Tag Archives: Street Fighter

1993 M. Bison

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1993 M. Bison

I was reflecting on my early childhood with GI Joe a bit ago, trying to actually recall why I like these toys so much. Being born in 1994 means I didn’t crawl this earth until GI Joe was already gone, though, I got many of my own GI Joes from what was available at Toy Liquidators and Big Lots in the years to follow. It was then that I started to recall some favorites from my brother’s collection: The Street Fighter II GI Joes. In an overall sense I think these were some weaker offerings, but I also have to imagine they played a pivotal role in keeping GI Joe relevant, and maybe the toy industry as a whole. We take them for granted now, but video-game based action figures were not so common when these came out.

GI Joe TV reruns were getting harder to find into the late nineties, which is when a lot of these memories are from. I think I caught some Sunbow episodes a handful of times on USA Network, along with Ronin Warriors and Street Fighter. I realized then, that playing my copy of Street Fighter II on my SNES and watching the show prompted me to probably stay more interested in GI Joe. That is to say, that for me as a kid, GI Joe was this weird catch-all brand that was almost like an action figure adaptation of a morning cartoon block. I had the real GI Joes (the ones I could recognize), Street Fighter, some Ronin Warriors (Ninja Force), and even Sentai/Beetle Borgs (the V2 Eel, who was usually good-guy superhero to me). The point being, that Street Fighter stayed relevant in the 90‘s long after Joe was gone. Yet, because GI Joe was also Street Fighter, it acted as another avenue to keep me twice as interested in GI Joe.

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An head-swap created with M. Bison’s head, a Shadow Guard’s body and 1993 Cobra Commanders legs.

The main issue the Street Fighter GI Joes run into is that most of them have gigantic heads. Often times, the proportions favor the sculpting seen with 1986 figure more so than anything from the 90‘s. M. Bison’s a middle of the road example of this; his head is nicely sharp and not as big as Ken’s, but it’s still pretty big. One time I got curious to make a lazy approximation of the Joecon Black Major figure by swapping M. Bison’s head into a Shadow Guard body. The result looked really cartoonish, possibly because of the more slender ‘85 body sculpt.

The rest of the figure is constructed from the torso and arms of Hardball, and the legs and waist of ‘92 Destro. The Hardball torso is a little slim, but for something made almost entirely of reused parts, I think the little recipe works. Something that really gets me about this figure, is just how attractive the overall design is: The Hardball half keeps him looking military enough to fit with GI Joe, but the Destro half adds a good bit of flair without infringing on Destro’s look too much. Further, the bright red plastic looks really good, especially with the choice details they picked out to paint blue, black, silver and yellow. When you compare him to something like the HEAT Viper from the same year, it’s actually surprising how much paint is featured on M. Bison.

For both the single-carded M. Bison and the blue one packed with the Crimson Cruiser, there exists variants that have the shoulder pad from Road Pig, colored in silver. To my understanding, these are inconsistently glued in the typical vintage Hasbro fashion, where some examples are not glued at all, and others are glued anywhere from lightly to heavily. I don’t have any like this, but I’ve tried putting Road Pig’s pad on him before. It’s a poor fit, and while it does improve the overall bulk of the figure, the asymmetrical design and fit against his head probably takes more away than it gives.

For another bit of interesting trivia, the blue version with the Crimson Cruiser, is photographed on the back of the box with a General Flagg head. Almost all of the Street Fighter Joes can be found with a reused head pictured on the back of the vehicle boxes, which makes me curious if these were rushed a bit.

For accessories, you get the M-6865 tree, shared with ‘94 Metal Head, the ‘93 HEAT Viper, and the ‘93 T.A.R.G.A.T. (and it’s Funskool version, too). So, you get the Annihilator SMG, the Iron Grenadier pistol, the Rock Viper PSG1, missiles and a stand. In addition to this, you get a green launcher (also from the aforementioned HEAT Viper), and a grappling hook with a string you can place in it. Curiously, the grappling hook was unique to the Street Fighter figures and only included with them. I don’t find his accessories to be all that good or essential, though he’s the only figure that has this particular set in black. There’s examples of most of these guns in this color with the exception of the Iron Grenadier pistol, which gives him something a tad unique to enjoy.

M. Bison’s are fairly cheap still. Street Fighter Joes used to not be all that popular at all, but a strong appreciation for these figures has grown in recent years, probably fueled by softer attitudes on 90‘s Joes, and the enduring popularity of Street Fighter, too. So they’re way more expensive now than they used to be, but a complete M. Bison will only run around $20, which what most Joes from that year cost complete. If you don’t care for the accessories, you can get him for about half of that, which might be wise if you’re not looking for your 40th example of a black Rock Viper rifle.

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1993 M. Bison Links:

3D Joes

Half the Battle

1993 Balrog

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1993 Balrog

In hindsight, the 90‘s Street Fighter II crossover was somewhat surreal. I say this, because GI Joe has very rarely done this sort crossover, and really hasn’t done anything like it ever since. Now, that doesn’t count the multitude of times GI Joes have been recycled into other toy lines, which you saw back in the 90‘s for Mortal Kombat, and even in recent years for The Hulk, and Jurassic Park most recently. Heck, even the comic-inspired Transformers Crossover sets were something that only existed as SDCC exclusives, and somewhat phoned-in ones at that.

One could look at the series as a desperate attempt to keep GI Joe relevant on Hasbro’s end, but I personally think it was well played. While none of these toys are spectacular, Hasbro pretty much picked the best 90‘s gaming franchise to tie into GI Joe. Of course, that’s not to say I wouldn’t have welcomed a Megaman X crossover, but I already had a Sigma via Armor Tech Destro, so I didn’t need that anyway.

Balrog is a real highlight among the Street Fighter figures. He’s entirely a repaint of Big Boa, with a new head. Frankly, I like this figure a lot better than Big Boa, and I feel he actually integrates into the Cobra design aesthetic better. The blue on his pants is more in line with Cobra blue, and the new head looks more reasonable than Big Boa’s. The Club used this head for Lt. Claymore, and that was a surprisingly good repaint on their part, though sometimes I still just prefer this Balrog to him.

In my mythos, Balrog is a Cobra strongly affiliated with the Dreadnoks, so while he’s not an official member of that group, he’s best-buddies with Torch and Ripper. In ways, I kind of imagine him being a hybrid of Burnout and Lt. Claymore, and using him this way gives him a little more versatility. Primarily, he functions as a Cobra drill sergeant, but he also doubles as a field commander and a liaison to the Dreadnoks, who are often difficult to negotiate with.

The parts were pretty cool with Balrog, though I’ve never personally acquired a complete example. He included virtually identical boxing gloves to the ones Big Boa had, just sans the Cobra symbols. Other than that, he included most of the same parts found with the Headhunter Storm Trooper and a few other figures, which were: ‘92 Destro’s pistol, the Rock Viper rifle, ‘88 Shockwave’s knife, and the launcher from the Headhunter Storm Trooper, with an extra hook-missile only shared with Blanka.

There’s a second Balrog that came out in the Street Fighter movie line, which is an even cooler repaint of Salvo, with this toy’s head. I’ve tried getting one on and off for years, but at this point I’ve settled on this version as that figure is much harder to find at a fair price. It also does not have the benefit of improving an older sculpt in the way that this ‘93 repaint salvages the Big Boa mold.

Street Fighter figures like Balrog used to fall into the category me and some others knew as “dolla-hollas”. Like with everything else now though, they tend to cost a bit more, and are a bit harder to find. Complete Balrog’s are pretty hard to come by, and seem to fetch about $45, though you can get an incomplete one around $15, which is a reasonable option since most of his parts are generic.

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1993 Balrog Links:

3DJoes

Half the Battle

1993 Blanka

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1993 Blanka

For the most part, it’s my opinion that the Street Fighter GI Joes are one of the weaker 90‘s sub-lines. No doubt, there was some curious figures I had as a kid that saw plenty of play, but most of them had terrible sculpts or glaring flaws because of the tooling they reused (Zangief with exposed robot parts!). Blanka is one figure whom has almost always been immune to my critical outlook, however.

I’m partly biased towards Blanka because I’ll readily admit, he was my favorite Street Fighter II character as a kid and to this day the character I play as the most. So when I was a kid having a figure of my favorite character from the game meant Blanka received an ample amount of my attention. From then and up to now, I felt like one of the appeals that Blanka had was that he was a fairly ambiguous character, even in the game. So it was easy to find a place for him in a variety of roles, as either a friend or foe depending upon what I felt like.

Outside of his head, Blanka is a full repaint of 1988 Roadpig. The muscular, shirtless Roadpig body works well for Blanka and is among the better reuses of tooling for the Street Fighter GI Joe line. There’s not much that seems out of place besides maybe the arrows on his leg, and the physique is a good match for Blanka. The new head is also a pretty good sculpt, nicely sized and featuring a fierce expression that suits the character.

The version of Blanka I’m highlighting is the one that came packaged with the Beast Blaster. It has slightly more muted colors over the single carded version. The green for his skin has been replaced with blue, while the red details have been replaced with two shades of brown. It’s still a pretty eccentric figure, but these colors fit with how I like to use him more, and visually just look better to me on a subjective level.

To incorporate Blanka into my GI Joe universe, I’ve usually had two ways I liked using him. The first way that’s probably more typical, is to use him as a mutant creation by Dr. Mindbender. It’s a fun scenario that ties Blanka into Mindbender and possibly Serpentor. Alternatively, I’ve on and off contemplated him as a more mentally competent ninja character, as an adversary to the Ninja Force. I sort of got the idea when I was 13 or so after playing Samurai Warriors 2 and thinking Kotaro Fuma looked like this Blanka. I guess you could say he’s always captivated my imagination.

Beast Blaster Blankas aren’t as common as other versions of Blanka, but they show up from time to time and aren’t worth too much. Typically an auction will go around $10, and as he has no parts there’s little variation in his value. In my opinion, this is the most appealing version of Blanka, though he’s a figure that might be easier to fit into some people’s collections more than others.

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1993 Blanka Links:

Yo Joe

(Note: There’s almost nothing on the internet about this figure! Some content about the green version, but nothing on this guy.)