2011 Canceled Jurassic Park Mercenary GI Joe

Little secret: I actually still like 25th Anniversary style sculpts. Not more than vintage, but many of the post-’09 sculpts are nice enough, and fun to pose and fiddle around with. You don’t see them here very often though, because A: Most of those toys aren’t very interesting and B: None of my readers really want to see them all that badly. Still, I think it’s worth documenting an interesting unreleased toy, and a toy that represents another example of Hasbro using GI Joe molds to represent whatever other brand.

Sometime a little after 2010, an ample supply of mysterious, canceled Jurassic Park figures made from recent GI Joe sculpts showed up on eBay. As I recall it, it wasn’t even known for a while that some of these figures were intended for a Jurassic Park line. Most of the toys intended for this line used tooling from the GI Joe Resolute figures, with the only notable exception being a guy with Zanzibar’s head, and some soldiers using Firefly’s head. Vehicles were to be sold with these figures, which included the umpteenth AWE Striker repaints, and a newly sculpted helicopter and hummer. A handful of newly sculpted dinosaurs would’ve also accompanied these figures.

Just before Hasbro lost the Jurassic Park license, some version of this line was seemingly salvaged, with two 2013 releases, although, those were a little different than the 2011 canceled figures that appeared earlier. And notably missing was this odd tattooed guy with a Duke head. For a long time you could get these cheap, just like with the Elite Ice Viper and the old stories about various other midnight-run figures from the 2000‘s. There’s never really been a name put to this figure, as far as I know, but he’s generally identified as a mercenary, so I’ll just be referring to him as Mercenary beyond this point, for the sake on convenience.

I thought the GI Joe Resolute toys were pretty nice overall, and seemed to mark the point at which the Anniversary-era moved towards sculpts that were at least mostly functional. Sadly though, the figures were plagued with some Spy-Troops tier bad proportions, typically huge heads and tiny baby-feet. Mercenary here is made from Resolute Duke’s huge head on Resolute Roadblock’s body, which oddly enough, balances out. Pretty much everything else here is just Resolute Roadblock, including the vest and his accessories.

It’s a fairly nice looking toy, with unique colors and some highly detailed tattoos over his face and arm. He’s able to pose decently with a wide range of motion in his joints, and he’s balanced nicely too, which was a rarity for figures from this period. Truth be told, I like how he looks a bit better than either of the figures he’s made from, although that’s not to say those were bad. The only real gripe I can find is that Duke’s head is kind of ugly, but it’s an otherwise fine figure.

His accessories are… not great. He comes with most of the parts seen with Resolute Roadblock which includes a vest, LMG, ammo belt, rocket(?) and a pickax. Frankly, these are some really bizarre parts. I’m not sure how he’s supposed to use the rocket. The pick axe has a massive backpack-peg on it, and it’s sort of blunt, making it look more like a hoe. The LMG is his only nice part, and it’s dumb too. It has these square-holes in the bottom of it, almost like it’s missing something (Roadblock’s is the same, so it’s not because this is a prerelease figure.). You can thread his ammo belt all the way through the gun… Which gives it unfired rounds on both sides of the feed. At the very least he can pose decently with it, but it’s a pretty nonsensical gun.

Want to know something incredible? This figure isn’t worth all that much… Someone scored one on eBay a while back for a shocking $5, and most offers trend around $40. For a toy that’s eleven years old and was never actually released at retail, that’s surprising, especially when figures that exist in countless amounts, like Funskool Tripwire, can run an easy $100. I think it says something interesting about the on-going collecting bubble, when a figure like this really has no value, but toys that were common just a few years back are holding huge premiums (low-information buyers).

2011 Canceled Jurassic Park Mercenary Links:

Jurassic Wiki

JP Toys

2011 Unreleased Rescue Mech

GI Joe has a pretty lengthy history with giant robots. Usually, it’s never been popular and doesn’t end well, but the sci-fi theme has been there since Marvel #3 (Before the Snake Armor!). We saw robots in Star Brigade right when GI Joe got canceled, again in Valor vs Venom, and then they made a large mech for the 2.5-inch Sigma Six line. That mold was then retooled for a line of robots from the 2010 Pursuit of Cobra line, which ended with them getting canceled.

gi joe pursuit of cobrs 2010 2011 cancelled unreleased alpine mech rescue mech

I like GI Joe having mech on the side, and personally I consider myself a fan of the design used for both the Sigma 6 and POC robots. However, in the case of the POC mech, the toys were particularly flawed, especially the Cobra Deviant. The main reason? It’s a giant robot with almost no decent weapons. It turned the toy into an instant dud that was clearanced just months after release, and unfortunately it looked as though they would have repeated that mistake with this release.

Of course, there was more wrong with the POC GI Joe mechs than just the Deviant’s lack of weapons. GI Joe was in the midst of a death spiral after the retail failure of the Rise of Cobra toys, so a pair of oddball GI Joe mechs that didn’t terribly resonate with the collectors at the time didn’t have good chances of succeeding at retail.

The Rescue Mech would’ve been almost entirely a repaint of the Cobra Deviant. It would have featured one arm attachment that was new, though just from pictures I’m not sure how it’s gimmick would’ve worked. The lack of new tooling would’ve rendered this release and it’s wave-mate Cobra mech very stale as the third and fourth takes on the mold after the Sigma 6 Iron Hammer.

Speaking of stale, the very concept of this toy is almost perplexing and redundant. An arctic rescue mech? Who were they going to sell this to? Sci-fi fans who are afraid of guns? To me, it seems very childish and random, especially given the more serious tone of the POC line. The only thing I can really assume is that it was a poor attempt to make the toy seem more unique among it’s three other recent color variations. The result is a nonsensical concept that serves little purpose.

As an added bonus, it’s known that the arctic Alpine figure that would’ve come with this toy couldn’t sit in the cockpit without taking the figure’s jacket off. That’s partly a problem with the Modern Era construction, but it’s ridiculous for a vehicle to include a driver who’s virtually incompatible with it.

It’s almost shocking how much the fate of the 2010 POC mechs resembles the 1994 Power Armor line. Both came in window boxes, with repaint drivers, and at a separate price-point to the rest of the vehicles. Then, both lines would have had two more toys come out the following year, but were then canceled instead.

If Hasbro ever resurrected this mold or brought back GI Joe robots of at least this quality, I’d probably buy them. If you wanted to make some repaints of this mold, there’s still a lot that could’ve been done with it. The Club could’ve easily made a Star Brigade Armor-Bot homage from it, or someone could’ve just put it in some standard Cobra colors and that would’ve been a lot more interesting. But instead, we only saw this mold rendered in ways that were bland or obtuse after the Steel Marauder, which is sad.