Tag Archives: 2000

2000 Law & Order

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2000 Law & Order

The 2000‘s ARAHC line is pretty boring when taken in as a whole, which I think is part of why contemporary collectors of the time tend to hold it in low regard. I personally like the toys pretty well, but that’s because I got most of them years after the fact for pennies, mixed in with other 2000‘s repaints that gave me better variety. It changes your perspective a lot, as a bunch of grimy brown and grey figures seem more fun when mixed with oddities from 1997 or the Valor vs Venom 6-packs. Still, most of these figures make me strain for words on this blog, so I think that points to them being pretty boring, even if I like them okay.

V1 Law & Order was released three times by Hasbro, and fortunately all three color-schemes are pretty good. At a time, the 1987 figure irritated some people for the orange shirt (which doesn’t seem like it should matter much for an MP), but the subsequent Sonic Fighters figure and ARAHC figure fix that, giving him a totally neutral color-scheme. So if you prefer a Law who’s a little less flashy looking, you have two good options that are also nicely distinct.

Taking a broader perspective, it’s nice that he exists, but these colors are pretty boring. His jacket is navy while his pants are a mahogany brown, but whenever I recall this figure, I just remember him being solid brown (incidentally, the Funskool version is solid brown). The color choices themselves aren’t bad, though if the contrast was a bit stronger I think he would not seem like so much of a blur. If the blue was a closer tone to Sure Fire or the Dusty he came packaged with, it would’ve been better. For that reason, I see the figure as mostly inferior to the nicer ‘90 release, but I appreciate him either way.

Law’s head sculpt is based on Kirk Bozigian, which is an interesting bit of trivia. It’s on the softer end of ‘87 sculpts, but the figure looks pretty good overall. 1987 was a real sweet-spot for sculpts, as we saw the bulbous heads of ‘86 being walked back, and the designers had also moved past the sometimes odd proportions of the ‘85 line. It was also well before the often busy looking designs you saw in ‘89 and later, so figures like Law have a simple, down to earth look like most of the early Joes.

For accessories, you get his helmet, uzi, Law, a leash, and baton, the full Law & Order V1 load-out. The accessories are all similar to the originals, but a wee-bit different: this time the uzi comes in silver, the MP design on the helmet is different, and notably Order has more paint. The last one should be a good thing, but I think Order might by the weakest Joe-dog of them all. Mostly, it’s the expression: it has much more of lip-curled and dejected look than the intense growl seen on Junkyard and Timber. The pose and fur are both nice, though he’s not my favorite pet for his face.

2000 Law & Order is still cheap… When you find one cheap. Practically all of the figures you see for sale are carded examples, and are almost exclusively BiN’s. Still, auctions for the carded set with Dusty (who’s pretty neat, too), only hit around $16, and fair-minded sellers will sometimes only ask for $20 if it isn’t an auction. Since he has the original accessories, it makes this figure a decent option, though just in terms of colors, the last two were probably better.

2000 Law and Order gi joekeep-that-thing-away-from-my-dog_6338763871_o

2000 Law & Order Links:

Forgotten Figures

Attica Gazette

Joe A Day

GeneralsJoes

Half the Battle

2000 Rip It

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2000 Rip It

A lot of people take issue with the original HISS Driver, mainly for being the very first obnoxiously colored Cobra. I like that figure, and think it’s red color is there for a reason; so that way he’s especially noticeable inside his tank. Rip It, is a more standard colored Cobra, and I like him too, even if I like the standard Hiss Driver better.

As a kid, I missed out on most of the ARAHC line. I had interest, but I was also interested in a lot of other things too, and a trip to TRU was something that only happened a few times per year for me. When I did go, the only figures they had were the Chameleon and Cobra Commander set, and vehicles were pretty much off limits, so the HISS III, was never really an option for me. At the same time, I don’t recall ever seeing one, so it ended up being an oddity I never discovered until I was a teenager.

There’s a contrived new character that Rip It, is meant to represent. Someone at Hasbro clearly thought that it was more marketable to turn army-builders into unique entities, as we saw this several times during the 2000‘s. A tank commander for Cobra really isn’t a bad idea, but not one like Rip It. His bio is horribly dumb, and having him look just like a normal HISS Driver, seems like something an old video game would do, when they didn’t have the budget to make a new sprite for a boss character.

But any Cobra-loving GI Joe collector can see Rip It for what he is, and that’s a solid repaint of the HISS Driver. Were it not for this release, and his subsequent (and incredibly expensive) convention repaint, there would be no other HISS Drivers to collect. You can buy the HISS tank in almost any color imaginable, but the HISS Driver was rarely recolored, and that’s a glaring omission on Hasbro’s part. There was going to be another HISS Driver, but it was cancelled,  and after that the only other recolor was the torso for one of the ugly TRU Infantry Division figures.

It’s a solid looking color scheme they used for Rip It. He’s mostly a desaturated blue, with black details (boots, chest-pad) and some red bits too (face mask, cobra symbol, gauntlets). I like it, and despite the colors having a dull tone, he looks more visually interesting than the V1 HISS Driver. Despite being a bit different looking, his blue is close enough to Cobra blue that I think he looks great with V1 Cobra Troopers. It’s an all around solid repaint, and something I’m glad happened.

I have a solitary complaint with this figure, that really doesn’t undermine any of it’s appeals, but I’ll say it anyway: He doesn’t contrast with his tank. The bright red of the V1 HISS Driver, is meant to compliment the tank, hence the clear canopy that allows you to see it all of the time. It makes the driver noticeable, and adds more red to the look of the V1 HISS, making it look consistent with other early vehicles, like the FANG, Stinger and the STUN. Rip It, does not stand out in a V1 HISS, and he especially doesn’t stand out in his similarly blue HISS III. It’s not really a big deal, but in my view, the original was red for a reason.

Rip It’s were apart of a number of desirable figures you could get cheaply from China there for a while, from around 2009 to 2012. The paint apps on these always seemed a little more suspect than retail examples, which makes me think they might have been old factory rejects that were just laying around for years. Most of the time, they were indistinguishable, so it was a nice way to army build him there for a while.

Like a lot of toys mostly owned by collectors in the 2000‘s, Rip It’s are a lot harder to find now. They tend to run around $30, and examples sold with the HISS III go for about the same amount, or sometimes a few dollars more. I don’t think that price will hold, but sadly, it’s apparent that 22 years later, Rip It’s are a lot harder to find, and are no longer a cheap alternative to the ‘83 figure. It’s a nice enough figure to be worth a premium, but honestly, $30 is simply too much, especially when Hasbro will probably just reissue him with a HISS again, now that o-rings are back in fashion.

HISS III GI JOE vintage TBM custom trooper Rip It HISS III GI JOE vintage TBM custom trooper Rip It

2000 Rip It Links:

Forgotten Figures

Joe A Day

Half the Battle

2000 Major Bludd

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2000 Major Bludd

I really like Major Bludd, he’s a fun character, and most of his toys are good (with the exception of 25th Major Bludd. That one’s really bad!). But writing about Major Bludd toys as too much of a regular occurrence could make my blog a bit tedious. Though, nothing else really strikes my fancy at the moment, so I figure I might as well profile another one.

I got this figure in a lot sometime in either ‘09 or ‘10, for peanuts. At the time, I already had an ‘83 Bludd, so I didn’t have a lot of need for this one. Though, there was some novelty in having a brown version that can bend both of his arms, he was always overshadowed by the cadre of other ARAHC figures I found more interesting at the time. I really regretted missing out on the ARAHC line when I was a kid, so I when I started buying figures loose, I found it exciting to track these down for relatively low amounts of money. Despite that, I’ve tended to find my ambivalence to this figure has become a pattern relative to the entire series, where most of the toys are nice, but usually get out-shinned by something similar from another year.

2000 Major Bludd is an odd duck, because the truth is he’s a pretty alright looking figure. The problem he runs into though, is just that there’s so many other Major Bludds that do the same thing, better. When I say that, I’m mainly talking about Chinese Major Bludd, which has the same head and similar colors, but with a more interesting selection of body parts. Were it not for that figure, this would probably be the best toy of Major Bludd.

Normally it’s a nice thing when you get a subdued repaint of a neon-90‘s toy like Super Sonic Fighters Major Bludd, but, that figure already came in great colors, featuring primarily dark blue with some yellow details. It’s hard to call this one superior because of that. That doesn’t make him bad either, it’s just the other toys seem to invalidate him a bit. I also think the deco suffers from being rather flat, as he doesn’t have any of the green details you saw on the ‘83 figure.

The only part besides a figure stand included here, was his original double-barreled laser rifle, now in black. A little creativity from Hasbro could’ve gone a long way to make his parts more interesting, but that’s a funny thing to complain about, since this section is where I normally complain about the superficial inclusion of Rock Viper rifles and SAW Viper backpacks with 2000‘s figures. This little gun’s not that bad, and it’s nice to have it in black too, as I could imagine it looking good with a few of Cobra’s sillier characters like Overkill or Mindbender. It’s just not great with Major Bludd.

It’s not every day you find one of these being left to open pricing, but it’s regular enough you can get a BiN for $8 or less. Carded sets with the Rock Viper (Range Viper), go for as little as $10, which is probably a better value. There’s so many Major Bludd’s to choose from, it’s really hard to say anyone needs this one. Despite that, it’s a relatively solid figure, and represents ol’ Sebastian well enough. I also realized Chinese Bludd’s have become a lot harder to get, so in lieu of that one, this one’s probably become a good option again.

gi joe cobra vintage arah major bludd action figure hasbro 2000 2001gi joe cobra vintage arah major bludd action figure hasbro 2000 2001

2000 Major Bludd Links:

Forgottten Figures