1989 Darklon

Posted on March 6, 2023 by mwnekoman

1989 Darklon

Darklon’s an interesting figure to me, particularly for the fact that he’s one of those figures that’s really grown on me since I got him. Of course, like half of the Iron Grenadiers he’s fairly flawed, but the character was pretty cool, and if any classic Cobras needed replacing in the 80‘s, it was probably Destro more so than Cobra Commander.

Overall, Darklon’s kind of a tough sell. His first problem is that he’s tied to a vehicle, Darklon’s Evader. I believe I’m more open than most people to oddball GI Joe vehicles, though the Evader is something I’m fairly certain I’ll never own unless it’s by pure chance. Usually, when Hasbro packed an important character with a small vehicle, the character was some kind of big badass, and the vehicle was more like an oversized accessory (See Zartan, Serpentor, Sgt. Slaughter, ect.). In Darklon’s case, he’s kind of an oddball in bell-pepper colors, who comes with a motorbike(?) too embarrassing for a Funskool Batman figure to use. Maybe in a different context it wouldn’t have seemed so strange to me.

The main appeal of Darklon is his albeit underdeveloped character, which mainly only existed for a brief tenure in the Marvel comics. That’s one way of saying the toy really isn’t that good, as without some interest in his role in the GI Joe world, this wouldn’t be a figure much worth paying attention to. Still, I associate him with some pretty cool issues and moments in the comics, such as the debut of the Python Patrol. He did more than Voltar anyways.

Now normally in a comic-book story line, having a popular character whose getting worn-out replaced by his family member who pretty much does all of the same things (Just more evil!), is a pretty shabby way of trying to get repeated interest and sales, but with Destro and Darklon, there’s actually a pretty good case for it. By this point in the comics, a lot of the older Cobra’s were played out and over-exposed. Destro especially, saw his character melt and go from being a ruthless, terrorist arms-dealer, to being some kind of half sympathetic anti-hero, dedicated to Baroness, and nice enough to smooth over her life-long hatred of Snake Eyes! I think it would have been better if a character like Darklon had played a bigger role after his initial appearance, especially since I do think he was genuinely cool for the few scenes he had.

Putting his character aside, Darklon’s a guy who wears an outfit so random and asymmetrical it looks like something that’d be made by an AI-art generator. Asymmetry is a big theme in the Iron Grenadier aesthetic, so I understand it’s role here, but Darklon still might look just a little too random. Probably the most strange detail is the strap of tiny gold grenades on his right knee, which is among the dumbest grenade-oriented details I’ve seen on a GI Joe toy. Though, in Darklon’s defense, maybe they’re just decorations.

Everything else is just kind of okay for him. I like his head, the mask-sculpt especially looks pretty neat; the texturing on his shirt is nice too. Nothing special, but a good enough figure to represent a gaudy European warlord. In that context, even his wack-o colors aren’t so bad, but the Bronze Bombers repaint into Crazeblaze is much better. That would be my go-to Darklon, but mine’s missing his arms, so I still have to fix that at some point.

Despite being a late-era vehicle driver, Darklon gets the privilege of having a gun. It’s a terrible kind of weapon that looks more like an air-soft or a Nerf gun, so I’ve yet to bother with one. My personal replacement for this is the black version of Skydive’s pistol, also included with Battle Corps Leatherneck. It has a bulky, sci-fi look to it, which I think suits him pretty well.

To my Surprise, mint complete Darklon’s fetch a steady $15. Ones missing the gun go for about half of that, and ones sold with the Evader trend towards $30. Not the worst price, but more than I’d have expected for figure that’s both obscure and somewhat unremarkable. I like him and he brings value to my collection, so I suppose others just see him that way as well.

1989 Darklon Links:

1988 RPV

Posted on February 27, 2023 by mwnekoman

1988 RPV

The RPV, or “Remote Pilot Vehicle”, is one of those ideas for a GI Joe toy that’s actually rather cool and interesting, but comes across somewhat bland as an actual toy. I’ve seen this toy get put through some harsh put-downs by collectors at various points, though I think there’s other GI Joe vehicles that are more deserving of thorough admonishment. Still, it’s a somewhat flawed vehicle, but not without it’s merits.

So, to my limited understanding of Cold War-era RPV launchers, this vehicle is actually fairly realistic and would serve a real purpose. Remote Pilot Vehicles, or as you may know them now by the modern acronym UAV, were first being used for reconnaissance and intelligence operations around 1960 during the Vietnam War. At the time, these vehicles were top-secret of course, and they looked a lot different than the drone equipped on GI Joe’s RPV, but it’s another element that ties back to ARAH’s heavy reliance on Vietnam-era military tech. I’m not sure if either the drone or the launching vehicle here is based on any particular real-word equipment, but similar vehicles would’ve been in use around the time of this toy’s release.

A major problem for the toy, is that I don’t think too many people really understand how one of these would work, especially not in 1988. With some cursory reading, I can imagine a few scenarios where the RPV could be involved with some very fun GI Joe adventures, but I doubt so many children of the 80‘s knew too much about these, which meant those adventures probably never happened.

Aviation history aside, the RPV has a critical problem as a toy: It doesn’t do much. Small vehicles are limited in what they can provide, but the RPV essentially launches it’s drone and sits there. Just by way of it’s gimmicks, it’s a little more interesting than the Battle Barge, but this isn’t a toy that does a whole lot of things. Of course, it has some then requisite features to make it a tad more interesting, like a tow-hook and the seat-belt. The drone has a removable nose cone too, which reveals some computer details.

My biggest gripe with this vehicle is no doubt the radar station. When fully hooked up it makes this vehicle really cumbersome and tedious to move around. It connects to the RPV via a standard rubber-hose like most figures included. Unfortunately though, the pegs for it are in these odd recesses on both the vehicle and the radar station, meaning you can’t gently push the hose on like you normally would. I had both pegs break on me recently, so I blame it on that.

In Europe there was a significant recolor of this vehicle, where the tan was replaced with silver and the white was replaced with Cobra-blue. Just for it’s oddness I’d kind of like one, but between the fact that it’s terribly hard to find, and that the RPV isn’t something you need more than one of, I doubt I’ll ever bother with it. The color choices were especially weird on it though, as it makes it look more like the Cobra Adder than any existing Joe vehicle.

The RPV is virtually worthless. Mint complete examples sold by toy dealers who can usually get 300% of a figure’s value at auction, can only sell the RPV for $8 to $10. It’s odd, niche, and doesn’t fit with any particularly beloved subset of figures, so I think there’s generally not much of a market for it. Despite that, I personally feel like this was the best drone-related vehicle in the entire toy line, and there’s enough there that it’s worth having.

1988 RPV Links:

3D Joes

Toys from the Past (European variant)

A Real American Book

1993 Mutt & Junkyard

Posted on February 14, 2023 by mwnekoman

1993 Mutt & Junkyard

I’ve really come to be fascinated by the 1993 lineup of figures. It’s weird, because I really don’t think this is a very strong year quality-wise, and I’d even go further to say it might even be the worst year of the 90‘s. Garish colors, generic accessories, a deluge of low-quality repaints, those are just some of the problems that reach their peak in this year, while the ‘94 figures seemed to make a return to better quality overall. Still, the ‘93 figures feel interesting to me, I think if nothing else for just how odd so many of them are.

‘93 Mutt & Junkyard is one of those repaint oddities that makes me scratch my head in some ways, but I really like the figure. Mutt doen’t have a bad figure of his four releases in ARAH, though speaking of which, the first thing I find odd is that Mutt (& Junkyard) got four releases! He seems like such an odd character to dedicate two molds and two repaints to for back then, but I suppose dogs are popular, so that’s probably a selling point that warranted his occasional return.

The colors are so-so on this version of the sculpt. The orange doesn’t really bother me, and browns and greens are exactly the same as the DEF release. Still, the orange and blue are just so saturated, it throws off the look of the other parts. Oddly, I think the bright colors look nicer for night-shots with cool and dark colors, as it makes him a little easier to see. It’s a niche reasoning, but for me it matters a lot, since photos are one of the ways I still get to enjoy playing with my toys.

He’s a very bulky sculpt, though it’s not as odd or inhibiting to him as it is for others (Like Mace). According to his filecard, he’s wearing a life vest flak jacket, which I find neat and mildly justifies the aforementioned orange color. It also gives him some added life for your boat and naval crews, which is nice (and likely meant to tie-in with the Shark 9000). He’s also really decked out with shin-guards and elbow-pads, which makes him a few shades of black away from being a POC or Classified figure. Other than that, it’s a modest and simple sculpt that I like a lot.

gi joe mutt & junkyard 1993 vintage toy hasbro battle corps DEF

Note that the G11 here appears to be a bad casting. It’s perfectly smooth on all of the parts where details are missing. I also just realized that one of the childhood G11’s I have is shiny and one is dull, so they are not exactly the same as most sites indicate. If you know which one is Headman’s and which one is Mutt’s, I”d love to hear it.

The pistol connoisseur in me is very glad that DEF Mutt’s pistol made a return for this release, with the addition of Headman’s gear, only with an opaque launcher and no light. Included is his pistol, Junkyard, Headman’s G11, missile launcher and a stand. The pistol is a really nice sculpt worthy of having multiples off. To that end, I think it’s really sad that a nice accessory like this wasn’t used more in favor of something awful like V1 Shockwave’s pistol. The Headman gear is really weird: a drug-kingpin having a tacky, gold G11 made some sense, but why Mutt? It just seems so odd for him to be toting around an experimental prototype gun (With costly, proprietary ammo!), and one that’s in gold no less. Might’ve been cool if we had gotten this sculpt in black, but for now it remains another addition to Saddam Hussein’s armory. Oh, and Junkyard is the same toy dog he was in ‘84, which interestingly makes him quite an old accessory to still be in use by this point.

It’s hard to peg down exactly what a ‘93 Mutt and Junkyard are worth right now. At the very least, you can get a complete one for $20 and a carded one for $30, so he’s not worth too much. Of course many examples are missing his pistol, but even that part is not too hard to come by on it’s own. With a little luck, I think a complete one should really only be worth around $15, since most of his parts are not unique and appear to be fairly common.

1993 Mutt & Junkyard Links:

Half the Battle

3D Joes

Joe a Day

1991 Battle Wagon

Posted on January 30, 2023 by mwnekoman

1991 Battle Wagon

1991 produced some classic GI Joe figures that any frequent reader of this blog would know I like quite a bit. The vehicles from this year however, are not a thing I find myself the biggest fan of. In general, I don’t think a lot of 90‘s vehicles compare too well to the offerings from earlier in the line, even though some of them were still quite ambitious like Armor Bot, or generally fun like the Brawler. Then you have things like the Battle Wagon.

Straight to the chase, the Battle Wagon is not a vehicle I fancy myself a fan of. To me, it just looks too stupid to ever be something I could take seriously. Still, I can’t really fault it for existing, as it is very much a product of it’s time, maybe so much so that I’d even say it’s the most 90‘s-centric toy of ARAH. I mean, it’s basically a monster-truck for GI Joes with a gargantuan multi-barrel missile-launcher turret in the back. It’s completely ridiculous, but it also seems tailor made for the interests of a young boy in the 1990‘s, so it’s not without reason.

In terms of playability, it pretty much checks all the important boxes for a large GI Joe item. It supports a decent amount of figures, has firing weapons, a working tow winch, is motorized, and even has a removable battle station in the same vein as the MAGGOT. It has a lot of things you can do with it, and most of the gimmicks work well enough too, which makes it inherently better than a total dud like the Attack Cruiser. One problem with a lot of very large GI Joe toys, is that they take up a ton of space without really doing all that much, which is fortunately not the case here.

For my uses however, the Battle Wagon is much too over-the-top to ever really be useful. While the military industrial complex can justify the existence of a great many absurdities to waste my money on, in the end of the day the Battle Wagon really is just a monster-truck. For the GI Joe team, it looks far too out of place to work in my eyes as military equipment, and generally it’s really just a much worse version of the Mean Dog. It has some cool gimmicks like the hidden computer station under the turret, but what’s the point of it? To me, it really does feel like something crammed in just to give it more play features, though I suppose that’s not the worst thing.

The turret/gun station is another element that should be really cool, but just isn’t. The Mean Dog, Maggot and Thunderclap all do a similar thing, where the turret can be removed and used as an individual piece, but they don’t look so ridiculous. The individual components of those vehicles also tended to look a little better on their own, while I find the Battle Wagon looks really empty without it’s turret. At the same time, it looks really silly with it, so there’s really no helping it.

I have no childhood memories of playing with the Battle Wagon, and through all of my adulthood I’ve barely so much as touched the thing, besides one time taking it apart to rescue a handful of parts my brother lost in it as a kid. In fact, the only thing that prompted using it for some photos is that Battle Corps Cross Country’s filecard mentions he drives it, and I had one, so I used it. In that light, I’m tempted to say I’ve generally had a sense of contempt for this thing for the longest period. Despite that, I realize that it’s not an objectively bad toy, rather, it’s a good one that suffers for being too big and ridiculous looking (The opposite of the MOBAT, a toy that looks great, but is too small and does almost nothing!).

Battle Wagon’s float around $30, with the price usually getting jacked up by shipping since it is a very large vehicle. Truth is, that’s really not a lot of money for a large vehicle like this, but that probably goes to show the general disinterest in this vehicle. Crazy things like Dreadnok vehicles can be fun when they don’t take up much real estate, but this vehicle doesn’t really provide much for how much space it takes up. I respect it for being a toy that could’ve only existed in the 90‘s, but there’s countless GI Joe vehicles that do similar things in a much better way.

1991 Battle Wagon Links:

3D Joes

There’s not much out there on the Battle Wagon, so if you have some cool Battle Wagon content or photos, feel free to share ’em.

1993 Cobra Commander

Posted on January 16, 2023 by mwnekoman

1993 Cobra Commander

Cobra Commander figures are something I have a ton of, and that’s not something I mind too much either. For all I care, the Joes can be led by Duke, Falcon, Sgt. Slaughter or Captain Gridiron, but the main gist of this conflict centers around Cobra Commander, which makes him less interchangeable. Still, because I have all of these Cobra Commanders, I’ve often times contemplated them as secretly being different people, like Fred VII, though really that’s just an odd way of trying to rationalize having so many toys of essentially the same guy. Anyways, the Battle Corps one is really cool, like half of the others.

So as I’ve mentioned before, most of the Joes I played with as a kid were ones I knew from my brother’s collection of ‘89 through ‘94 figures (although, I did have my own small collection of ‘93 and ‘94 guys). With that in mind, I was more dismissive of some of the crazier redesigns back then than I am now, as I didn’t really have much passion for neon toys that didn’t resemble anything I’d see in a Sunbow rerun. This Cobra Commander was different though, as not only did he look enough like a Sunbow Cobra Commander, the black and silver made him arguably look better. To this day, he holds up as a favorite, but I have a lot of favorite Cobra Commanders, so I haven’t used him all that much despite that.

As a repaint/retool of the Talking Battle Commanders mold, it’s a sculpt that works pretty well. It’s a much more regal design than the V1 sculpt, very similar to a Crimson Guard, which adds a bit of consistency I like. He’s a noticeably bulky figure, but it works well here to give him more presence. Generally, I find it somewhat odd how Cobra Commander went through a series of more drastic redesigns before going back to essentially his first look from the Marvel comics, but again, looking familiar is something I’ve always appreciated this figure for. I think the only thing that makes him look a little off is the head sculpt: the eye-holes of his mask are a little large, which I think makes it look a bit sillier than it really should.

Cobra Commander included a tree of silver parts, featuring the Rock Viper’s PSG1 rifle, Incinerator’s flamethrower, Voltar’s machine-gun, the Toxo-Viper’s gun and the requisite stand and missiles for his red missile launcher. These parts are okay individually, but really suck for the figure. The silver plastic looks decent, so there’s some novelty value in being able to appropriate these parts off to other figures, but I have a hard time imagining anything Cobra Commander would do with them. I guess if you were to pretend the flamethrower has a small fuel tank on it, you could have him execute someone with it like a jackass. Personally, I wish he had been given one of the trees with a knife or pistol on it, since that would seem a little more appropriate to me.

As far as I know, this mold with the fully sculpted back never appeared again. Of the several times this mold was repainted in the 2000‘s, Hasbro always used the flat back from the Talking Battle Commanders version, which was unfortunate. The other iterations of this sculpt are all pretty good too, even the comic-pack figure was a little better than average compared to it’s contemporaries. Still, this one was already almost perfect, so the lot of them seem superfluous to me.

Pricing breaks down pretty simple for this version of Cobra Commander, a complete example runs around $20, and one that’s less than complete will go for about half of that. Until just a few years ago, this figure was worth about 50% less, but that’s about how it is with everything in the current market. I suppose it’s also possible that the Transformers crossover sets might’ve renewed some interest in this version, since this was the design that appeared in #139 with the Transformers crossover in the Marvel comics… I doubt that’s much of a factor though.

1993 Cobra Commander Links:

1991 Cleansweep

Posted on January 4, 2023 by mwnekoman

1991 Clean Sweep

Clean Sweep is, overall, probably my favorite figure from the entire Eco-Warriors subset. In the back of my mind, there’s always been this question as to why if he looks so much like Airtight, why wasn’t he a new Airtight? At the same time, one of his key characteristics that makes him worth remembering is that he was actually a new character, and not the second or third version of some guy from the line’s early days.

Speaking of which, I do think an area where 90‘s Joes lose out to 80‘s Joes, are the subsets. I think 80‘s figures overall are more memorable or distinct for the fact that novel specialties were represented often by one figure per year, instead of an entire carded assortment. This didn’t hurt DEF/Headhunters quite so bad, but most of Ninja Force is way more forgettable than the periodic Storm Shadow or Jinx. The same can be said for Eco-Warriors, where Clean Sweep and Ozone stand out a lot less well, just for the fact that you have Flint, Barbecue and Deep Six all doing essentially the same thing.

Getting back around to Clean Sweep, he’s a really well done figure. While I do like all of the Eco-Warriors, if I could only have one, it’d definitely be Clean Sweep. His yellow hazmat suit and it’s sculpted details come across to me as the most well-suited and appropriate looking of the lot, where as some of the others seemed like they were trying to find ways just to look different. It’s sharp and interesting without looking busy or like an X-men reject, which is something you can’t say for many of his contemporaries.

His colors are another one of his strong aspects. Sure, the green is quite a lot brighter than the traditional olive-drab, but it still looks good, and makes him cohesive with both Flint and Ozone. Having a mostly yellow suit in a nice medium tone is another thing I like, as this color really sells him as a hazmat guy, in a way that bright blue and ketchup red doesn’t do so well.

Probably the most integral accessory for Clean Sweep is his helmet. It’s weird, as unlike with the Toxo-Viper’s helmet and HEAT Viper’s missiles, Clean Sweep isn’t really ruined without it. Being a Joe, I can imagine a few play scenarios where showing his face off would be kind of fun, which is less the case with the other two. It’s also very nice that his helmet has a few bits of green on the trim and some light blue for his visor. I always appreciate painted helmets, since this really wasn’t standard for the vintage line, and I can think of plenty of contemporaries for this guy where having a painted helmet would’ve helped them a lot, like with Eco-Warriors Flint or DEF Shockwave.

Yet another thing I find to like about Clean Sweep is that all of his accessories are fairly well done, in addition to the helmet. Included is a pistol and a backpack with a control panel in neon green, his aforementioned helmet, and this huge, water-squirtin’ tank thing. I feel like Hasbro was still putting a lot more effort into the gimmick parts at this point, as opposed to the requisite and recycled launchers you more often saw in ‘93 and ‘94. I certainly don’t find this tank too captivating, but it was a nice pack-in, especially when you consider the fact that dumper vehicles like the Barracuda were available at around the same time.

Clean Sweep runs around $20 for a complete figure, sometimes a little more or less. Seems like a fair amount for what should be a very obscure character, but he looks good enough that if I ever wanted another, I wouldn’t be badly offended to pay that. Most of the Eco-Warriors come across to me as something nice for a change of pace, though Clean Sweep and Cesspool stand out as the must-haves from the lot. As the economy continues to crumble, you’ll probably see guys like this get a little cheaper in the coming months.

GI Joe Clean Sweep Eco Warriors 1991 Hasbro ARAH Cobra

Old photo from when I first started collecting. The embarrassing sharpie-marks on Mainframe’s computer were there when I bought him.

1991 Cleansweep Links:

1989 HEAT Viper

Posted on December 13, 2022 by mwnekoman

1989 HEAT Viper

‘89 Joes are ones I mainly know though my brother’s collection, and most of them stuck with me as the figures my brother had that weren’t horribly gaudy. In his collection, he had almost every figure released in that year, with the notable exception of the HEAT Viper. So when I got into buying vintage figures in my teenage years, this felt like a curious gap I was eager to fill. As it turned out, the HEAT Viper wound up being a figure I never really had a use for, despite my earnest intentions for him.

I really like the 1989 Joe line. Sure, there’s a few stinkers in the lineup, but more of the figures, and especially the Cobras, strike me as being innovative and fun. Among the figures that should be a lot of fun, is the HEAT Viper. He’s bright, has an exciting job (Cobra bazooka trooper), and tons of little gimmicky parts. Only none of these things are done well, and he really isn’t that much fun of a figure, unfortunately. The light-orange and purple colors don’t really hit as nicely as the Alley Viper did. His parts also tend to make him really, really cumbersome to handle, yet, they’re also integral to the figure (good luck if you lose some). Speaking of his accessories, his sculpt is covered in hardpoints and pegs for those, which leaves something to be desired, to say the least.

While the idea struck me as an interesting niche at first, one thing I’ve discovered with time, is that having a Cobra equivalent of Bazooka or Zap, isn’t something that finds a role all that often in my collection. I guess unlike those two, the HEAT Viper is a terrorist, and can find all sorts of nefarious things to do with his bazooka. Regardless of how you rationalize him, he’s basically a guy that shoots his rockets off and then that’s it. It seems like something fun, but I much prefer a Stinger or a Viper with a bazooka, to having a dedicated specialist for the role.

Although I don’t particularly hate the HEAT Viper in spite of his flaws, while writing this, I have come to the conclusion that this maybe the worst figure from his release year. Comparing him to the other bad figures from that year, he’d be among the likes of Annihilator and Dee-Jay from the single-cards, and Long-Range and Wild Boar if you count vehicle drivers. The vehicle drivers are pack-ins, so of course they’re a little more underwhelming, though I think overall the issues with his parts and clunkiness makes the HEAT Viper decidedly worse than Annihilator, and maybe slightly worse than Dee-Jay. Both of those are ugly figures too, but they don’t loose functionality in the way the HEAT Viper does, the Annihilator is a lot more fun with his parts, too.

A huge problem for this figure, is that he is essentially married to his parts. His kit includes a bazooka, a sculpted hose and generic black tube, six tiny missiles, and a backpack with some exhaust pipes on it. None of these parts are terribly exciting, though the figure doesn’t really work without them. The small missiles are a particularly perplexing decision. When taken off the figure, there’s nothing to do with them. I guess him running out of ammo was considered a play feature? Of course, most of the time they just got lost instead. When he’s fully decked with his gear, another huge problem is that he’s really clunky. It looks sort of okay, but it’s not easy striking a convincing pose with him. Speaking of which, I get the feeling that his bazooka was designed for use with a certain hand, but I’m not sure which. The card-art shows him using it in his left-hand, though it feels a little more comfortable in his right. Also, he has some kind of exhaust pipes from his backpack on his left hip, so it’s weird that his bazooka’s exhaust would be bumping into that.

Despite his problems, Hasbro made of number of repaints of this mold! He got an Undertow head in 2001 and became the Fast Blast Viper, who was subsequently painted red and tossed in the BJ’s 8-pack from ‘02. The original head then made a return to the figure for a Python Patrol version in the ‘03 Python Patrol 5-pack, with the peg on his helmet retooled to sit higher. Prior to all of this, he appeared in Brazil as Estilhaço, with slightly different colors.

HEAT Vipers are very common and not at all valuable, though mint, complete HEAT Vipers don’t actually show up all that often. Most of the time, you can find this figure with one or two of his missiles, but rarely all six. Still, even a complete figure is only worth around $15, which isn’t too much for something with parts as small as this. It’s also easy enough to just buy two with a few of their missiles and combine them to have one complete figure, as less than complete HEAT Vipers tends to only run around $7.

1989 HEAT Viper Links:

The Dragon Fortress

Half the Battle

Pint O’ Comics

1983 Torpedo

Posted on November 21, 2022 by mwnekoman

1983 Torpedo

While I don’t have a mint example of many of the figures from this year, I’ve occasionally contemplated that ‘83 might be my favorite line-up of GI Joe figures: at least from a minimalist point of view. A lot of the figures from this year were pretty plain and seem less remembered compared to the cast of the next two years, but in ways, that’s also their charm. Very ordinary and down to earth renditions of various military specialties, similar to the ‘82 guys, but with more personality and a lot less green. Torpedo very much falls into that.

With that said, Torpedo is by far probably the most no-frills, plain-jane diver you’ll find in this toy line, but I like that about him. This theme was done several times over between the Eels, Wetsuit, Hydro Viper and later the Battle Corps renditions of both Wetsuit and Shipwreck; with all of those figures you see a nice progression of play features and complexity that make them a tad more exciting than V1 Torpedo. At the same time, all of them are more fiddly, and definitely more busy looking than this figure, which I think is what gives him some staying power in my eyes.

As suggested, Torpedo’s sculpt is very basic with not a lot going on, he’s a guy in a wetsuit and that’s about it. Like with most early Joe divers, his diving mask is sculpted on, although unlike with later attempts, he has no hoses or anything to connect his respirator to his backpack. It makes him a little less interesting for a guy with a limited role, but it’s not a deal breaker. All of the other divers with their respirators look a tad more sophisticated, though that comes at the cost of a small and easily lost piece of rubber to complete their look. I’m not sure if this is a case of less is more, but it does make him a little easier to handle.

Torpedo features some pretty tiny feet, which I suppose represents his form-fitting wetsuit and lack of big bulky boots that most Joes wear. It’s sort of nice in some ways, though in today’s world it’s translated into a lot of figures with broken heels. There simply isn’t enough plastic there to last over time, especially with the suction caused by inserting and removing his flippers (look out for that). Foot pegs are something collectors are having to avoid more with time, though you don’t really hear about such a thing with the Snow Serpent’s snow shoes, so I think Torpedo’s just a little more worse off than usual.

For parts, you get a backpack, harpoon gun, and two flippers, in line with the simple kits seen in these early Joe releases. He has everything he needs, which includes some kind of weapon at the very least. GI Joe seems to interpret that most divers have a standard issue spear or harpoon gun for underwater combat, though to my understanding, no SEAL uses a weapon like this. As for his backpack, I’d like to point out that this is one of the first and rare examples of a figure with a painted part. The oxygen tanks have a nice splash or orange-red on them, which is a very eye-catching detail.

This mold has a lot of repaint potential that never really got tapped into. Funskool released the mold in three different colors, gray, blueish-gray and yellow. He was then repainted with the Cobra Night Landing as a ‘97 release, and came out again in similar colors to the original as Wet-Down in ‘01. The GI Joe club floated the idea of using this mold for Cobra Divers IIRC, though that never manifested and they promptly dumped the classic sculpts. Bootleggers like Red Laser Army got some good usage of his head for various figures, though I don’t think the entire mold was ever used. Guess if I want some repaints of him, I’ll have to do it myself.

A complete ‘83 Torpedo is worth around $15, and is not very hard to find at all. Truth is, that’s a little more than I expected him to go for, but it seems like a reasonable amount for an early Joe. Although mint ones are pretty plentiful, he does seem like a figure that’s prone to damage in a variety of ways. He’s also horribly boring and pretty useless without his parts, so that likely has an effect on his value too.

1983 Torpedo Links:

1987 Sky Sweeper (Battle Force 2000)

Posted on November 14, 2022 by mwnekoman

1987 Sky Sweeper (Battle Force 2000)

The weird thing about the Battle Force 2000, is that half of their vehicles are as lame as you’d expect, and half are cooler than they honestly should be. A great example of the later can be found in the Sky Sweeper, which has become a go-to vehicle in my GI Joe armory, and it even has a life away from the Battle Force 2000, too.

I have a slight fascination with the Battle Force 2000, which definitely makes me confront how much my tastes have changed over the years. When I was a kid and up through my early collecting years, I hated this group more than Cobra-La. The pulpy sci-fi aesthetic just seemed so chintzy and out of place to me. I remember looking at them online with my brother, who explained to me that in the comic they all died except Dodger; which sounded a lot cooler than it really was. That changed at some point years ago, though I still don’t like them a lot.

All of the original Battle Force 2000 vehicles had a gimmick, where you could combine pieces from each to form the Future Fortress. I have to give it some credit as an example of where the line kept trying to do new things and innovate, but this was a horribly corny and greedy idea (you had to buy EVERY vehicle to assemble the set). It’s also crappy, in that certain vehicles were more compromised than others to include a Future Fortress piece: This Sky-Sweeper has only a small block on the back, which looks fine, though the Marauder for example, fared less well. Then again, I’m really not sure what the Marauder was supposed to be in the first place, so maybe that one was just a bad idea overall.

That aside, the Sky Sweeper is an excellent vehicle, and by far my favorite anti-air vehicle (I like it better than the Armadillo and the Asp!). It’s the perfect size, with a similar profile to the ‘83 HISS, just trading some height for a little extra width. The guns are large and look powerful, with two side guns and a turret in the back, plus four missiles. Thanks to it’s nice size, the vehicle is fairly roomy, and it’s easy to fit any driver you want (including bulky figures like Knockdown), and there’s foot-pegs for several more commando friends to hitch a ride. Overall, it delivers a lot of play value for it’s size, and that’s probably the vehicle’s strongest point.

If there’s one thing I don’t like about this vehicle, it’s the turret on the back. At a glance it looks pretty good, though almost all of my issues with this toy revolve around this turret. There’s nothing there to hold the gun up, which means most of the time it just flops around freely. It also lacks any sort of control sticks for a figure to hold onto, meaning you just have to play pretend back there. Usually you can find a way to reason out the turret with no controls, though here it’s a fairly glaring flaw.

A surprisingly nice detail here is the clear orange headlights above the canopy. It’s strange and unusual for an ARAH vehicle to feature something so nice, when most headlights prior and after were represented by stickers. You didn’t even see this detail make a comeback much until 25th Anniversary, when clear plastic lights were added to the VAMP mold and the Arctic HISS. I’m sort of left wondering if the BF2000 vehicles had some gang-molded parts, as it would make a little more sense if the Sky Sweeper’s lights were just an extra tacked onto the mold for the Vector’s canopies.

I’m pretty mixed on the Battle Force 2000‘s signature colors, which you can see represented on the Sky Sweeper. On the plus side, the silver, green and blue mixture is pleasing to the eye and sets them apart from the sea of olive GI Joe vehicles that were still being pumped out to that point. With that said, silver is not really a realistic color for a tank, so it mildly requires more suspension of disbelief than some of the fluorescent colors you’d have seen in the 90‘s. Assuming the mold was still around, I think it’s a shame the Sky Sweeper never got a repaint, as a green/beige one could’ve been interesting as a beefed up Armadillo.

Sky Sweepers tend to run around $20, sometimes more or less depending on shipping, but it’s usually somewhere around there. Sadly, finding a complete one does require a fair bit of hunting. The antenna, headlights, and one or all of the missiles can often be missing. Truthfully, it’s not hurt too bad by not having the antenna or the missiles, but the headlights looks amazing, and you definitely don’t want to miss those.

1987 Sky-Sweeper (Battle Force 2000) Links:

3D Joes

1992 T’Jbang

Posted on October 24, 2022 by mwnekoman

1992 T’Jbang

First, to make you feel old, I just realized that T’Jbang is thirty. That means if you’re older than T’Jbang, you’re a really old man now. Unlike you, I’m younger than T’Jbang, which might make you wonder why I run an 80‘s toy blog, but that’s another story for another time. Anyways, T’Jbang is an insane looking figure, and is simultaneously the best GI Joe and the worst GI Joe.

I’ve always been a pretty big fan of the Ninja Force. The gimmicks don’t bother me much, and a lot of them were some of my first GI Joe figures (I was born in ‘94, but my parents bought me Ninja Force and Star Brigade figures that were still floating around into ‘98). They put a bigger focus on the fun-factor, and as a kid, they could play out roles as anything from ordinary soldiers, to wrestlers and Power Rangers. I never read the comics or knew who any of these guys were supposed to be. I just made up my own adventures and had fun.

Recently, I’ve rectified my lack of media knowledge and have finally read through the later Marvel comics. The result of this is a better understanding of why grumpy older people hate Ninja Force. In the comics, they suck. They come out of no where, they’re goofy, and clearly are riffing too much off of the then popular Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Maybe it was something else, but colorful ninjas with attitude is a considerable leap from Storm Shadow or the Night Creepers.

Put that aside, T’Jbang is a fun figure. Although he’s a ninja, he definitely looks more like a wrestler to me, even now. I don’t mind that, he fits in well with Sgt. Slaughter, and it seems like a more appropriately colorful idea to have a ninja commando that moonlights as a masked wrestler. Visually, he comes off a lot stronger than Banzai or Dojo, which probably makes him one of the more memorable figures from the subset. There’s enough detail on him to make him stand out. My favorite part is his rather detailed yellow mask, with tiger print on it. Most of what you see on him is some more standard ninja aesthetics, with big shin-guards and arm gauntlets, but the mask is unique and looks pretty good.

Of course, like all Ninja Force figures, T’Jbang has an action feature. Similar to Dice and Zartan, you can twist him at the torso and he springs back into position, similar to a punch or a sword swing. Although it’s a shame that a ninja of all things loses some articulation, he’s not as harmed by the gimmick as figures like Snake Eyes. Of course, once his o-ring rots away, the figure has to be cracked in half or extensive mods have to be done to fix him. I really hate that, though as a toy it’s not a terrible concept, since most o-rings will outlive the amount of years a kid would spend playing with toys.

For added interest, his accessories are a sword, and a double-bladed hook sword. Hook swords are sometimes called hu tou gou, or tiger head hook, so there’s a tiger connection that goes with the mask. It’s also interesting that this weapon is Chinese in origin, so T’Jbang has learned Wushu to go with his ninja training. Oddly, hook swords are usually used akimbo, but T’Jbang’s is one weapon, combined. Because of that, I’m not sure if it’d really work the same, or all that well at all, but I suppose that’s all apart of his secret style. Sadly, it’s a little hard for him to hold because of it’s design. The other sword is plain and works better, but is also boring. Both parts are powder blue, but this figure already looks nuts, so he’s not any worse for that.

T’Jbang is worth about $5, complete. I’ve warmed up to this figure in a lot of ways, but I’m not blind to the ways he’s also an awful toy. He’s a nobody with a corny character, and his outlandish toy is doomed to eventually fall apart and require a dreadful repair. He’s practically worthless for a good reason, but I can’t find it in myself to hate this figure. He’s still fun in a very innocent, juvenile kind of way.

1992 T’Jbang Links:

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3D Joes

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Tag Archives: ARAH

1989 Darklon

1989 Darklon

1989 Darklon Links:

1988 RPV

1988 RPV

1988 RPV Links:

1993 Mutt & Junkyard

1993 Mutt & Junkyard

1993 Mutt & Junkyard Links:

1991 Battle Wagon

1991 Battle Wagon

1991 Battle Wagon Links:

1993 Cobra Commander

1993 Cobra Commander

1993 Cobra Commander Links:

1991 Cleansweep

1991 Clean Sweep

1991 Cleansweep Links:

1989 HEAT Viper

1989 HEAT Viper

1989 HEAT Viper Links:

1983 Torpedo

1983 Torpedo

1983 Torpedo Links:

1987 Sky Sweeper (Battle Force 2000)

1987 Sky Sweeper (Battle Force 2000)

1987 Sky-Sweeper (Battle Force 2000) Links:

1992 T’Jbang

1992 T’Jbang

1992 T’Jbang Links: