1992 Headman

There’s a lot you can say about “The War on Drugs” in hindsight. It was a huge propaganda push, and really an old corporate virtue-signal that amounted to good PR for toy companies, cartoons and video games. Though, kind of like with Eco Warriors (GI Joe was really preachy there for a few years), it’s a realistic part of modern warfare, and made for some pretty cool toys. Most of what you see going on with Headman is more on the extremely cool end, and only a little corny.

First, it should be said that Headman’s appearance more so than any other GI Joe villain pulls from an iconic visage that strikes fear into the hearts of many:

The suspicious man from neighborhood watch signs! Jokes aside, the corniest thing about Headman is that he wears a bandit mask and a silly little hat. The head sculpt itself is high-quality and has that late-ARAH sharpness that often goes underappreciated, but it looks super silly. I think they purposely tried to make his head look a little sillier, since if he looked like his DIC design, this would be a pretty drab figure of a guy in a suit (though, that probably would’ve been cooler).

The suit sculpt is really nice too. Hasbro’s later releases of Tomax and Xamot, as well as ‘04 General Flagg show how this mold had a lot of potential in it. A lot of later repaints didn’t look so good with 80‘s figures because of the sculpting changes that occurred between the beginning and end of ARAH, though I feel Headman is subtle enough that he doesn’t look so weird with some sculpts that are a few years older than his.

Headman’s suit is lined with gold pin-stripes that are incredibly delicate. I love how it looks, but sadly getting a mint example is not the easiest thing to do. The figure pictured in this post is my brother’s childhood Headman, whose gold paint is almost entirely gone. I wanted my own figure of this guy for a while, but eBay grief and other purchases always kept that at bay. Other than that, Headman doesn’t have much going on for painted details. The ’02 release shows off the sculpt better, though that comes at the cost of him being orange.

For parts, Headman included a G11 rifle, a free-standing rocket launcher, missile and a figure stand. The rocket launcher lights up like the other DEF launchers, which I always thought was a pretty cool gimmick, though I’m not sure there was really enough here to justify the higher price of DEF figures. Essentially including one launcher and a standard gun is pretty lacking when compared to the normal ARAH releases from the same year.

With that said, the rifle is pretty cool, and actually another great example of how much attention to detail was placed in GI Joe guns. For years I thought it was just some weird sci-fi contraption, but it’s actually H&K’s experimental G11 rifle. That gun has a long and interesting production history, but the point of it is that even in 1992, this would be a very unusual and very, very expensive gun to be toting around. It’s my assumption that it’s meant to reflect his tacky and posh nature as a drug kingpin, though that doesn’t explain why Battle Corps Mutt had it too. Oddly, the barrel area is more open than any G11 prototype I’ve seen, but maybe that’s a change that occurred once it became the filecard’s “mega-blast combat rifle”.

Getting a complete Headman is actually cheap and somewhat easy. Getting a mint Headman is a lot more challenging. A loose complete Headman in good condition tends to run around $20, but it takes a while to find one with even decent paint. Carded figures seem to float more around $50 at the moment. As is the case with much of Hasbro’s vintage gold and silver paint applications, it’s made of fairy-dust, and that’s bad for Headman since you essentially can’t touch the figure without rubbing it. Oddly though, there’s a lot more of Headman on eBay than I see for other figures (especially DEF ones), so I can only assume this guy was actually very popular back in ‘92.

1992 Headman Links:

Although nothing seems more repetitive than 80‘s and 90‘s anti-drug messages, the DEF and Headhunters were some pretty cool toys to come from the era. They’re a bit corny, but also a real world topic that’s interesting to inject into a military toy line. In the 2000‘s however, anti-drug messages in children’s shows and product largely went away and even seemed to take somewhat more of a taboo status. So when Hasbro brought Headman back in the GI Joe vs. Cobra line, he was somewhat of a departure from his prior form to say the least.

The original Headman was a sweet figure. The black pin-stripped suit was a great look for a drug dealer, among other features I found that made the figure charming.There was little to do in the way of improving the original, and sadly the ‘02 Headman could be seen as quite the down grade. Now he wears a solid orange suit that looks quite a lot like The Mask, which I’d be a little insulted to know if that was really the inspiration for this figure.

There’s nothing much to say about the figure other than that. He’s Headman, but in orange. In all fairness I think certain details of the sculpt are a little easier to see in this color than in black, but that doesn’t really justify the poor color choice here. Oddly, his hair color has been changed to black as well, a design choice I still don’t quite understand.

HEADMAN started out robbing convenience stores, then learned the ropes of high-end thievery while serving time in prison. A hardened criminal, HEADMAN doesn’t think twice about removing anyone who gets in the way of his plans. He steals anything for the right price—government secrets, weapon system specifications, and priceless art treasures. His thefts have undermined the safety of countries and satisfied greedy private art collectors at the expense of museums around the world. He has managed to escape GENERAL TOMAHAWK time and again, but the relentless G.I. JOE commander has caused him to abandon some plans, losing money. He wants to remove the threatening general from his trail, once and for all.
“I am a master of crime who can steal anything, and never get caught.”

-Headman’s Filecard

The filecard’s from this era tend to be pretty worthless, and Headman’s is no exception. Interestingly, they’ve completely overhauled his character in this one. No longer is he a drug dealer and the leader of the Headhunters, but instead a robber and expert thief. The portrayal seems especially childish and simple, and even steps on the toes of a few other Cobras who already fill similar roles (Firefly and Zartan). Again, I suppose at this point drugs were a topic they simply preferred to avoid, but they could’ve found a more appropriate role for the Headman than one as blase as this.

They also really phoned in the accessories on this figure. Instead of his highly interesting G11 riffle, he now includes the grenade launcher and knife from the V1 Range Viper, as well as the pistol from ‘91 Dusty (the one they would eventually include with different figures more than twenty times.). What gets me about these accessories isn’t that they’re horribly generic, but that absolutely no thought was put into them for the character. A big, noisy grenade launcher for a guy who’s supposed to be a thief now?

Despite all of this, I like using this figure every now and then just because no one else really does that much. I’m also a big Headhunters fan, so he has appeal to me for that alone. But this isn’t a good figure and his value sixteen years later reflects that. Complete figures can be had for around $5, but if you look around, the sealed set with General Hawk (Tomahawk) can be had for almost as much.