1989 Muskrat (Night Force)

Posted on February 19, 2024 by mwnekoman

1989 Muskrat (Night Force)

Collectors really suck the fun out of things, don’t we? The Night Force is one of those subjects: It’s an undeniably cool sub-team, but seeing mass produced children’s toys hit upwards of $200 makes one call so much into question. Are they that rare? Are they that cool? Are they that much better than the normal versions that are barely worth 10% of that? The hype around them makes it hard to really form an objective opinion on the toys, regardless of it’s good or bad.

Muskrat here could be chalked up to one of the more mid-tier Night Force entries. The original ‘88 Muskrat was already an especially strong figure, and this recolor doesn’t change that very much. A major positive is that he now features an extra color, where V1 Muskrat was entirely green with some black details, Night Force Muskrat now has black pants that contrast with his blue vest and various olive details. The olive and black colors are pretty standard fare for the Night-Force, but the dark blue was a more unusual choice, only appearing on Muskrat and Charbroil from the same year. It looks a little Cobra-esque to me, but I like it; it makes the group more interesting for the addition. Also, for whatever it’s worth it’s almost the same color later seen on Battle Corps Muskrat (who I hate).

I think the added color makes him a tiny bit better than V1 Muskrat. Despite that, the difference in quality is negligible, and were it not for the fact that I got this one in a nifty lot, I’d probably never pursue him. He doesn’t really do anything that a normal Muskrat doesn’t already look good enough doing, and I really don’t have a compulsive desire to own everything Night Force like I might feel for Tiger Force or Python Patrol. That’s not to say anything bad about this figure, but he just seems kind of interchangeable with a normal figure, compared to the more theme-heavy sub-teams. I’ve sometimes wondered if Night Force was meant to stand on it’s own a little less, given their limited nature as TRU exclusives and the fact there was barely enough figures to fully crew some of their vehicles.

An oddity about these figures I’ve encountered is that they always have either super-tight joints or broken leg-pins. My Muskrat has a dead knee and Crazylegs had two, but my Tunnel Rat is so tight I get scared posing him. The plastic on the figures feels solid, so it’s not like the Slaughter’s Marauders stuff, it’s just like the plastic tolerances themselves were off. Or maybe I’ve just not been lucky with the four or so figures I own, you guys tell me.

Muskrat includes a Benelli Super 90 shotgun (Some folks call it an M3 or M4, but the M3 wasn’t even produced until ’89.), a machete and a boogie board just like the original, just now all in black. The original had a baby-blue machete, so it’s a bit of an upgrade, though these parts showed up in a lot of places in black. Numerous ‘93 and ‘94 figures had similar accessories, so this one’s not really unique for that. The boogie board is unique, but also not really something I find much value in having, since I never use the green one either.

So the last Night Force Muskrat, with all of his parts, went at auction for $204… Incomplete figures trend between $70 and $50, with the boogie board being the hard part to come by (makes ya wonder about all those machetes and shotguns). The part I find bewildering, is the sort of vacant reasoning for why you’d pay that much for this figure. He’s cool, but for $200 wouldn’t you want an exotic foreign figure, or maybe some odd mail-away? A squad of rarer army-builders? A convention figure? Even with current pricing, there’s a lot of more interesting items you could chase in that price bracket than the Night Force repaint of a relative no-name. The world wonders.

9610737703_77c577d789_c 1989 Muskrat Night Force gi joe

1989 Muskrat (Night Force) Links:

Forgotten Figures

Half the Battle

3D Joes

1988 Psyche Out (Night Force)

Posted on October 12, 2021 by mwnekoman

1988 Psyche Out (Night Force)

Night Force would almost be an overrated subgroup in GI Joe, if you only looked at figures like Falcon and Muskrat, where nice looking toys were put in different, arguably less cohesive colors. The appeal of Night Force, in my opinion, largely comes from the figures who had normally bright colors swapped for more serious business colors, like Lightfoot, Crazy Legs, and in the case of this profile, Psyche Out.

A GI Joe who specializes in Psy-Ops is a pretty bizarre idea for a character. There’s a few other characters he could pair up nicely with, but personally, I find it hard to do much with him. It makes it even weirder to think about why he’s a member of a night-ops team, but I suppose it was really just an opportunity for Hasbro to recycle a mold from yesteryear. I find something fascinating from a more conspiracy minded point of view about Psyche Out, and personally enjoy pairing him up with Chuckles and Scoop as a propaganda/conspiracy team (though, I have no cool pictures to represent that).

Given the nature of this figure, the fluorescent green of V1 Psyche Out really wasn’t that obnoxious. Still, the colors are superior on this version. Palette-wise, there’s a lot of hues that overlap between this figure and a few other vintage classics. His off-white shirt is pretty similar to Mainframe’s color; likewise, the olive pants are in line with Heavy Metal and a few others. It makes him look more cohesive with those golden-year ‘85 and ‘86 figures, and less like a stereotypical 1987 figure in all of the worst ways.

This figure looks pretty nice, but in the end of the day I can’t find too much to do with him. I’ve had the figure out at my desk for two, maybe even close to three years now contemplating that cool photo I’ll take of him, but “standing aimlessly by a hummer” was the best I could come up with for now. I like the toy enough to want to do something with him, but he kind of just comes off as a good-guy version of Crystal Ball.

I still don’t own a single Night Force figure that has their original parts, so for my Psyche Out, I just use a selection of my favorite pistols or the original’s gear. Night Force Psyche Out included a backpack, an antenna for his head, two clip-on wrist radars, a radar hand-device, and a seldom seen pistol, all in black. It’s nice for being different, but these parts really don’t look any better than the original’s. As I already find Psyche Out’s normal equipment to be weird and niche, I feel no need to acquire these parts.

A complete Night Force Psyche Out runs around $130 currently, but one with only a couple of his parts in nice condition only fetches about $30. Having figures and repaints without their original parts feels pretty lame. Despite that, I really can’t say some little black satellites are worth $100, especially not when he looks fine enough with other parts.

1988 Psyche Out (Night Force) Links:

2004 TRU Night Force Tunnel Rat

Posted on December 10, 2018 by mwnekoman

2004 TRU Night Force Tunnel Rat

I’ve never been a fan of the 2004 Night Force set. It’s really not bad in retrospect, but the figures are a poor match for the superior vintage Night Force colors. The 2003 Python Patrol set was a far better update to the vintage Python colors compared to this, but there are a few interesting figures in this set. Today I’ll have a look at Tunnel Rat, who I feel is neither the best or worst figure included.

This set passed me by at retail without my knowledge (or caring), and when I got into collecting older item’s a few years later, this set was still at the bottom of my priorities. In fact, I’ve only acquired two thirds of the set to date, mainly through lots and the like. My disinterest in the figures spurns from a simple reason: they’re bland. The colors and details are pretty good across the set, but at a glance all I see is black.

Such is the case with Tunnel Rat. The vintage Night Force Tunnel Rat had a strong palette of colors without being boring to look at. The 2004 figure on the other hand, has an excessively dark color scheme. There’s a lot of colors and details in this deco, and really it’s a well decorated figure. It’s just that the colors are so dark you can hardly appreciate that, which is a massive shame.

Speaking of details, one thing that drives me nuts about 2000‘s Joes moreso than pinheads, terrible parts and poor mold choices is the usage of the full GI Joe logo. For some reason this became of visual trope of figures from this era, and Tunnel Rat features it on his leg like all the other figures in the set. It’s especially jarring on this figure where dark, realistic colors are part of the appeal, and then you just have a massive toy brand logo running down his leg. I really hate that.

For accessories, he included Red Star’s AK47, and V1 Firefly’s backpack and walkie-talkie. It’s a pretty weird situation when a figure comes with good parts, but still doesn’t really have a good loadout. I pretty much always enjoy getting a spare Firefly walkie, but the backpack without his tool tray is pretty off-putting. All in all, these parts are good things to have in a parts bin, but for Tunnel Rat, they don’t suit the character.

So, overall this Tunnel Rat is an okay figure. There’s a few worse versions of Tunnel Rat, such as the Sonic Fighters repaint, but that doesn’t make this figure’s problems any better. Nowadays completionists will pay a lot for the sparse appearance of this figure “complete”, but as the parts are totally generic, I don’t recommend bothering with them. Partsless, you can get this guy for about $6 or $7, and depending upon how you view the colors, that isn’t a terrible price. Most of these 2000‘s TRU exclusives have become a lot harder find and a lot more expensive, but the Night Force set hasn’t appreciated in value quite as much.