1989 Lynx

Posted on May 29, 2023 by mwnekoman

1989 Lynx

The late-80‘s repaint lines followed some simple patterns, especially when it came to the vehicles. An old toy that had been out of production for a year or two was slapped in new colors and put back out on store shelves. The Slaughter’s Marauders vehicles are the odd exception to this, as they all featured new turrets, making them unique from any other vehicle in the line. Why Hasbro took a different approach with these vehicles, I do not know, but either way it lead to some more memorable items.

I’m very biased towards the Lynx, as this has been one of my favorite GI Joe vehicles since I was a small child. I never had any of my own vehicles until I was a teenager, but part of that was because my brother had a decent collection of late-line items to chose from. I think vehicles interest me a little more than most, but I still place a higher focus on the figures, just like most of you guys out there. Of course, my brother’s collection was mostly 90‘s items, so out of the vehicles he owned, this one was the most reasonable and tank-like.

A lot of fans seem to find artillery vehicles boring for not doing much or having reduced figure capacity. This is true, but sort of alien to me, both now and when I was a kid. I’ve always really liked artillery vehicles, mainly for the fact that it’s a vehicle with the potential to kill something in another zip-code. This also provides me with an easy plot for a battle, as Joes and Cobras would always have an interest in attacking each other’s artillery. It doesn’t have to do much to act as a kind of objective for attackers and defenders, so they always saw a lot of use in that way.

The Lynx is an fairly impressive looking vehicle for something that’s just a Wolverine repaint. The Wolverine’s missiles have been replaced by a new turret, which recycles the main gun from the Mauler. The turret looks really big on it, which I think makes the vehicle look a lot more powerful. For a little more visual interest, it’s covered in the signature camo that the Slaughter’s Marauders vehicles use. This is a really good woodland pattern, the greens are vibrant, and everything has a realistic hue to it. Because there’s no odd or clashing colors, putting any Joe from outside Slaughter’s Marauders you like in it doesn’t seem too odd or unnatural as well, which is what I do most of the time.

Because it reuses the lower hull of the Wolverine, it also inherits most of that vehicles gimmicks. The removable engine cover is a nice detail, though it’s always prompted me to imagine that it breaks down every other mile. The tow-rope also reappears; I wish I could say I loved this little part, but I don’t. The clips for it on the vehicle are comically fragile, and while intact examples give the vehicle a lot of flair, it doesn’t really seem to make up for how delicate it is. With a little work I could repair a broken one with some epoxy and a 3-D printed tow-rope, which I might do if I ever bother with a cheap Wolverine. For this vehicle, I’ve never really cared that it doesn’t have it on my copy. Another flaw in the Lynx’s design is in the turret. While it does look very cool and used to be a little tighter, there’s not very much you can do to keep the gun elevated. I’ve not found a good way to safely take this vehicle apart either, so if you get one with a floppy turret, it’s a hard problem to fix.

Typically, I look up the value of an item at the end of my blog post, though I usually can guess if something is expensive or not while I’m writing. The Lynx seems to have a pretty consistent value of about $50, which surprised me a fair amount. That’s not too much money, but it’s a lot more than I was expecting, especially for examples that often had missing or broken tow-ropes. I really like the Lynx, but as a vehicle, it really doesn’t do anything you can’t find in a much cheaper Slugger. Likewise, if you just want a centerpiece to display the Slughter’s Marauders on, the Equalizer is a much better choice.

1989 Lynx Links:

3D Joes

Joe A Day

2009 Serpent Armor

Posted on April 24, 2023 by mwnekoman

2009 Serpent Armor

GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra, was a botched toy line in more than a few ways. It did however give Hasbro the opportunity to make some lovably odd toys, like the Serpent Armor. The original SNAKE which this toy is based on, is not the most compelling item from the early line, but getting a new one in black was more than welcome by me.

So, the Serpent Armor is technically a new mold, though as far as I can tell the sculpt is identical to the original SNAKE. The original tooling went to Funskool in the 90‘s, where I assume it was used until it broke, since they opted to make a new mold. Originally, the SNAKE was going to be featured in the 25th Anniversary line, but the last wave of vehicle sets were canceled. If memory serves, we never saw much of these besides a WalMart computer listing and possibly a test-shot from China. Either way, it serves to explain why Hasbro produced new tooling like this for a line of Target exclusives, which also featured some even more questionable releases like a new Jet Pack.

The Serpent Armor is a pretty simple toy, it has four interchangeable arms, and the torso and legs open up, which allows you to either insert a figure or place the included black stand. I never stick figures in this thing since that feels like a waste, so for me it just bounces around with the stand. The hands include a machine-gun, a missile, a claw, and laser-gun. The claw and laser look pretty lousy, so for me these almost only use the other two parts. Other than that, there’s not much you do with it, but it’s a decent little vehicle for it’s size.

As a toy, I get the sense that the BAT was essentially just a more refined version of the SNAKE armor, since they’re both robots and have similar gimmicks. As a concept, I think the SNAKE seems a little less absurd and therefore, a little cooler than the BAT, but the BAT wins for it’s practicality. Again, it’s not very fun to put a figure inside the SNAKE, and there’s really not much it does besides stand there. If the goal was just giving Cobra a robot weapon with swappable arms, the BAT’s superior. Also, the BAT has a place to put it’s spare arms, which the SNAKE does not, and that sucks.

The black colors on the Serpent Armor were really nice, and broke from the trend of most post-’08 vehicles being reissues to some degree of an 80‘s item. It’s also pretty nice that the toy features a handful of silver paint applications on it, which you don’t see on other versions of the mold. For me, my favorite part of this toy is that matches really well with a lot of my early Cobra items; black puts it perfectly in line with HISS Tanks, FANGs, STUNs and everything else from the period where black was the main color for Cobra vehicles.

Serpent Armors often hit $30, but can easily be had for $20, boxed or loose. This price lines up roughly with what a Black Major SNAKE will cost you, as well as a decent ’83 example, so it makes sense. These were fun to grab at retail with an included figure for $10, but $20 isn’t an appalling price to me. I can’t say the SNAKE armor is my favorite toy, but it’s fun enough the have around.

2009 Serpent Armor Links:

Photo by Scarrviper

2004 Quick Strike

Posted on March 27, 2023 by mwnekoman

2004 Quick Strike

New-Sculpt era vehicles often presented some interesting ideas, but fell flat on execution. That’s somewhat the case with the Valor vs. Venom Quick Strike, which is a nice looking and mildly fun vehicle, though flawed, in several aspects. Generally, these are flaws that could’ve been easily resolved with small design alterations that simply were not made, which makes me suppose the people designing these toys simply were not so invested.

In 2004, Hasbro cared about GI Joe enough to release more than a requisite AWE Striker and HISS Tank for a vehicle lineup. In fact, there were more than 20 vehicles released that year if I didn’t count wrong, which is fairly hard to imagine at this point. Unfortunately though, the 2000‘s were not the 80‘s, and what would’ve been a banging assortment in 1992 was muddled by standardized price-points, obtuse gimmicks and the lack of a creative play-pattern. With a little more wiggle-room, something like the Quick Strike could’ve been a nice successor to the Monster Blaster APC, but such is not the case.

The Quick Strike is a medium-size vehicle with a similar size and profile to the original HISS Tank. It has a maximum capacity of about 6 figures, which includes two in the front cabin, one in each turret, and one on each of the two foot-pegs on the rear of the vehicle (just magically standing there with nothing to feasibly hold onto). The anti-infantry gun pivots both left and right, and can be aimed up and down too. Meanwhile, the lift-up missile launcher is fixed in it’s position, and can’t be aimed at all. Two additional missiles for the launcher are stored at the very bottom of the vehicle in the back (which doesn’t seem very intuitive). It really doesn’t do that much of interest, but it’s also not a very big vehicle, so it’s a little forgivable.

The back of the box describes the Quick Strike as an “Armored Vehicle”, presumably because any designation more specific than that would impart a purpose this vehicle likely cannot achieve. Something I find odd about the vehicles from this era, are their often over-engineered gimmicks that serve questionable purposes, while somewhat failing at more basic things you’d want to do with a GI Joe vehicle. A missile launcher really could’ve been stuffed anywhere else on the vehicle, like hanging off the side or underneath the cockpit, but instead it’s smashed into the rear of the vehicle, where I really would’ve much rather had some extra seats or a computer station. Most of the vehicles from the period are like this, where mid-sized vehicles usually had some kind of towering cannon pop out to fire a missile in one direction, at the cost of virtually any other play feature.

A strong point of the Quick Strike is that it does look relatively good. The sculpt is decent in most places, and it has all the familiar tapestries of a classic GI Joe vehicle, including shovels, tow-rope, hammers, and various other tools strapped to the outside of the vehicle. Personally I think this vehicle is rather photogenic; it fills up the frame really well, and it looks decent to have figures posed around it. It’s simple look and camouflage paint job also help it look decent with older sculpts, in particular, I think it pairs up somewhat nicely with the DEF guys, who never really had a good ground vehicle.

Quick Strikes don’t appear to be as cheap or common as they should be, with complete examples floating between $40 and $50 when you find them. I got mine back in ‘19, and if I recall correctly I only paid around $20 for a MISB example, meaning prices have essentially doubled since then. It’s bizarre to me, since I really don’t think 2000‘s GI Joe has that much of a fan base, I certainly haven’t seen any large amount of individuals demanding iconic characters like Dr. Link Talbot be remade for Classified… So I really have no clue who’s behind the market for $50 Quick Strikes.

2004 Quick Strike Links:

Joe A Day

Generalsjoes

1988 RPV

Posted on February 27, 2023 by mwnekoman

1988 RPV

The RPV, or “Remote Pilot Vehicle”, is one of those ideas for a GI Joe toy that’s actually rather cool and interesting, but comes across somewhat bland as an actual toy. I’ve seen this toy get put through some harsh put-downs by collectors at various points, though I think there’s other GI Joe vehicles that are more deserving of thorough admonishment. Still, it’s a somewhat flawed vehicle, but not without it’s merits.

So, to my limited understanding of Cold War-era RPV launchers, this vehicle is actually fairly realistic and would serve a real purpose. Remote Pilot Vehicles, or as you may know them now by the modern acronym UAV, were first being used for reconnaissance and intelligence operations around 1960 during the Vietnam War. At the time, these vehicles were top-secret of course, and they looked a lot different than the drone equipped on GI Joe’s RPV, but it’s another element that ties back to ARAH’s heavy reliance on Vietnam-era military tech. I’m not sure if either the drone or the launching vehicle here is based on any particular real-word equipment, but similar vehicles would’ve been in use around the time of this toy’s release.

A major problem for the toy, is that I don’t think too many people really understand how one of these would work, especially not in 1988. With some cursory reading, I can imagine a few scenarios where the RPV could be involved with some very fun GI Joe adventures, but I doubt so many children of the 80‘s knew too much about these, which meant those adventures probably never happened.

Aviation history aside, the RPV has a critical problem as a toy: It doesn’t do much. Small vehicles are limited in what they can provide, but the RPV essentially launches it’s drone and sits there. Just by way of it’s gimmicks, it’s a little more interesting than the Battle Barge, but this isn’t a toy that does a whole lot of things. Of course, it has some then requisite features to make it a tad more interesting, like a tow-hook and the seat-belt. The drone has a removable nose cone too, which reveals some computer details.

My biggest gripe with this vehicle is no doubt the radar station. When fully hooked up it makes this vehicle really cumbersome and tedious to move around. It connects to the RPV via a standard rubber-hose like most figures included. Unfortunately though, the pegs for it are in these odd recesses on both the vehicle and the radar station, meaning you can’t gently push the hose on like you normally would. I had both pegs break on me recently, so I blame it on that.

In Europe there was a significant recolor of this vehicle, where the tan was replaced with silver and the white was replaced with Cobra-blue. Just for it’s oddness I’d kind of like one, but between the fact that it’s terribly hard to find, and that the RPV isn’t something you need more than one of, I doubt I’ll ever bother with it. The color choices were especially weird on it though, as it makes it look more like the Cobra Adder than any existing Joe vehicle.

The RPV is virtually worthless. Mint complete examples sold by toy dealers who can usually get 300% of a figure’s value at auction, can only sell the RPV for $8 to $10. It’s odd, niche, and doesn’t fit with any particularly beloved subset of figures, so I think there’s generally not much of a market for it. Despite that, I personally feel like this was the best drone-related vehicle in the entire toy line, and there’s enough there that it’s worth having.

1988 RPV Links:

3D Joes

Toys from the Past (European variant)

A Real American Book

1991 Battle Wagon

Posted on January 30, 2023 by mwnekoman

1991 Battle Wagon

1991 produced some classic GI Joe figures that any frequent reader of this blog would know I like quite a bit. The vehicles from this year however, are not a thing I find myself the biggest fan of. In general, I don’t think a lot of 90‘s vehicles compare too well to the offerings from earlier in the line, even though some of them were still quite ambitious like Armor Bot, or generally fun like the Brawler. Then you have things like the Battle Wagon.

Straight to the chase, the Battle Wagon is not a vehicle I fancy myself a fan of. To me, it just looks too stupid to ever be something I could take seriously. Still, I can’t really fault it for existing, as it is very much a product of it’s time, maybe so much so that I’d even say it’s the most 90‘s-centric toy of ARAH. I mean, it’s basically a monster-truck for GI Joes with a gargantuan multi-barrel missile-launcher turret in the back. It’s completely ridiculous, but it also seems tailor made for the interests of a young boy in the 1990‘s, so it’s not without reason.

In terms of playability, it pretty much checks all the important boxes for a large GI Joe item. It supports a decent amount of figures, has firing weapons, a working tow winch, is motorized, and even has a removable battle station in the same vein as the MAGGOT. It has a lot of things you can do with it, and most of the gimmicks work well enough too, which makes it inherently better than a total dud like the Attack Cruiser. One problem with a lot of very large GI Joe toys, is that they take up a ton of space without really doing all that much, which is fortunately not the case here.

For my uses however, the Battle Wagon is much too over-the-top to ever really be useful. While the military industrial complex can justify the existence of a great many absurdities to waste my money on, in the end of the day the Battle Wagon really is just a monster-truck. For the GI Joe team, it looks far too out of place to work in my eyes as military equipment, and generally it’s really just a much worse version of the Mean Dog. It has some cool gimmicks like the hidden computer station under the turret, but what’s the point of it? To me, it really does feel like something crammed in just to give it more play features, though I suppose that’s not the worst thing.

The turret/gun station is another element that should be really cool, but just isn’t. The Mean Dog, Maggot and Thunderclap all do a similar thing, where the turret can be removed and used as an individual piece, but they don’t look so ridiculous. The individual components of those vehicles also tended to look a little better on their own, while I find the Battle Wagon looks really empty without it’s turret. At the same time, it looks really silly with it, so there’s really no helping it.

I have no childhood memories of playing with the Battle Wagon, and through all of my adulthood I’ve barely so much as touched the thing, besides one time taking it apart to rescue a handful of parts my brother lost in it as a kid. In fact, the only thing that prompted using it for some photos is that Battle Corps Cross Country’s filecard mentions he drives it, and I had one, so I used it. In that light, I’m tempted to say I’ve generally had a sense of contempt for this thing for the longest period. Despite that, I realize that it’s not an objectively bad toy, rather, it’s a good one that suffers for being too big and ridiculous looking (The opposite of the MOBAT, a toy that looks great, but is too small and does almost nothing!).

Battle Wagon’s float around $30, with the price usually getting jacked up by shipping since it is a very large vehicle. Truth is, that’s really not a lot of money for a large vehicle like this, but that probably goes to show the general disinterest in this vehicle. Crazy things like Dreadnok vehicles can be fun when they don’t take up much real estate, but this vehicle doesn’t really provide much for how much space it takes up. I respect it for being a toy that could’ve only existed in the 90‘s, but there’s countless GI Joe vehicles that do similar things in a much better way.

1991 Battle Wagon Links:

3D Joes

There’s not much out there on the Battle Wagon, so if you have some cool Battle Wagon content or photos, feel free to share ’em.

1987 Sky Sweeper (Battle Force 2000)

Posted on November 14, 2022 by mwnekoman

1987 Sky Sweeper (Battle Force 2000)

The weird thing about the Battle Force 2000, is that half of their vehicles are as lame as you’d expect, and half are cooler than they honestly should be. A great example of the later can be found in the Sky Sweeper, which has become a go-to vehicle in my GI Joe armory, and it even has a life away from the Battle Force 2000, too.

I have a slight fascination with the Battle Force 2000, which definitely makes me confront how much my tastes have changed over the years. When I was a kid and up through my early collecting years, I hated this group more than Cobra-La. The pulpy sci-fi aesthetic just seemed so chintzy and out of place to me. I remember looking at them online with my brother, who explained to me that in the comic they all died except Dodger; which sounded a lot cooler than it really was. That changed at some point years ago, though I still don’t like them a lot.

All of the original Battle Force 2000 vehicles had a gimmick, where you could combine pieces from each to form the Future Fortress. I have to give it some credit as an example of where the line kept trying to do new things and innovate, but this was a horribly corny and greedy idea (you had to buy EVERY vehicle to assemble the set). It’s also crappy, in that certain vehicles were more compromised than others to include a Future Fortress piece: This Sky-Sweeper has only a small block on the back, which looks fine, though the Marauder for example, fared less well. Then again, I’m really not sure what the Marauder was supposed to be in the first place, so maybe that one was just a bad idea overall.

That aside, the Sky Sweeper is an excellent vehicle, and by far my favorite anti-air vehicle (I like it better than the Armadillo and the Asp!). It’s the perfect size, with a similar profile to the ‘83 HISS, just trading some height for a little extra width. The guns are large and look powerful, with two side guns and a turret in the back, plus four missiles. Thanks to it’s nice size, the vehicle is fairly roomy, and it’s easy to fit any driver you want (including bulky figures like Knockdown), and there’s foot-pegs for several more commando friends to hitch a ride. Overall, it delivers a lot of play value for it’s size, and that’s probably the vehicle’s strongest point.

If there’s one thing I don’t like about this vehicle, it’s the turret on the back. At a glance it looks pretty good, though almost all of my issues with this toy revolve around this turret. There’s nothing there to hold the gun up, which means most of the time it just flops around freely. It also lacks any sort of control sticks for a figure to hold onto, meaning you just have to play pretend back there. Usually you can find a way to reason out the turret with no controls, though here it’s a fairly glaring flaw.

A surprisingly nice detail here is the clear orange headlights above the canopy. It’s strange and unusual for an ARAH vehicle to feature something so nice, when most headlights prior and after were represented by stickers. You didn’t even see this detail make a comeback much until 25th Anniversary, when clear plastic lights were added to the VAMP mold and the Arctic HISS. I’m sort of left wondering if the BF2000 vehicles had some gang-molded parts, as it would make a little more sense if the Sky Sweeper’s lights were just an extra tacked onto the mold for the Vector’s canopies.

I’m pretty mixed on the Battle Force 2000‘s signature colors, which you can see represented on the Sky Sweeper. On the plus side, the silver, green and blue mixture is pleasing to the eye and sets them apart from the sea of olive GI Joe vehicles that were still being pumped out to that point. With that said, silver is not really a realistic color for a tank, so it mildly requires more suspension of disbelief than some of the fluorescent colors you’d have seen in the 90‘s. Assuming the mold was still around, I think it’s a shame the Sky Sweeper never got a repaint, as a green/beige one could’ve been interesting as a beefed up Armadillo.

Sky Sweepers tend to run around $20, sometimes more or less depending on shipping, but it’s usually somewhere around there. Sadly, finding a complete one does require a fair bit of hunting. The antenna, headlights, and one or all of the missiles can often be missing. Truthfully, it’s not hurt too bad by not having the antenna or the missiles, but the headlights looks amazing, and you definitely don’t want to miss those.

1987 Sky-Sweeper (Battle Force 2000) Links:

3D Joes

1986 HAVOC

Posted on May 2, 2022 by mwnekoman

1986 HAVOC

When I was a kid, I loved GI Joe: the Movie. It was one of the only pieces of media I had to know GI Joe by, all on a continually degrading VHS recording, probably from before I was born. Among the mostly 1986 and ‘87 cast featured in the film was the HAVOC. I knew the STUN, also prominently featured in the film through the Python STUN, but there was no Sky HAVOC in my house, leaving me to wonder for years what kind of awesome vehicle it might be. Then at some point in the 2010‘s I finally got one, and to this day I’m still not sure what to think about it.

Because of it’s connection to the movie, and those years spent wondering what it might be like, it’s one of the few 80‘s Joe items I have some real sentimental value with. Not a lot, but I’m biased in favor of it just for the fact that I wanted one for so long, and the satisfaction associated with finally getting one. When I try to put that aside, I’m mightily tempted to call the HAVOC a bad vehicle, as it treads a fine line between “fun” and “very stupid”.

The best thing about the HAVOC is that it has a lot of play features. The worst thing about the HAVOC, is that none of them work very well. There’s a lot of oddities with it’s design, where like with many Joe vehicles, you ignore the explicit danger it presents it’s crew in favor of having a fun toy that can do more: it’s a rule of cool kinda thing. The HAVOC’s features include it’s deployable hovercraft, an adjustable turret, turning tracks, and an opening canopy, supporting a grand total of four figures to crew the vehicle (twelve, if you count the foot-pegs on the outside of the vehicle). Seems like some modestly fun gimmicks, but virtually all of them have some flaw or issue.

The thing that bugs me most is by far the turret. The obviously stupid thing about it is that it leaves the gunner in plain sight with no protection whatsoever. Less obvious is that it can not aim left or right without turning the entire vehicle. Even less obvious, is that the turret can not be in it’s lowered position and still allow for the vehicle’s main canopy to be opened. Every time you want to get a figure in and out, you have to jack this ratcheted turret way up, just to get the canopy open. Was it tacked on at the last second? It just feels like an afterthought.

Even the main driver’s area is crummy. Why does the driver and co-pilot operate the thing with their faces planted in a monitor, laying on their bellies? It’s almost as bad as the SHARC, and that vehicle is only the way it is to support Deep Six. I really don’t have any gripes with the large glass canopy, since the vehicle’s meant to be fun, and I get that seeing the toys inside it is a lot more fun than an opaque canister. Still, the whole driving on your belly thing looks lame, and I really wonder who was working on the brand at the time that had such a fascination with this.

The back half of the vehicle is mostly taken up by it’s hovercraft bay. On the outside of it, there’s some guns and orange missiles. Inside, there’s the hovercraft which rests in a specially shaped grove. It could be sort of cool, but really, this is probably the biggest let down about the vehicle. If they had just sculpted the floor boards and inner panels differently, you could have more figures in there or even have it double as a mobile command station, like with the MAGGOT. Instead, it’s just empty, and you can barely fit a few extra figures around the hover craft by balancing them.

The recon craft is alright. It’s got two guns, some nicely sculpted engine details, and pivoting fans on it’s ventral side, which I guess allows it to turn or maneuver. It’s fun, but also somewhat unspectacular. On a side note, when I’m bored and being stupid, I’ve wondered what a GI Joe version of Mario Kart might be like, where Duke can fly in this recon craft in a race against Serpentor on his chariot, Cobra Commander in a Flight Pod, and Destro in his Despoiler. Add in the Chameleon and the Weapon Transport and you have enough for a full game. I can’t really think of anything else when I see this recon vehicle.

All things considered, it’s still a mildly fun vehicle if nothing else just because it does have a few things it can do. I think what’s just so jarring about it though, is that it does so much of it so poorly, when most of the toys released around it are better for less money and space. I like it’s overall shape and the way it looks with the more sci-fi focused ‘86 and ‘87 guys, but after that, it’s a very cumbersome vehicle, and it’s appeal is rather limited.

Prices seem to vary for a HAVOC, but generally you can get a decent one around $20, sometimes more, sometimes less. It’s surprising, but vehicles don’t seem to carry the value of figures, where now a V1 Leatherneck will cost you more than this vehicle will most of the time. Of course, this isn’t a very good vehicle, but when nostalgic tooners are paying $200 for a Cobra Commander, you’d think it’d get a bump just based on the Sunbow association.

1986 HAVOC Links:

Forgotten Figures

3D Joes

Adambobomb

2003 C.A.T. II

Posted on November 8, 2021 by mwnekoman

2003 C.A.T. II

In terms of Hasbro’s 2000‘s failures with GI Joe, few items strike me as more of a flop than the KB Toys exclusive Crimson Attack Tank. Mind you, I didn’t watch that go down live, as in 2003, I was a mere 9-years old. But the 2003 CAT had a long life at retail, and languished on the aftermarket long enough for me to pick one up cheaply as a teenager. Because of that, I probably like it better than I should.

You wouldn’t know it now, but used to, Big Bad Toy Store sold a decent amount of vintage items. Usually, their prices weren’t all that good, but every now and then something would set around for long enough that they’d put it on clearance. Occasionally, I’d pick up a decent deal from them this way, such as with the CAT II, which had been rotting at KB Toys stores a few years prior. I missed out on the best CAT II clearances there, mainly because I was only taken to KB Toys once a year. Though, if I had seen the CAT II at retail, I can guarantee I wouldn’t have bought it, because I was a germophobe as a child and refused any toys with open-packaging like the Spy Troops line had.

The CAT II was my introduction to the MOBAT mold, and I have to say, I’m glad I started with a CAT II and not the MOBAT. I’ve always enjoyed this vehicle for providing me with an interesting, realistic looking tank for my Cobra arsenal, that also stands out nicely in photos. However, outside of the niche the CAT II provides, the MOBAT sucks. It barely does anything, figures don’t fit on it, the sculpted details are clearly closer to 1/35 as opposed to 1/18… There’s barely anything good I can think to say about it. The only thing fun about this toy is sitting it in the background of photos.

With that said, I don’t hate the CAT II at all. It has all the problems of the MOBAT, but at the very least the CAT II is interesting and eye-catching, while the MOBAT is dull and easily replaced by several better GI Joe tanks (the Mauler). I do wish that I could fit a few more troops on the CAT, or at least a driver, but for $10 with a cool Crimson Guard Immortal repaint, I’ve gotten more than my money’s worth out of it. That said, I’ll probably never buy an ’85 CAT unless I find it near that price too.

Cobra having GI Joe weapons is a seedy and interesting idea that really appeals to me in the fiction. GI Joe’s top-secret and experimental weapons falling into enemy hands speaks not only to Cobra’s fighting capabilities, but also to the levels of Cobra’s entrenchment. Personally I’m not really familiar with the CAT’s comic appearances (if it even had any), but it speaks to the traitorous nature of the arms industry, and works well with a shady character like Destro slipping around. It gives me something to play around with in my head, which again, is more than I can say for the MOBAT.

Sadly, the days of cheap-as-free CATs are all but over. Now, it’s hard to find a CAT II, and when you do, it’s usually some nerd selling it as a buy-it-now for $100. It’s not worth that in any regard, but it’s not very often you’ll find one left to open pricing besides that. I honestly wonder how many of these were just tossed in the trash or ended up in landfills somewhere. There had to be thousands of these that never sold, and most collectors only wanted it for the CGI repaint. Personally, I think it’s a neat toy, but it’s only fun for a few dollars.

1993 Mudbuster

Posted on August 10, 2021 by mwnekoman

1993 Mudbuster

90‘s GI Joe figures are awesome; 90‘s GI Joe vehicles however, more often suck. I have some I really like, but it seems like in most cases, the good 90‘s vehicles are only “mostly okay”, while the bad vehicles are really bad, at least compared to the quality of the 80‘s line. The Mudbuster is one of the former, and is an overall, mostly okay party wagon.

The Mudbuster is essentially a pickup truck with a turret in the back, which I have to admit, feels pretty unimpressive for the world’s most daring anti-terror task force. Sometimes I rationalize GI Joe having more primitive equipment like this, by ignoring the code name and imagining a scenario where vehicles like the Mudbuster are pieced together on the job, from civilian vehicles found in third-world countries where a mission is taking place. At the very least, the Mudbuster gives my imagination something more to work with than the Battle Wagon, which is a similar thing but way worse.

As a basic truck-type toy, the Mudbuster is a lot of fun and a nice contemporary vehicle to a collection of 90‘s Joe items. As a kid, this was a go-to vehicle for me from my brother’s collection, with the only vehicles I really liked more being the Tiger Sting, the Lynx, and the Brawler. The Mudbuster is small, easy to play with, and can fit a generous number of Joes for what it is.

Overall, the Mudbuster feels pretty solid, at least when compared to something terrible like the Rat. However, 90‘s cheapness is apparent here, which is part of why I consider this vehicle less when compared to a similar 80‘s item. I very much dislike the emptiness of it’s interior, which does not feature a steering wheel like the VAMP. Despite this, the driver’s area is still somewhat cramped, especially for the beefy 90‘s sculpts that would be intended to sit in it.

The gimmicks feel pretty basic, there’s a battering-ram on the front bumper that works using a rubber-band and a button in the truck-bed. Personally I think it’s pretty lame, and the band won’t last too well either. Getting a figure to pose with the turret is a pain; it’s doable, but it also feels like a really good way to break a thumb or heel at this point. The launcher had some weird grappling-hook type thing that you could tie to the vehicle, and to be honest, I also think this is rather dumb looking, and a weak point to the vehicle overall. It looks better with the spare missiles that come with it, which is kind of neat: it includes three unique missiles that can all be stored in the back.

The Mudbuster’s colors are decent. Overall, the turquoise and blue is a good look and the vehicle isn’t as obnoxiously colored as something like the Badger. The only bad thing is that it’s still pretty incohesive, and the turquoise really breaks the feeling of this thing being a piece of military equipment. Then again, going back to my earlier narrative, it’s a little more believable if you contemplate it as a retrofitted civilian vehicle.

Mudbuster’s are super common, you can usually get a complete one for around $15 or less. I don’t have a particular obsession with trucks, but a lot of people, especially rural people, really love trucks in any capacity, and I imagine that translated into a strong-selling vehicle in ‘93. These days, the Mudbuster probably isn’t a must-have vehicle, but it’s a nice piece for display with it’s contemporary toys. If you compare it to the VAMP, it’s a much weaker toy, but without that comparison, the Mudbuster is good enough on it’s own.

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1992 Parasite

Posted on June 15, 2021 by mwnekoman

1992 Parasite

90‘s GI Joe vehicles were often not on the same level of quality as 90‘s GI Joe figures, at least in my opinion. Certain vehicle options were quite poor, or questionably designed in a way you never saw from the vehicles we got in the 80‘s. One very underrated gem amidst all of this however, is the Cobra Parasite. It’s a simple vehicle, but it’s nicely sized and has a ton of play value, enough that’s hard to believe it shares a release year with the RAT, at the very least.

The Cobra Parasite is basically a Cobra APC, and it does a good job of being a go-to party wagon for your 90‘s Cobras. It fills a similar role to the HISS II, and in comparison to that vehicle, the Parasite feels far more basic and simple. However, it overall does the job a lot better, as while it lacks the fancy railing and more detailed construction, it makes up for it by featuring a more spacious troop bay, which can carry 6 figures as opposed to the HISS II’s 4.

One little gimmick that’s often ignored is the top-mounted catapult. I really hate this part of the vehicle, so I can see why it’s usually given no attention. It works in the same way as the Incinerator’s catapult, though oddly enough I don’t think they really share any tooling. The worst thing about it is that it looks completely tacked on, and just detracts from the vehicle’s overall shape, which is quite pleasing otherwise.

The Parasite has an interesting look that I feel is pretty well in line with a lot of Cobra vehicle designs. It has a very angular geometry that fits in nicely with any of the HISS tanks, or other boxy ground vehicles like the Maggot. One flaw that might irk a good number of folks is that the driver is totally exposed in the front turret. It’s a little goofy, but it’s also in line with most other prominent Cobra vehicles, which typically provide their pilots little in the way of protection.

Fun-fact, did you know the wheels on the Parasite are shared with at least two other vehicles? Both the Hammerhead and the Blockbuster use the same wheels as the Parasite. It’s probably another way Hasbro was cheaping out at the time, but it’s actually kind of interesting since I don’t think I’ve ever seen too many people notice this.

The worst thing about the Parasite is by far it’s colors. They’re not only bright, they’re an obnoxious mixture of orange and purple, which clashes with almost everything. It would look a lot better even if it were just solid purple, but the orange is really hard to take seriously whenever you see it. A lot of GI Joe fans have breathed life into this vehicle by giving it a quick coat of paint, which can really show how much potential this vehicle has (see the links below). Sadly, Hasbro never brought this vehicle back in any way, and a repaint in the 2000’s could’ve been pretty popular if they did it right.

The price that Parasites go for now shows almost no consistency, and seems like another indicator of the current collecting bubble. Every now and then, a Parasite will hit some absolutely stupid price, like $40. Most of the time, they go between $10 and $25, which is already a pretty wide price range. Before the era of the COVID collector, these routinely went for dirt, and it was easy to get a complete one for no more than $15. It’s a very common vehicle and I think it’ll return to the $15 price tag before too long.

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1993 Mudbuster

1993 Mudbuster

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1992 Parasite

1992 Parasite

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