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.