1994 Shipwreck

Shipwreck is probably among the most memorable and iconic GI Joe characters in the franchise. Especially for people who came in on Sunbow, Shipwreck was kind of the cartoon’s alternative to Clutch, as a similar kind of personality who was easier to identify with than characters like Flint, Duke or Snake Eyes. Despite his popularity, he really never received all that many toys, only being represented by his original in ‘85 and this Battle Corps version nine years later.

So this version of Shipwreck is a diver, which is hard to say whether this makes Shipwreck more usable or less usable. Although it’s the most recognizable element of the character, Shipwreck seems a little more cohesive outside of his sailor duds. It weakens his identity a bit, but also makes me imagine a lot of different scenarios where you might find Shippy in diving gear. Since I was a kid I’ve always imagined this Shipwreck going on a lot of sabotage missions, rendering him somewhat of a Joe equivalent to Firefly.

Like many ‘93 and ‘94 figures, Shipwreck is recycles the waist and legs from older sculpts, in this case ‘86 Wet Suit. In a few cases this mold recycling was a little more arbitrary, like with ‘94 Major Bludd, but here I feel like it somewhat benefits the figure for tying him back to Wet Suit, and adds a little continuity to their designs. They’re both GI Joe divers, it sort of makes sense to me that they’d share similar equipment/outfits.

For parts, you get a diving mask, two flippers, a Shockwave pistol, Bullhorn’s Steyr AUG, and a Hit&Run riffle and knife all in black, in addition to a silver missile launcher (and it’s missiles). I always appreciate old figures that came with decent looking black guns, even if it might’ve been nicer for him to have some kind of diver-specific part like a spear gun. The rubber mask is really one of the most fun parts that comes with this figure, as it also makes him one of the only diver figures that has a fully removable mask and air-intake.

This mold got a couple of repaints, most of which weren’t really better than this release, but not really worse either. He showed up in ‘98 as a part of the Navy Assault Unit set, colored black with bright green highlights. He then showed up another time in 2001 as apart of the ARAHC line, looking just like this figure with the addition of paint-wipes. This figure already had fine colors, so I’m not sure there’s much else you’d do with it, though a brighter repaint might’ve been kind of neat.

‘94 Shipwrecks go for about $15 to $20 complete, though for much less incomplete. I notice this with more Battle Corps figures these days, where there’s huge discrepancies between what a complete and incomplete figure will go for. It strikes me as odd, given that with most of these figures like Shipwreck, the parts are totally generic and not even unique to the figure. His exact same tree of parts was included with both Cross-Country and the two versions of Battle Corps Roadblock, so between the three of them, there’s a lot of these parts out there. Either way, he’s a nice figure, and worth getting in some fashion.