2008 | The Viper Pit

I feel like there’s some silly or bad GI Joe figures I could dredge from the annals of the line to celebrate APRIL FOOLS day, but today I’ll make some bland comments about Indiana Jones toys instead, which have really almost no relation to GI Joe. Well, except the Cairo Swordsman, who was adopted as the official real-ass terrorist of late 2000’s GI Joe dioramas. So he’s kind of GI Joe. Kind of.

On a more serious note it’s amusing to me that as far as I know, the 2008 Indiana Jones line borrowed nothing from a GI Joe line. 25th Stalker came with an MP40 very similar to one included with the green German Soldier, but I believe they were different sculpts. Since Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat, Hasbro had a tendency to pad these more short-lived 1/18 scale movie licenses with Joe tooling, such as with the 2008 Hulk line which was more or less littered with Valor vs Venom and DTC era Joe sculpts. Yet, the trend just sort of stopped with Indian-Joe, and in fact, reversed. An unreleased Toht was repainted into 2008’s SDCC Suited Cobra Commander, and meanwhile the German Cargo Truck and Troop Car found additional life as Joecon exclusives.

More back then than now, you had a certain audience of GI Joe collectors who bought and played with toys, but seemed to have some dismissive contempt for fantasy terrorists and the fantasy special ops who fought them. Instead of GI Joe vs Cobra or any variation there off, it was usually “Dusty representing a random guy, vs the evil forces of Cairo Swordsman”. I am self aware of the fact that I’m writing about how people played with toys wrong 15 years ago, but, it really struck me as a mildly amusing facet of the culture at the time. I can personally see the temptation to use the then cheap Cairo Swordsman as a random middle-eastern terrorist, but the attitude was something different; as though some people still felt an odd sense of shame over the childish aspects of the brand.

The sculpting was very odd on this toy line. Overall, the figures tended to look a tad more cartoonish than their cohorts in the Star Wars line, and even the 25th Joe line. In the case of the Cairo Swordsman, he has a wide open hand and sculpted rolled up sleeves. It’s hard to put my finger on it exactly, but he feels more at home with New Sculpt Joes than he does with 25th ones. I’d be really curious what these sculpts would look like reissued with modern face printing tech like what they’ve done with several Star Wars TVC releases, but that’s probably impossible after how bad the last Indy film flopped.

A disappointing feature of this toyline, represented in the Cairo Swordsman but not unique to him was the way that many of the figures managed to feel less articulated and cheaper overall than their 80’s Kenner counterparts. In this guy’s case, he picks up elbow articulation, but looses a knee-bend. Likewise, he also has a solid plastic robe rather than the nice quality cloth piece found with the Kenner figure. Seeing as how Hasbro wanted a then hearty $8 for these figures, you’d think they’d show more improvements over toys from a full generation prior. Fiddling with him, I found it hard to even get the figure to stand sometimes, which is rather off putting.

For accessories, you get a whopping one sword and a piece of treasure: in his case, a Terracotta Soldier. The 2008 Indiana Jones line really provided poor value for a (at the time) high retail price. I do feel like this was meant much more as a toy than what you see today at this scale, but the lack of a better quality robe compared to a Kenner toy from the 80’s kills it. The one accessory you do get, his sword, is excessively soft and pliable. While GI Joe was still doing classically rigid weapons, this line opted to make everything from an extremely soft PVC.

If you dig around, you can get this figure for around $9, still MOSC. Given that nowadays you can hardly find anything at 1/18 scale for less than $20, that’s actually pretty cheap. Still, this figure’s appeal is limited to liking Indiana Jones and odd desires the recreate Associated Press news photos. The toy itself is pretty poor, especially from a line that was decent otherwise.

2008 Hulkbuster Squad

The late 2000‘s Hulk movie and it’s accompanying toy line was a curious and seemingly low-effort endeavor for Hasbro. You saw the return of several popular toys from years past, like the sensational Hulk-glove roleplay toy from the last forgettable Hulk movie, and several GI Joe sculpts making an appearance, such as this Hulk Buster.

He came sold in a two-pack with Emil Blonsky, though the figure’s not named in this ambiguous “Hulkbuster Sqaud.” set. The focus of this post is on the generic Hulkbuster, who was made from Valor vs Venom Bazooka, with a glued-on helmet from the Spy Troops Sand Viper. It’s actually an interesting looking figure, and I used to use him interchangeably as a faceless mook and disposable individual character who worked with Lowlight.

These figures came out to relatively little fanfare, as by the time they were released collectors were firmly obsessed with the 25th Anniversary figures. Of course, because these are made from New-Sculpt molds, they also don’t provide anything for ARAH purists, either. As such, it’s become a rather overlooked release in the Joe world, as it doesn’t provide much of interest to either of the major collecting demographics. Still, I find releases like this to be very interesting, especially for the fact that it’s part of a pattern of GI Joe tooling reusage in licensed brands that goes back to things like the Street Fighter Movie toys from the 90‘s.

It’s based on a good sculpt, so nicely this Hulkbuster is also a pretty good figure. Given, I think it’s a waste they glued his helmet on, which is the biggest flaw of this figure. Because he has a permanently attached night-vision helmet, the figure is much more limited in usage than he would be if the helmet were removable. For the past few weeks I’ve contemplated some pictures I could take of him, but then I realized you can really only use him in the dark.

The two-pack included a ton of parts that seem to be ambiguously intended for either this guy or Emil. Given, most of these parts besides the M4 carbine aren’t very good, and at that, the M4 mine included was somewhat warped out of package. Of the random mishmash of parts, you get things like 25th Roadblock’s 50. Cal (without the tripod), the uzi from 25th Snake Eyes, an M240 SAW (without a magazine!), the sniper rifle from DTC Lowlight, ‘91 Dusty’s pistol, DTC Footloose’s M4, and lastly, a very bad missile launcher. It’s a fair amount of guns, but really the only usable parts are the pistol and M4.

Hasbro pushed a few more GI Joe cameos into the 2008 Hulk line, including a set of Steel-Brigades in a TRU exclusive pack with a Hulk figure. Additionally, the exploding Hulk-Attack Humvee was heavily based on the Valor vs Venom Jungle Strike Humvee, although it’s extensively retooled. To my memory, this set marked the last time you’d see GI Joe molds being used outside of the GI Joe brand until Hasbro’s Jurassic Park line from 2013. At that, most of those figures went unreleased or were ridiculously hard to find.

You don’t see these two often, but the last one I saw sold carded for $16. These days, something like this is a pretty cool novelty to have around, and I personally find it fun to collect these oddball releases of Joe molds that showed up under different brands. With that said, this figure’s only okay at face value. The glued-on helmet kills a lot of his potential, and the accessories are pretty bad too. Can’t objectively say he’s worth getting unless you really just like obscure and oddball stuff as much as I do.

The Viper Pit

Tag Archives: 2008

2008 Cairo Swordsman (Indiana Jones)

2008 Hulkbuster Squad

2008 Hulkbuster Squad

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