the set collectively.

gi joe 1993 dino hunters dinosaur

The 1993 Dino-Hunters set was a curious item. In the late years of ARAH, Hasbro began experimenting with packaging a multitude of older sculpts and vehicles into themed sets as store-exclusives. Only this one saw release, but a second set was planned for ‘95, which would have featured the Mudbuster and Locust with an arctic theme. This was a pretty good format, as it afforded some fun and curious repaints of toys that had been off store shelves for several years.

The truth about this piece, is that it’s a fairly terrible toy. I get that this was supposed to be a budget friendly gift set, but this is probably one of the lamest toy dinosaurs I’ve ever handled. The sculpt is weak and wimpy looking, while the paint applications also look rather lousy. It’s posed in this really silly way that makes it look like it’s having a heart-attack. It feels similar to the simple sculpts you’d see on the small animals like Timber or Max, but upscaled a ton. To someone unfamiliar, you’d never guess such a shabby dinosaur was a GI Joe toy.

What’s a Dino-Hunters tyrannosaurus worth? I hate to say it, but I have almost no clue. It seems like almost everything from the set trends towards $100+, and given that you almost never see a loose set or dinosaur for sale, I’d figure well more than $100, at the very least. Boxed Dino-Hunter sets pop up more often and sell for at least more than $600. Given that, if you’re in the market for one of these and feel compelled to own the complete set, it’s probably cheaper to pay $600 to $700 on a sealed set than buy anything here, especially the dinosaur individually. As for me? I can only photograph one of these because it’s from my brother’s childhood collection. If not for that, I wouldn’t pay those kinds of prices for what anything in this set provides, let alone this goofy tyrannosaurus.

1993 Star Fighter

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1993 Starfighter

The Star Brigade line overall made some really solid choices in molds to reuse for a space-only themed GI Joe line. The ‘87 POGO getting turned into the Invader, a spacecraft, was a good example of a pretty lame idea being reinvented as something a little more fun. For the Joes, you had the Starfighter, which was a retool of the Stellar Stiletto.

As a kid, and as a kid going into adulthood who never stopped buying toys, I tended to find myself frustrated with a lot of 90‘s items like this. There was always that feeling of knowing what you had was a repaint of an older toy you wanted more, which often made me feel a tad cheated with toys like this. Of course, I haven’t always known about the Stellar Stiletto, so before that point, I was sort of disinterested in the vehicle for thinking it looked cheap.

To that end, there’s elements of the deco I think cheapen the look of the vehicle. I tend to dislike the bright white plastic used for the main hull, it makes me think too much of an unfinished scratch-build made from generic styrene. Of course, nothing screams cheap more than the paper decals that were endemic to all of the post-’91 vehicles. It still makes for a decent space vehicle despite that, but apart from the Star Brigade, it’s not too impressive looking.

As I mentioned, the vehicle has actually been altered from the Stellar Stiletto in several areas, which is interesting. The first and most obvious change, is that the nose-gun has been replaced with a missile-launcher. Second, the entire nose-cone has been changed, and now has been replaced by a piece made from very soft plastic. Third, the tail-wing has been shortened considerably.

Compared to the Invader, I think this repaint has a lot more going against it, and even risks feeling somewhat phoned-in. Despite that, the Starfighter has some good qualities going for it, that make me relatively fond of the vehicle. It’s unique as being the only aircraft/spacecraft in the Star Brigade line, which strikes me as a bizarre and glaring omission. Even when Hasbro introduced new vehicles in ‘94, your choices were Armor-Bot and the Power-Fighters. I think that had a lot to do with the fact that the first year was comprised of cheap repaints, while the second year featured new items that seemed to be unreleased carry-overs from prior years (In the old live-action Battle Corps ad, you can clearly see Duke and Destro fighting around a blue Armor-Bot). Either way, it’s a strange distinction that belongs to the Starfighter, which I think makes it a more important piece in a Star Brigade collection for that reason alone.

Oddly, another nice thing about the Star Fighter is that it actually included a driver. I’ll save my comments on Sci-fi for a day when I do a post specifically on him, but it’s curious he was included at all, as this was at a point when vehicle drivers were increasingly rare.

The Starfighter is not very expensive, nor very rare. A complete one can be obtained for about $25, and ones missing a few parts can be had for even less. The missiles are often missing, but are easy to find from dealers sold on their own. I probably wouldn’t recommend this vehicle to anyone who’s not a Star Brigade nut, but it seems almost inseparable from that group given it’s their only spaceship.

gi joe star brigade 1994 hasbro 1993 vintage action figure sci-figi joe star brigade 1994 hasbro 1993 vintage action figure sci-fi

1993 Star Fighter Links:

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When It Was Cool

HCC788 Review

1993 Mail Away General Hawk

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1993 Mail Away General Hawk

A lot of the 90‘s mail aways are some pretty weird figures. Whereas early mail away items were often early releases of figures like Major Bludd or Duke, and often entirely new characters like Star Duster, by the 90‘s, they went to doing more repaints of older figures. The result of this was often gaudy figures that were non-essential to a collection, but are interesting in their own right for the bright alternative colors, such as with this General Hawk.

Straight away, the most distinct aspect of this figure is the loud color scheme he comes in. It’s actually not that bad, as the colors themselves look somewhat harmonious; the brightness of the greens and yellows are certainly on par with Eco-Warriors or Funskool, however. Since the figure’s exact role is somewhat open for interpretation, I could see him being used in a couple of ways with these bright colors. He pairs well with the Star Brigade, so using him as an extra astronaut alongside Roadblock is an option. He also matches up pretty well with Clean Sweep and ’91 Flint thanks to those colors, so it wouldn’t be out of place to use him as an Eco Warrior too.

Ultimately, the appeal this figure provides is pure novelty. Other versions of the sculpt including the original release are superior in most aspects, but the fun and distinctly loud 90‘s colors are what makes this figure interesting. The ‘91 Hawk mold is a really strong sculpt I like collecting repaints of, so it was inevitable that this figure would have a home in my collection. If I were less of a toy-hoarder and kept a smaller collection, I’d definitely chose a different version of this sculpt to have over this one. I don’t have to make those choices though, so I like this figure for how he pairs with his contemporaries.

The parts included here are pretty lackluster, though in ways they’re apart of the oddness that makes the figure fun. While the first release of this sculpt included a nifty jet pack with folding wings, you instead get a black version of Super Sonic Fighters Major Bludd’s backpack with this release. Additionally, the original gun and helmet from ‘91 Hawk are carried forward with this release, in bright green and bright yellow respectively.

For a very long time after his release, surplus mail away Hawks were available and cheap. I got this figure MISB around 2011, and paid a humble $10 for him as I recall. Not much has changed, and there’s still good amounts of these that appear sealed in their bags for around $20. There’s a few other versions of this mold I’d consider better than this release, but there’s something here to love if only for the neon.

1993 Mail Away General Hawk Links:

Forgotten Figures

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Half the Battle

1993 Headhunter

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1993 Headhunter

An odd phenomena from the end of ARAH was Hasbro’s penchant for slight repaint color variations. Not really new figures, but re-releases with small changes, like different parts and usually a swapped color on a single paint application. Most of the time these weren’t very great recolors, and that’s really the case with this Headhunter. But, it’s a gaudy drug-dealer who wears fluorescent green gloves, so I like him anyway.

I never really wanted this figure when I first got back into vintage collecting, mainly because I saw him as a downgrade to a figure I already had. Why buy fluorescent green Headhunters when you can just army-build the more reasonable looking brown ones? At least, that was what I thought, but I really like the Headhunters faction, so at a certain point I was curious enough just to try one to further expand that group in my collection.

The truth is, it’s a cool and totally reasonable repaint. Generally speaking, the figure is exactly the same as the Headhunter who came out a year prior, it just swaps the brown paint for green. It’s not really any less realistic, and in some ways it adds charm to the figure, turning the Headhunter into a bit more of a showy, gaudy cartel member.

Though, beyond changing one color, the figure really is just the same thing as the standard Headhunter. So, anything else you might think about that mold still applies here, and there’s really no reason to like this figure if you don’t already like the V1 Headhunter. In my collection, this figure is useful for adding some variety to my Headhunter ranks, which is of course acting as an accessory to the original.

The parts make this figure better than the original release, arguably. The dumbest thing about the DEF line was the light-up missile launchers that pushed the price of them up by an absurd amount. This figure has virtually the same parts, just without the light-up gimmick in the launcher. You still get the extremely cool shotgun and backpack that holsters the shotgun, which is the main draw of the figure’s parts. At a time when Hasbro’s creativity was waning, it was nice to see parts that interacted like this.

These are harder to find, and the prices are pretty badly inconsistent on them.Used to, they were very cheap figures, but now they range from $15 all the way up to $30. Amusingly, they even out price a couple of convention Headhunters, which probably exist in far fewer numbers than this figure does. I like this figure, but I’ve gotta say I really don’t understand why it now commends more money than many other rarer and more delicate Headhunter items, including Headman, the Headhunter Stormtrooper, and normal Headhunters. I guess that’s just GI Joe collecting in 2020.

Headhunters Headman Gristle Gi joe Arah hasbro vintage action figure
Headhunters Headman Gristle Gi joe Arah hasbro vintage action figure
Headhunters Headman Gristle Gi joe Arah hasbro vintage action figure

1993 Headhunter Links:

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Headhunters by Scarrviper

1993 Blanka

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1993 Blanka

For the most part, it’s my opinion that the Street Fighter GI Joes are one of the weaker 90‘s sub-lines. No doubt, there was some curious figures I had as a kid that saw plenty of play, but most of them had terrible sculpts or glaring flaws because of the tooling they reused (Zangief with exposed robot parts!). Blanka is one figure whom has almost always been immune to my critical outlook, however.

I’m partly biased towards Blanka because I’ll readily admit, he was my favorite Street Fighter II character as a kid and to this day the character I play as the most. So when I was a kid having a figure of my favorite character from the game meant Blanka received an ample amount of my attention. From then and up to now, I felt like one of the appeals that Blanka had was that he was a fairly ambiguous character, even in the game. So it was easy to find a place for him in a variety of roles, as either a friend or foe depending upon what I felt like.

Outside of his head, Blanka is a full repaint of 1988 Roadpig. The muscular, shirtless Roadpig body works well for Blanka and is among the better reuses of tooling for the Street Fighter GI Joe line. There’s not much that seems out of place besides maybe the arrows on his leg, and the physique is a good match for Blanka. The new head is also a pretty good sculpt, nicely sized and featuring a fierce expression that suits the character.

The version of Blanka I’m highlighting is the one that came packaged with the Beast Blaster. It has slightly more muted colors over the single carded version. The green for his skin has been replaced with blue, while the red details have been replaced with two shades of brown. It’s still a pretty eccentric figure, but these colors fit with how I like to use him more, and visually just look better to me on a subjective level.

To incorporate Blanka into my GI Joe universe, I’ve usually had two ways I liked using him. The first way that’s probably more typical, is to use him as a mutant creation by Dr. Mindbender. It’s a fun scenario that ties Blanka into Mindbender and possibly Serpentor. Alternatively, I’ve on and off contemplated him as a more mentally competent ninja character, as an adversary to the Ninja Force. I sort of got the idea when I was 13 or so after playing Samurai Warriors 2 and thinking Kotaro Fuma looked like this Blanka. I guess you could say he’s always captivated my imagination.

Beast Blaster Blankas aren’t as common as other versions of Blanka, but they show up from time to time and aren’t worth too much. Typically an auction will go around $10, and as he has no parts there’s little variation in his value. In my opinion, this is the most appealing version of Blanka, though he’s a figure that might be easier to fit into some people’s collections more than others.

Gi joe Street fighter II 2 Blanka guile chun-li Ninja Force Hasbro 1993 90's

1993 Blanka Links:

Yo Joe

(Note: There’s almost nothing on the internet about this figure! Some content about the green version, but nothing on this guy.)

1993 Heat Viper (Version 2)

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1993 Heat Viper (Version 2)

When I was collecting in my teenage years, my early vintage acquisitions were some odd ones, mainly flavored by both odd tastes and conditions. The condition being, that for a while early on I did not buy loose toys. Back then I was really bothered about not knowing where my toys had been, but with time I came to desire more vintage items then I did new ones, so the only practical solution was to forget this phobia. Still, it meant my early purchases tilted more towards what was practical to buy MOSC, such as the Battle Corps Heat Viper.

It was pretty fun buying a vintage figure for the sake of opening. I know some of you might find that sentence a bit sadistic, but on a cheap (and honestly crappy) figure like this Heat Viper, it’s an experience with enough novelty value I found it worth a small premium. The truth is, I don’t remember opening many ARAH GI Joes. Most of the oldest toys I had as a kid were ones I was borrowing from my brother, though I had my own collection of figures from ‘93 and ‘94 acquired on clearance years later. So there was a lot about the feel of the packaging I didn’t remember.

“This new generation of Cobra anti-tank specialists are equipped with the latest in hyper-kinetic, high-speed, armor-piercing technology. When they spot a G.I. Joe vehicle (especially a nice Battle Wagon, Patriot, or Mudbuster) they sit perfectly still, lining up the tracker sights on target to guide their projectile. Then they try to squeeze off one of their hand-held rockets knowing they’ve only got one shot because if they miss, there isn’t a G.I. Joe worth his salt who’ll let that poor fool try for seconds!”

Interestingly, his secondary specialty is listed as being the Earthquake Driver. They did this a lot in the line’s twilight years, where instead of including a vehicle driver with the vehicle, a random single-card figure was just named it’s driver. I really can’t see why a Heat Viper would also be driving what amounts to a weaponized construction vehicle, but oh well.

The Heat Viper himself is a boring, maybe even terrible figure. The original Heat Viper had it’s fair share of problems, so it’s amazing they created what is almost surely a downgrade from that. The figure is almost totally devoid of either sculpted or painted details. He’s just a guy in green tights, and he looks as much like an anti-tank trooper as he does a ninja. Besides that, he’s all of three colors, and he wears his underwear on the outside. So he doesn’t have much going for him visually.

Gi joe arah vintage cobra heat viper hasbro 1993 dr mindbender parts

Nothing gets better with his accessories. The generic combo of the PSG1 (Rock Viper riffle), the Annihilator’s SMG, and Iron Grenadier’s pistol all in fluorescent green makes him feel almost like a parody of a 90‘s figure. I normally skip commenting on missile launchers, but in the case of this Heat Viper, it’s one of his more interesting accessories. It shares a lot of details with the V1 Heat Viper’s bazooka, even having the distinctive “Fang” logo on the launcher. So for once, it’s character appropriate, and although it’s a very cumbersome part, it’s one of the only launchers I’d ever contemplate displaying a figure with, so there’s that.

In proper correspondence with the figure’s quality, the V2 Heat Viper is nearly worthless. A MOSC figure will still sell for about $12, which is maybe only a dollar or two more than what I paid for a carded one almost a decade ago. Save for the missiles, you can typically find these nearly complete for around $6. Through lots, you’ll get a good number of them for even less, which is what I’ve done over the years. There’s not much good to say about him, but it’s a cheap acquisition to pad out a 90‘s collection if you seek that.

Gi joe arah vintage cobra heat viper hasbro 1993 dr mindbender
Gi joe arah vintage cobra heat viper hasbro 1993 dr mindbender
Gi joe arah vintage cobra heat viper hasbro 1993 dr mindbender cardback
Gi joe arah vintage cobra heat viper hasbro 1993 dr mindbender cardfront

1993 Heat Viper (Version 2) Links:

Forgotten Figures

Yo Joe

3D Joes

Half the Battle

1993 Alley Viper

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1993 Alley Viper

Before the superb Black Major custom Alley Vipers and the plethora of well colored Alley Viper repaints in the 2000‘s, you had one alternative for an Alley Viper who wasn’t orange. That alternative, was the Battle Corps Alley Viper.

Compared to other Battle Corps reimaginings, this Alley Viper has gone through a few spats of collector popularity. It seems strange since you’d imagine the neon yellow would be a buzzkill for most normie collectors, but with the original Alley Viper donning orange and baby blue, it does make sense. In particular, I remember when collectors were going mad to get every figure updated in the modern/25th anniversary style, a lot of folks actually wanted this design over the 1989 version.

And for a figure that does lazily reuse the lower half of the V1 Alley Viper, it’s a pretty solid redesign. Personally I tend to prefer the 2000‘s repaints not only for their colors, but also for the swap to V1 Duke legs, as I feel that balances their proportions a little more and makes the sculpt more unique, but there’s nothing wrong with the legs used here. A lot of the V1 Alley Viper’s design and gear are retained on this version, such as how they both feature a knife and grenade on their vests. In some ways it makes the two figures almost cohesive, which could lend itself to using them as a single unit (especially the V1 and the 1994 repaint of this figure.)

When I was a kid I had access to this figure, the 1994 repaint and the V1 version. Of them, the ‘94 repaint was my favorite, with this guy in a close second. I reasoned that the armored look made him a strong adversary of the Ninja Force. So typically the shield and face mask were for countering ninjas.

One of the popular features of this sculpt is the shield and face mask. The face mask has a feline, beast like aesthetic which is very cool. Personally I prefer the look of the V1 mask, but this one has a lot more personality. Meanwhile his shield is a large Cobra symbol, which depending upon how you look at it is either very cool or somewhat overbearing. The original shield was far more practical and interesting looking to me, but in truth I’ve always had a hard time getting that figure to hold it well. Meanwhile the V2 Alley Viper here has a shield that just clips on his wrist, and as a toy this just functions better.

Other than the mask and shield, he included V1 Dial-Tone’s SMG, a modified version of the V1 Alley Viper’s gun and backpack, and a yellow missile launcher. This is a pretty good assortment of parts, and best yet they’re all in black. For some reason though, they changed the foregrip on the Alley Viper gun to be a solid block that the figure can’t hold. Why? Sure, most of the time I want to pose the figure with his shield and can’t use the grip anyway, but it just doesn’t serve any purpose to change it. For that, I tend to prefer posing him with the Dial-Tone SMG.

Complete V2 Alley Vipers run around $20 now. Carded ones show up more than you might expect and actually run about the same price, which I suppose we can thank vintage scalpers for. I like this figure a lot, but for that much money there’s better and way cheaper alternatives, where this figure strikes me as having more of a novelty appeal.

gi joe battle corps vintage cobra trooper 1989 1992 hasbro arah version 2 gi joe battle corps vintage cobra trooper 1989 1992 hasbro arah version 2

1993 Alley Viper Links:

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3D Joes

1993 Keel Haul

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1993 Keel Haul

If you own a V1 Keel Haul, I think it’s fair to say you might be lucky. You might have a lot of money now, or you might’ve lucked out and acquired one from Hasbro Direct in the 90‘s. If you were extremely lucky, you had rich parents who bought you the USS Flagg as a kid. But in the case you never acquired one in one of those scenarios, there’s this Battle Corps Keel Haul from ‘93, the one for us poor kids.

This figure is another one I had frequent access to as a kid. He was always there, always in the Joe tub, and yet I have hardly any memories of him. When I was young, the only figures I especially went for were robots and ninjas. Occasionally, a few other interesting looking soldiers would get thrown into the mix, but Keel Haul was far too mundane to really fall into that criteria. At most, I think I used him a few times as a drunk boat captain who was haplessly murdered by the Frag Viper and Vapor, but that’s about it.

It’s sort of odd, because Hasbro didn’t resurrect too many early 80‘s molds for single card releases at this point. We got things like the Steel Brigade and Ninja Viper as mail away items, or a few repaints from as far back as ‘88 with the Astro Viper, but nothing as old as an ‘85 mold.

Thankfully, there’s not a real loss of quality here. The figure’s colors are mainly blue, dark green and some brown. Not quite as nice as the original, but perfectly fine in its own right. I could imagine a lot of ways that a 90‘s repaint of this figure could’ve gone wrong, with unwanted fluorescent colors tainting the sculpt, but everything’s kept surprisingly reasonable looking here.

There’s a cool little variant of this figure regarding the logo on his back. Normally, the logo is large and takes up most of his back, but on certain figures it’s small and is placed just below his neck. I’ve acquired both figures by chance, but at the moment I forgot what I did with the tiny-logo variant (hence, no picture yet). According to Yo Joe the smaller logo is rarer, but I don’t know by how much. It’s a cool thing to look out for if you’re into variant collecting though.

GI Joe Keel Haul 1993 Battle Corps action figure Hasbro kenner

The weapons he includes are okay overall. Cloudburt’s MP5SD is a nice gun, and I never mind it’s inclusion. The knife and Eco Warriors Flint’s gun are forgettable at best, though at the very least the knife seems like it’d be somewhat useful. It’s a very generic lot of parts, but he doesn’t lose much from the original, and isn’t a character in great need of an arsenal anyway.

Keel Hauls carded or loose, seem to go for around $10. Carded examples are quite common, but don’t go for much more than a loose figure. I really enjoy having Keel Haul in my GI Joe roster, but he’s not a character I have much investment in, so this figure is perfect for my needs. Someday when I’m really bored, and have a lot more money and space, I’ll bother getting the V1 and USS Flagg. Until then, this version fills the void nicely.

GI Joe Keel Haul 1993 Battle Corps action figure Hasbro kennerGI Joe Keel Haul 1993 Battle Corps action figure Hasbro kenner

1993 Keel Haul Links:

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