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:

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

1988 Spearhead & Max

Posted on September 25, 2023 by mwnekoman

1988 Spearhead & Max

I’ve not put enough time lately into writing and taking photos. Part of that is because I’ve been going through tubs of childhood toys looking for lost vehicle parts, and usually finding everything except the one I’ve been looking for. In spite of that, I needed a Joe who I have at least two photos of this week to post about. Looking through my options, there’s quite a few figures that inspire some thought on my part, but I want to take a little more care while having fun with them; I needed someone to essentially be filler. In a lot of ways, that kind of sums up my feelings on Spearhead & Max.

So yeah, of the 1988 single-cards, Spearhead & Max is probably my least favorite release. To me, everything about him feels obligatory, forced and somewhat lackluster. Starting with his character, his filecard is just WEIRD:

Spearhead was the youngest and most successful insurance salesman in the Pacific North West. It was said that he could sell a term policy to a dead cow. Everybody like him, trusted him, and bought more insurance from him than they could afford. Spearhead denies that guilt was a factor in his decision to join the army—he simply felt that somebody had to do it.
“Some guys, they’re gonna lead a combat assault, right? They jump up and holler, ‘Follow me!’ and charge full tilt at a bunker—halfway there, they look back, and no one’s behind them! Of course not. The guy was a jerk. Spearhead could jump face first into a vat of rabid hyenas and fifteen guys would follow him. No hesitation. They’d jump SMILING. And of course, Spearhead’s mad cat, Max, is always a source of inspiration.”

He’s supposed to be really charismatic I guess? The text doesn’t really say anything interesting about him. It feels like some kind of joke I’m not getting, which may be the case, but even then his character just feels phoned-in. His secondary specialty is finance… Which I guess is unique, anyway.

The sculpt on this figure doesn’t do very much for me. His proportions feel really out of place and distinctly of lower quality than every other sculpt from ‘88. His head’s on the smaller end, his torso is super bulky, then his legs are really skinny looking. Kind of a shame he looks like a stern and cool trooper on the cart art, but the figure just has this ho-hum random dude kind of look to him.

The colors don’t really do him any favors, either. This entire year of figures was hurt by the more sparse paint applications, but among the few colors you’ll find on Spearhead is a heaping helping of orange camouflage. My current mentality for GI Joe is that if colors look good, then it’s enough reason to have them on a fantasy commando toy. With a similar looking figure, ‘92 Duke, he uses bright red for highlights, and it looks great against his light tan. A peachy tan with orange is both bright, and rather unappealing to me visually.

For accessories, you get his helmet, a rifle, sword, backpack and of course Max, his bobcat. The inclusion of a bobcat always came across to me as if they had a checklist of features to have in every year, and “good guy with pet” was one of them. His rifle looks like crap. For years I’ve had this figure and completely forgot I never bothered with getting his real gun, but I have other copies of the sculpt; I’m familiar enough with it to know I don’t really need it. It’s so cartoonish looking, why is the tip of the barrel so huge? It looks like some kind of weird suppressor. Then it has two magazines too: why? They look like different kinds of ammunition, but I can’t figure out what the second feed would be for. The only mildly cool thing is it has a strap, which adds a bit of play value. His sword is another mystery, it’s oddly kind of ornate like some sort of ethnic weapon.

A mint complete Spearhead & Max runs a solid $15, but even one imperfection often drops him down to being $6. He’s always been on the cheaper end, and because of that he does tend to make a fun addition to a turret, or just as buddy to go with someone cool like Shockwave or Repeater. All things considered, I don’t hate Spearhead (& Max), I just don’t really have any reason to like him, either.

1988 Spearhead & Max Links:

1987 Techno-Viper

Posted on September 18, 2023 by mwnekoman

1987 Techno Viper

At a glance, I would’ve one time told you that the worst year of ARAH figures was 1987. It’s a very unique line-up of toys, as in the course of about three years you go from mildly realistic contemporary military costumes in 1985, futuristic sci-fi designs for 1986, and then you wind up on 1987, which mixes pulp fiction with super-villains. It’s an unappealing transition, but even among the wacky designs, there’s hardly a figure from ‘87 that’s truly bad (And that one figure is probably Golobulus.). A few figures are even stand-out classics, like Falcon and Outback; for the Cobras, it’s easily the Techno-Viper.

Besides that I like the figure a lot, I realize I don’t have many substantial observations to make about the Techno-Viper. I think part of that’s because I’m a little nostalgic for this figure, which is something I don’t often feel about GI Joes, or much of anything. This was one of the first Joes I bought when I got into collecting vintage stuff when I was around 15, along with V1 Major Bludd, a Lamprey and a Stinger Driver. I think that’s a bit of an odd scenario, since I know most of you didn’t buy toys as a teenager, and likewise, I think people are usually more nostalgic for their early childhood. For me though, it was a good time: toys were cheap, and I didn’t have much better to do than daydream about plastic terrorists from the Cold War, and occasionally take some odd photos of them while learning how to do that. I still sometimes think about that mish-mash selection of Cobras going on missions, only for the fact that I got them at roughly the same time.

There’s a lot going on with the Techno-Viper that makes him such a cool figure. I think first and foremost the idea is a lot of fun. They’re basically combat engineers and maybe a little more, which makes them versatile characters you can always pepper in to a few scenarios. As the only generic, single-carded Cobra in his year, having a guy who mostly only fills a support role seems a little tame, but he works as a nice replacement for the Tele-Viper who would’ve been discontinued by this point, and he’s a little more action-oriented than that figure too.

Another thing they have going for them is looks: The Techno-Viper is one of the most visually appealing Cobras ever created. The purple and dark-purple colors are really eye-catching, and do nicely to compliment Dr. Mindbender. It’s a really well painted figure, and all of the major details and elements present on the sculpt are highlighted with a few colors of paint. The only thing about the sculpt I’ve never been to keen on his his helmet: it’s a little soft looking and more vaguely shaped than what you see on his card art, the size and paint on it are still very good though.

Finally, his accessories are absolute winners. He includes a hydraulic clamp (usually called a claw, but I think the card calls it a clamp), a sledgehammer, a wrench, a plasma rifle, a backpack and two hoses that hookup his tools to his backpack. There’s a lot of fun that could be had posing him with his various tools, and it’s very nice they have thin handles that let him hold them really easily. Without his parts, this is still a very fun figure with some uses, but these accessories are really one of the main factors that make him stand out.

V1 Techno Vipers remain relatively affordable figures most of the time. In general you can get a good one, mint and complete for around $13; BiN’s commonly go for around $20. This figure is especially prone to elbow cracks, so you might want to look out for that when buying one. Oddly, I’ve noticed prices can be really inconsistent on some of these, where sometimes figures with a lot of damage will outprice relatively mint examples. In particular, the elbow cracks don’t seem to stop people from randomly paying way more for a figure.

1987 Techno Viper Links:

1993 Dino Hunters Low-Light

Posted on September 11, 2023 by mwnekoman

1993 Dino Hunters Low-Light

Dinosaurs were to the nineties what ninjas were to the eighties. This is mostly caused by Jurassic Park, and in short order you saw Hasbro branch out and make an exclusive set of figures for Toys R” Us: GI Joe’s Dino Hunters. This was to become a new format of GI Joe releases, where you’d get two repaints and a vehicle as some kind of team, it would’ve resurfaced in 1995 with the Arctic Assault set, but instead that was canceled for Sgt. Savage, a toy line well remembered for it’s high-quality and selling out so fast you’d never dream of seeing them stacked to the ceiling at Toy Liquidators…

Anyways, this isn’t April Fools, though I did use that occasion once to remark on the hilariously bad dinosaur included with this set. Of the four items included, it’s easily the worst, but the Dino-Hunter (that’s the vehicle, it could use a better name) and Low-Light might be tied for the best items in the set. At times, the fluorescent yellow has made me wince at this figure a bit, but past that it’s a really nice repaint, and I like it a lot better than Low-Light V3 (who he’s a repaint of) in a few ways. I know a lot of people consider 1991 Low-Light an underrated figure. I see a lot of that release’s quality and I do like it, but he’s still probably my least favorite Low-Light figure. His appearance just changed so much form his ‘86 design that I could never really recognize it as Low-Light.

Dino Hunters Low-Light on the other hand has a really nice color-scheme and deco. Besides the fluorescent yellow (which does compliment his vehicle really well), Low-Light swaps a lot of the black he had featured on his pants for a nice olive green tone similar to what you’d see on plenty of older Joes, the Tiger Force figures especially. He also has a more emerald green color on his undershirt, so the figure has a nice range of complimenting colors, and it does nicely to make the neon seem less jarring (Compare this to Dino-Hunters Ambush’s orange, which seems way more out of place.).

My favorite painted detail on the figure though, would probably be his eye-brows. His eyebrows are black, not blonde like the rest of his hair. It’s a little touch of continuity between the figures, which implies the black-hair of the ‘91 figure is his natural color, while the original figure and this one show him with bleached hair. It’s one of those little things that you wouldn’t have thought anyone would’ve cared enough to do, given this is a random exclusive repaint at the tail-end of the dying toy line.

For accessories, you get ‘91 Low-Light’s customized uzi and helmet with visor, Airwave’s rifle, ‘91 Mercer’s smaller gun, Skydive’s pistol, and Hit & Run’s knife, and a figure stand. Right down to the color, most of these parts look exactly the same as ‘93 Leatherneck’s. His helmet’s visor is not the same as ‘91 Low-Light’s, it has no paint and is entirely black. Despite that, nearly every single “Dino-Hunters” Low-Light helmet you see for sale is just the common retail release. The uzi is also different, the sculpt was simplified and the stock no longer has hollow sections in the middle (Again, the same as Leatherneck.)

The last complete Dino Hunteres Low-Light sold for a whopping $158, which actually out prices some desirable Night Force figures. I find this grating, as this figure isn’t that rare (there’s always at least a few for sale), and while it’s nice, it’s not $158 nice. Also, the one I have pictured here isn’t mine, it my brother’s that he loans me for photos. So I don’t really have this figure in my own collection. I’d like my own, but there’s no way I’d ever pay that much for it, so bleh.

1993 Dino Hunters Low-Light Links:

Forgotten Figures

Half the Battle

3D Joes

Funskool Scrap-Iron

Posted on September 4, 2023 by mwnekoman

Funskool Scrap-Iron

Scrap-Iron’s always been a favorite character of mine, which I mostly attribute to this Funskool figure I got cheaply early in my collecting years. As a child I was somewhat of a germaphobe, and going into my early teenage years I retained this feature; which closed a lot of doors when it comes to an interest in old toys. For a brief window I only bought MOSC figures, which prompted me to buy more Funskool items than I probably would have otherwise (at the time, I had a very scathing opinion on them). In hindsight this was very good, but I’ve wondered if it hadn’t been for that, if Scrap-iron might’ve been overlooked for every other classic Cobra I could’ve had.

The funny thing is though, is that rather than being excited and satisfied with carded o-ring joes that didn’t trigger my germaphobia… I was rather unsatisfied. So much so that I got over myself and started buying old stuff, cause I had too much I wanted and Funskool figures seemed pretty lame at the time. Before they were chic, cool and overpriced, Funskool figures came across as toys for cheapskates, since they were generally like Hasbro figures, just with less paint and terrible quality-control. Then at some point the government changed the chemicals they were putting in the water, which is what made us collectively decide that Funskool rules and the neon-90‘s were actually pretty cool!

Funskool’s release of Scrap-Iron is reasonably solid and interesting. For the most part, he’s the same colors as the Hasbro release, though noticeably the blue is somewhat brighter and now his chest is painted flesh-tone instead of red like an undershirt. I’ve always thought this made the figure look like he’s somewhere unbearably hot like a desert or a jungle, so it has it’s charm, although it’s not too convincing. The upper-arms have also been swapped for Toxo-Viper biceps, which I do think is a small upgrade.

The downside in all of this is that the quality of this figure is complete crap. I do know that Funskool made Scrap-Iron’s for a very long time, and some of them were painted better than others (Vehicle pack-ins and certain odd years too.), but this figure was painted like poo. The paint is thin and smeared in several places, and along his collar is a noticeable bubble that I find very distracting. Now that we’re all old and hunting for novelties, it’s easy to sometimes forget why Funskool overstock was a thing into the early 10‘s.

Of course, a place where you don’t loose out in this instance is the accessories. Funskool Scrap-Iron comes with all the parts you’d get with Hasbro Scrap-Iron, and that alone validated this figure’s existence for a long time. That includes his RAR machine-pistol, and his complete rocket launcher system, all in colors similar to the original’s. At a time when this figure only cost $3, these accessories certainly made him worth it, although that’s mostly lost on newer collectors.

I’ve recently made an unfortunate discovery that my Funskool Scrap-Iron has yellowed suddenly. This one’s partially my fault, as unlike with Hasbro’s 2000‘s plastic that turns for no reason, my Funskool Scrap-Iron got nabbed by his launcher’s missiles. When I pulled them out of his bag, they were extremely sticky, meaning they leaked plasticizer, which probably is what discolored my figure. So if you have this guy, I recommend keeping his missiles somewhere else, isolated from any other parts or figures.

The only two Funskool Scrap-Irons that sold recently were BiN’s, that went for $65 each. I find that very silly, but it is what it is. For figures like this one, the sad fact is that a lot of the novelty they provided is lost once they started hitting around $20, and anything past that would be a very questionable purchase. There’s a lot of very interesting international figures you can get for not much more than that, and a mint complete Hasbro figure doesn’t fetch $65, in fact they barely go for $30.

Funskool Scrap-Iron Links:

Forgotten Figures

1982 Rapid Fire Motorcycle (RAM)

Posted on August 28, 2023 by mwnekoman

1982 RAM

The RAM is a very simple toy, but probably the best motorbike released in ARAH. It scales well, it has weapons, and enough detail to make it interesting. It’s also very iconic (hate that word, so overused) for how associated it is with the early Joes. Rock&Roll, Breaker, and Duke are all characters I see as being closely tied to the RAM, but it jibes well with figures that came a few years later too.

For a long while I really didn’t appreciate this year of vehicles. Partly, that’s because the 25th Anniversary line provided me with a very nice FLAK, VAMP and RAM, so with only a small collection of First 13 guys, I really didn’t see the point of going back for vehicles that for the most part seemed like downgrades. 15 years later and I still haven’t bothered with a VAMP or FLAK, but the RAM stood out as something that really needed to be with the figures it was designed for. The 25th mold is way more detailed, but big handle-bars don’t really mean much to figures that can’t dream of holding them. I think the added detail also alienates the newer mold a bit, as although it’s nice, it looks out of place with figures that are 25 years older.

The RAM is a really solid vehicle. GI Joe motorbikes tend to not be the most stellar items, from my own experience I don’t like quite of few of the others I’ve handled like the LCV Recon Sled, or the Ninja Lighting, and while I’ve never had one myself, from what I can tell the Silver Mirage is basically just a lousier version of this with copy-pasta missiles all over it. I think a major issue they run into, is that a good bike-ridding pose is somewhat difficult for articulated toys to achieve. Modern toys still struggle at this a bit, and classic o-ring joes especially struggle.

So the RAM sort of sidesteps some of this by having no handle-bars at all, figures just kind of hug it and play pretend. It’s a side-effect of being designed for toys that didn’t even have elbow pivots, but amusingly I think it works better in practice than some of the later attempts at bikes. The bike features a pair of removable saddle-bags, a kick-stand, and a removable gatling-cannon as it’s other features. It’s somewhat simple, but that’s really all it needs to be, so it excels at doing it’s job very well.

The only real flaw with the RAM is that it’s hard as fudge to find a mint one, which might be another way of saying it’s prone to damage? It has these little posts at the bottom of the bike, and I notice more often than not they’re cracked off (Semi-related: the box photos of the prototype depict these as pegs, but on the toy they’re wider.). The kickstand is also pretty fragile, and sometimes even the gun will have it’s connecting pegs snagged off. To me, it doesn’t really feel fragile, but it’s now upwards of 41-years-old, so I attribute most of this simply to time.

Which leads into pricing: Although the RAM is a very common vehicle, it’s also pretty hard to find a decent, unbroken one. $20 seems to be the average price for a good one, though something I found surprising is that plenty of ones that were broken would still hit around $20. My copy is a damaged one too, but I bought it on a whim at an estate sale years ago, mainly because it was in a vintage Matchbox case I wanted, with a handful of other small goodies for something like $5.

1982 RAM Links:

3D Joes

Joe A Day

1987 Psyche Out

Posted on August 21, 2023 by mwnekoman

1987 Psyche-Out

As I looked through prospective candidates for this blog post, I came up with nothing I really felt like writing about. Really, I have several Cobras that I fancy for a rant right now, but I wrote about the Crimson Guard Immortal last week, and if I do Cobras back to back, I’ll run out of ones to write about too quickly. It would’ve been a good reason to skip posting at all, but as I skimmed through my photos looking for some Joe I have at least two pictures of to write about, I realized Psyche-Out fit the bill.

“But in that second picture, he’s just in the corner! Shouldn’t I find some other use for Psyche-Out and post about him then?” I thought to myself, but that’s the thing: I’ve owned this figure for closer to a decade now, and I’ve only thought to use him twice. I never hated Psyche-Out, not enough to verbally declare it anyways, but the figure is just downright boring. More so the character, but the toy doesn’t do much to really make his specialty seem more compelling.

For a while, I thought that maybe the colors were something I found off putting about Psyche-Out. I wound up getting the Night Force version a few years after this one, but that still didn’t help me want to use him any. Opposite to that thought, I think the colors are one of Psyche-Out’s strong points. Sure, his shirt is a pretty bright shade of green, but at least it looks nice, and it contrasts nicely with his dark grey pants and red highlights. Some of his colors match up pretty well with ‘86 Roadblock, and Cross-Country, and the bright green’s not to far off from Sci-Fi. So contrary to the assumption that the colors are bad, he actually pairs up pretty well with a few contemporaries.

Still, as an action figure his specialties are just too boring for me. Yeah, psychological warfare is real, and often involves some sinister stuff (Some of which we experience in our everyday lives!) but what does he do that’s actually fun? From the comics, all I remember was his appearance in Sierra Gordo, where he stood there with an M-16, a role where he would’ve been interchangeable with anyone else.

His accessories go along with his weirdness. You get a pistol, two clip-on dishes for his wrist, a backpack, and a handheld… uh… Radio… Paranoia… Inducer, thingy. I guess he points his radar dishes at Cobras and makes them worry if they turned the stove off before going to battle or something. The whole set-up is okay, but with all of his gear on he looks incredibly dorky; it reminds me of the things people used to make with those old AOL disks you used to get in the mail every other day. His pistol is nice, nothing special, but an option in my armory of GI Joe sidearms. Looking at it, I get the sneaking feeling that it’s based on a real pistol, but knowing how odd some of these Joe guns are, it’s probably something so obscure I’d never be able to identify it. Speaking of that pistol, I didn’t comment on his sculpt: on his chest, there’s an empty pistol holster, which I thought was a nice little reference to the part he comes with.

You can get a mint complete Psyche Out for $12 pretty often, which isn’t much considering the fact that all of his dish-equipment is made of two pieces that can come off, in addition to his head antenna. So all in all, he has nine parts that could rather easily get lost. In that way, I could see him being a much more expensive figure, but that would be if he really served any purpose. In many ways, he’s really the Joe equivalent of Raptor: A well executed figure somewhat wasted by a boring and outlandish idea.

1987 Psyche Out Links:

1987 Cobra Maggot

Posted on July 31, 2023 by mwnekoman

1987 Cobra Maggot

Although it gets somewhat away from any sort of real-world vehicle, a popular gimmick of the late 80‘s was vehicles that split into smaller items and battle stations. Within the sci-fantasy world of GI Joe, it works incredibly well and made for some classic vehicles, which includes the Mean Dog, the BUGG and the Maggot, among others. All of those toys represent vehicles that could never really exist, but are still very good just for the high amounts of play value they provide to a collection.

I really like artillery items. To me, these have been my favorite GI Joe vehicles since I was a kid, as it acts as a simple objective for either side to be fighting around. I don’t know if this was inspired by video games I used to play, or if I just have a better memory of a few game stages that lined up well with my imaginations, but either way, a vehicle like the Maggot was really all I would need for a play session. Of course I didn’t own a Maggot until I was 16, but that doesn’t matter.

The Maggot splits into three smaller items, which grants you an immobile turret, a front-cab, and a command station. Without the turret, the other two components don’t do a whole lot in a action-oriented sense, but it still provides some fun opportunities. Flipping out the legs and setting up the turret is fun, but the main point is that it reveals the computer station underneath. This is a well detailed and fun little compartment to stick a figure, and it adds a lot of play value to the Maggot as a whole.

With the turret on it’s own, one issue that arises it that it no longer has the ability to aim left or right. For that reason, I much prefer the look and function of the Maggot with all of it’s components together rather than them being separated. While I’m focused on the turret/main gun, something I find frustrating is that mine no longer holds up very well. The gun barrel is given tension by a clip in it’s socket, that I assume has warped just enough over time to no longer hold the gun up on it’s own. Frustrating, but it’s 36 years old, so what can you say.

The front cab is fun too. The idea of it just rolling off on it’s own seems a little funny to me, but I guess it could be used just for towing extra turrets, so one cab could move two guns from location to location. This part of the vehicle has two guns, and the removable engine cover (Under the cover, you can also see the main gun’s loading system, which is neat.). I wish the driver could be hidden a little better inside the vehicle, but it’s alright as is.

I think a strong appeal of the Maggot is the way it looks kind of similar to a WWII German self-propelled gun. The shape of the turret especially reminds me of parts of the Hummel and a little of the Nashorn, mainly for the open-topped design they went with. It does a lot to make the vehicle seem more realistic and grounded, which I think strengthens it’s appeal as something that’s both fun and reasonable looking (rather than something like the Mamba, which is fun, but definitely not reasonable looking).

You can get a complete Maggot for around $30 on a good day, and prices right now aren’t much worse than what I remember from over a decade ago. There’s a radar dish that goes on the front cab’s rear gun, which is usually missing, though it’s not something that seems to carry a ton of value either. There’s enough demand for it that reproductions exist, which of course is another option if you feel like going that route. Regardless, the Maggot is a fun toy that doesn’t cost a lot of money, which probably means it’s still underappreciated.

1987 Cobra Maggot Links:

Forgotten Figure

3D Joes

The Viper Pit

Tag Archives: ARAH

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