ARROW

The HAVOC came out the same year as the STUN, and they BOTH had the same problem! And you are right--there's a lot of stuff that just cannot be rationalized.

If the immediate environment is so overwhelming, that is to say falling to one's death, then the mind can disassociate and the victim can become entranced. They are then essentially "unconscious", but technically aware. Its like an aspect of MPD ( multiple personality disorder) where the victim is so traumatized that their mind regresses, but a base "operating system" remains active. When the mind is totally convinced that its going to die, it frantically prepares the body and the mind for the shock of it. They might well see, hear, smell , taste and feel their last few moments, but they may not fully process it because the mind ( re: the ego) is so distracted in desperately attempting to filter the situation. This is also why the human brain uses only 10% of its capacity, for survivable trauma the brain has the means to shelter itself and still carry on. That 90% left over is a buffer/safe harbour to sequester the mind away from anything it really cannot handle. Dying slowly follows the same pattern, albeit stretched out over a great deal of time, and the mind has time to process/sort it all. The disassociations are either far, far less or none at all--especially near the end, and the psychology of the dying is then more benign in most cases. We are all wired this way, biologically, and so we all have some inherited instinct (at the genetic level)as to how to process this. This is why we feel an innate sense of horror at these kinds of death, because its not pleasant ( and biologically speaking, its not meant to be) and its the major catalyst in the human drive to survive.

It'll go to 26.

That is a pretty strong case assortment--its all good match-ups! Snake Eyes vs Storm Shadow Skydive vs Shadow Tracker & Jungle Vipers Beachhead vs Alley-Vipers Duke vs Shock Troopers Now, I dig that Storm Shadow-he's got great accessories. Sure, he's different, but so is Jungle Duke from Wave 1 ( and he's considered one of the gems of that wave). The Duke in this assortment is a nice figure too....and admittedly I have put aside the launcher gear for some spare kitbashed parts. The core figure is great though. The rest go without saying.

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/diddy-sued-1-trillion-blamed-9-11-20110129-022927-119.html What throws me is that a judge has actually set a hearing for this on Monday!! And in other news: http://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/dailybrew/chinese-tv-tries-pass-top-gun-footage-off-20110129-122945-920.html IF its true.......its hysterical. Damn!

Don't forget to check your collectible/comic books stores too. There's bound to be fair ones that will not hike the price up too high. One of my local stores has all the POC Joes marked up to just $9.99, which is not bad. I have heard of some stores up here that mark up the desired figures to around $19.99 <choke>. Also, do check out any local on-line dealers too--in my area a relatively new dealer, who I have made person-to-person transactions with, has most of the latest POC waves. If you are just unable to find the stuff, check out Hub City Toys. If you gotta stick with major retail.....Zellers, Walmart........London Drugs, Canadian Superstore....big chains like that MIGHT all carry this stuff over time. Even smaller retail chains like Pharmasave, True Value Hardware, and Home Hardware have been known to stock small amounts of current toys like Joes--IF they have a small toy aisle. If your travels take you by stores like these, and you have time then do check them out. I have found that is where the small treasure troves are often found. I have found everything current in my local area, up to and including Wave 4. I live in a prairie city (I'm in Saskatchewan, which narrows it down some) which has a modestly diverse collecting community, and thus only modest competition. I do not search constantly, maybe once every 7-10 days, and yet I still stumble across stuff, and even then I'm NOT searching extensively. Try some of the suggestions above, and try some places around you that might be a bit further afield and see what results you get. Good luck.

The spirit of TTT lives on..........in Robot Chicken.

The Wizard rags had the longest legs because they had the deepest pockets behind them. All of the other toy mags are gone now, iirc. Lee's Action Figure News and Toy Review, Tomarts.......they all went kaput and for the same reason: they became redundant when the Internet took hold. The threshold of of collectors that get their info from the Internet versus the print mags hit critical mass a couple of years ago--and the 'Net just wins because its timely. The mags were occasionally decent reading, and provided a bit more depth.....but there's the problem. The "modern" fan isn't interested in depth--they just want cheap gratification. We get faster news bites on-line now, faster area reports from fellow fans, Ebay provides a timely sense of current values, and.............well......Robot Chicken does Twisted Toyfare Theatre every night for us right on TV. Wizard was good when it did articles about the biz, the talent and the behind-the-scenes stuff--as well as the how-to material they once did. But like above, the number of people actively seeking out that kind of material is less and less as time goes on. Their major efforts became redundant: the news articles, the price guides--we all were paying for info we all ready had access to via the 'Net. They just didn't change with the times in time, and it killed them.

yeah, i found an alley viper and was surprised to see the new price, what the hell? good thing i found my shock troopers before the target price hike. sheesh! BTW, Walmart in Canada still have Joes priced at $7.92. Vehicles are $18.92 and $26-and change....... Do not know if we will see a price hike here.

I bought a Shock Trooper and a Wave 3 Snake Eyes at a prairie province Walmart just this last week....these being restocks onto bare pegs--so restocks are taking place. Don't limit your searches to just Walmart, as Zellers have been stocking POC for a couple of months now. They seem to get mixed cases in too--as Jungle Viper and Recondos have been sighted alongside Shock Troopers and others.

If they "just came out this week", maybe you should give the product some time to reach retail. Toy-lines very rarely all launch at the same time at different stores.

Yep, I'm still doing it. Action Man was one of the shows I did about 15 years ago now. Currently wrapping up storyboarding work on Speed Racer, and slated to work on a kiddie show in a month or so. My tenuous connection is that I was approached to work on Renegades last May (but did not get the gig) so I would have been "working with" Clement, although not in person. I would have worked from his designs and such. I felt from the first time I saw his drawing that his style would be fun to do-- the angular look is expressive and would have made for lots of opportunities for good posing. Clement had a great style for animation because it was so clean and read so well. There were little things I didn't like ( no lower lips on some characters), but that is a purely stylistic thing which every artist has. Clement easily had one of the more distinctive cartoon styles going, which is an asset in picking out a show. His loss will really be deeply felt.

I would expect an episode dedication to him as an almost certainty. They are nearing the end of the season-production wise, so it MIGHT go on the season cliffhanger ( I'd expect one), or it might go on an episode that is just being prepped for delivery and could air in the coming weeks. I understand he'd been sick for some time, and was off the production ( in hospital etc.) so he'd not worked on stuff since about last summer, I think. He's set the style guide for season one. He was not the only artist generating designs--there's always several artists doing character, prop ( vehicles and gear) and location designs because of the workload, but I gather he was the primary character designer as his style is clearly influencing here. I think there are a couple of artists currently on staff that can ape his style to finish off the remaining episodic designs for the season ( which either are already wrapped up, or will be in a month or so), and to carry on for next season. I would expect a transition to a closely similar style for the next season arc because that will just be easier to manage. Still, his death is a tragic loss--I have emailed a colleague on the show and he wrote back telling me everyone on the show is just reeling from it. But the show will go on.

I had gone into the studio that day completely unaware of what had happened. Went into the senior animators room and they were "serious" and listening to the radio. I wasn't paying attention until one of them told me " the space shuttle blew up". At first I thought it was a (tasteless) joke, but then they all told me it was true. In shock, I dropped to my butt on the floor right there and listened to the radio...........and THEN learned of the tragedy that has unfolded. Quite a shock to me, and upset me greatly. Initially, I wrongly believed that the shuttle had escape systems.......like ACES series ejection seats. I believed that because the first shuttle Columbia had them for the early Young/Crippen flight tests-and so I thought that it was possible the Challenger crew had punched out. Then I discovered the sobering truth that crew didn't have a means of escape and all perished in the accident.

Good luck to you, I have a friend in Australia that has done the Ironman and it was a hard slog, but he pulled it off. Let us know when the event is so we can cheer you on.

Just read this morning that Clement Sauve, the principle character designer for the G.I.Joe Renegades series succumbed to cancer last night, at the age of 33. He was an exceptionally gifted artist, and I understand his illness was not common knowledge. My condolences to his family, friends and colleagues.

Other way around actually, Renegades stuff will be sold in the POC line. Either way its done, we'll continue to get both.

A magnet would be part of a proximity field sensor, that would detect changes to the magnetic field of the mine caused by another ferromagnetic object-such as an airplane. A signal processor inside the mine would receive the signals from the magnetic field sensors and movement sensors and activate its propulsions system to get near to the jet and detonate. most magnets, even really powerful electromagnets have a limited range of attraction of ferrous objects.....stay far enough away and the magnet cannot pull at you. But I think a magnet as part of the sensing systems, like a proximity fuse, makes perfect sense. I am growing to like the idea of these things being fast enough to chase a jet--as the visual of a gaggle of these things tailing a fleeing jet it just too fun to pass up.

I just googled this item........first time I have seen this, and its pretty cool. http://www.theterrordrome.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/poc-jungle-assault-cobra-commander-01.png

The "aerial mine" the Trubble Bubble originally came with. This one was always a big WTF for me. But then I accepted some givens and it starts to make sense. Given #1: COBRA, or MARS, has anti-grav technology. Not something that is universally applicable to all their aircraft, but some stuff uses it. Mines are denial weapons. Unseen, they are terror weapons. Floating mines in the water can be seen, floating aerial mines in the open sky can be seen too..................unless you hide them in clouds. And there in lies the terrorist use of the weapon. Imagine an aircraft, zooming along in the sky......flies through a cloud and unknowingly comes across one of these things. Boom. Bye-bye plane. Now, you might think.........okay, once the are discovered......JUST AVOID THE CLOUDS, right? COBRA is crafty though. If they have anti-grav, they probably have miniaturized proximity sensors, and a basic propulsion system worked into the Anti-grav (and maybe some stealth systems to defer RADAR detection) so the mines could not only drift along with the clouds......they can home in on a plane as it passes through/nearby, or create a blocking field it is path. If you cannot see the mine, or pick it up on RADAR, you can fly right into one. They are painted light colours--a common simple detection countermeasure, because light coloured objects blend into the sky, disguising them. Imagine a area of sky seeded with these things.....and a Joe jet, or a copter flying along.....unaware of them, unable to detect them properly, and a bunch of these thing swoop out of the clouds at the Joes. I cannot imagine them being fast enough to chase a jet, or perhaps even a copter ( but if anti-grav is a given, why not?) but they can move ahead and gather just fast enough to create an obstacle. Does that make sense?

Keep in mind that these aren't official, just the product of some daydreaming. They are purely fannish in all respects--though if Hasbro were to confirm/deny some, it would be sweet. Now, if someone could just justify the P.O.G.O. ........ @smilepunch@

Mariko Yashida, Mystique, Silver Fox.... quite a few actually adult-age women, and most were unattached, irrc.

There was a unreleased CC??? Was its design revealed at all??

A thread or two here, and another on another forum sparked the idea for this. Making sense of things in G.I.Joe that a lot of people don't think make sense. Feel free to add your own--though just one rule: every question posed needs an explanation. A classic: Why do the COBRA BATs wear clothes? They are robots after all, right? Its not clothing they are wearing--its KEVLAR. Fitting a humanoid robot with hard-shell armour makes said robot quite heavy. The weight cost would subtract from the offensive systems ( weapons) and the computer hardware. What is the point of protecting the BATs if they cannot do much to begin with, right? Well, using kevlar--a ballistic cloth-- it covers the operating parts with protective material, while cutting the weight cost for similar protection from hard-shell armour. It means they can be fitted with more weapons, and better logic AI systems. Does that make sense? Why does the new HISS(5) have the hydraulic lift systems? Seems like a waste of engineering, right? Think about how tanks work for a minute. They often try to use defilade ( natural/artificial obstacles) to provide cover when they attack. This means that when they unmask (reveal themselves) it commonly is horizontally--that is to say driving around a hill. Unmasking vertically--driving over a hill--is usually undesired because there's a brief period of time when they are not only silhouetted on top of the cover, but their weapons (turret)is not always in a position to fire immediately. That puts them at a tactical disadvantage. The turret and thus the weapons are all on top of the tank, usually on the upper quarter of the tank's over all height. Firing OVER cover is usually indirect, or limited to select location where the cover is only so high. Otherwise the tank has to go around cover to fire on its target. HOWEVER, the new HISS tank overcomes that by hydraulically jacking up the turret--and thus its dorsal mounted weapons-- up to a height that can clear a lot of cover. This means the new HISS can raise to fire, fire for effect, lower its fighting turret and then scoot away before return fire can occur. This would reflect a overall strategy of COBRA armour forces using hit-and-run tactics to engage enemy forces, something that would be necessary if COBRA could field only limited forces. The HISS probably could not withstand a toe-to-toe slugging match with most main battle tanks........but it probably would seldom get into that kind of situation in the first place. It would likely attack in a pack manner--several tanks attacking from different directions, all moving fast, using their hydraulic jacks to take aim, then scooting to another firing point. they would harass, distract, and when their opponent is in the right place, move in for the kill. Does that make sense?

Yep, there's several there that are VERY intriguing.....notably COBRA Commander. The COBRA Trooper is a curious one, because of the unofficial/official revelation that the Shock Troopers from wave 3 are supposed to be the "upgraded blueshirts", but still.... If they LOOK COOL, I'm in like Flint...........err. well not that Flint, but.........uh.......Flint.......eh........