Magic 8 Ball
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Posts posted by Magic 8 Ball
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Well, if he's awesome aside from those things, then I'm taking it as a good thing. I'd much rather Hasbro cut corners on accessories, which I have/can get tons of, then have them skimp on the figure itself and leave me wondering why they bothered. Finding a gun that works is a lot easier than trying to correct or customize a figure that Hasbro dropped the ball on.
As a side note, Shock's a SWAT guy dressed in urban camo. What the heck's he need a backpack for in the first place?
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Wow. Some sharp paints there. The semi-gloss on Kamakura and Leatherneck almost has me convinced they're from Hasbro!
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Wow... What are the recipes here? Some of them are obvious, but others I'm completely stumped. I'm thinking maybe there's some Star Wars things in the mix?
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My advice would be to buy the lot.
Then tell me how complete Shockwave, Soundwave, and Blaster are, and what you want for them.
Yes, this makes me a little biased in telling you to buy them.
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GI Joe was 'futuristic' from the first wave. Flash the Laser Trooper can tell you all about it.
Actually......at the time of his debut, Flash wasn't all that futuristic. LASERS were in use on the battlefield, in several capacities, from targeting spotting to offensive use.
Yea, that's right........used as weapons!
There's evidence from the Iran/Iraq war of the 80's that LASERS were used by Iraq to blind Iranian troops. LASERS were used as a counter to human wave assaults which the Iranians employed, and used to zap the retinas of anyone that popped their head up over the lip of the trenches they were fighting from.
So Flash could be seen as a very topical character, if used as a spotter--something that fits his filecard info, IIRC.
There's other characters that fit the futuristic and fantasy themes a lot better.
Except that your 'offensive use' options don't include things like burning through armored doors (issue 2) and frying snakes (issue 7), which is most notably the sort of stuff Flash did in the comics. Flash's MOS is 'Laser Rifle Trooper', which can be taken either way, but to me suggests a more active frontline battlefield role than 'spotter'.
As with most fictional portrayals, in GI Joe a laser is weapon that is destructive in and of itself, not a spotting device or blinding deterrent. The idea that lasers were destructive weapons in the Joeverse from day one is further backed by the HAL (Heavy Artillery Laser) which came out at the same time.
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It's neat in design... but the tank mode obviously doesn't align and exposes some off-color robot bits. Of course, said robot bits appear to be off-color to begin with. The chest also needs some work. A bit of a 'shellformer', but I kinda like that about this custom.
I think/hope this is a WIP, though. It just feels unfinished.
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I certainly hope not.
Agreed!!! If a seperate line is needed, fine! But don't soil GI JOE with this futuristic fodder!! I mean aren't we all the same guys and gals that hated the neon Ninja Force and Futuristic Star Brigade???
Actually... no. When I was a kid, I thought Ninja Force was awesome. Never got into Star Brigade, which is funny because it's MUCH closer to my interests...
Anyway, trying to keep Joe 'pure' has always been a lost cause. As more and more adults come back to the property who grew up with Ninja Force, Star Brigade, and so on, the more you're going to find people who don't mind it at all. They never knew GI Joe as the straight realistic military concept that the purists claim it was founded on.
GI Joe was 'futuristic' from the first wave. Flash the Laser Trooper can tell you all about it.
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I also had them being in the 1950's and Jazz was a 57 Chevy
Ironhide was a Studibegga
and Kupp is an Edzel
I love those!
Please tell me that Shockwave would have been a Tucker
The 'Cyclops Eye' headlight would just be too awesome!
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I'm not sure why they couldn't paint him with white also, like his G1 iteration, but I suppose the all red was just easier. The figure also seems somewhat redundant since Evac (both versions) fills his job, which makes me wonder why they didn't just all this guy Evac. Or call Evac "Blades" to begin with.
From TF Wiki:
Joe Kyde originally did a deco sheet (based on a real Coast Guard color scheme for the Dauphin) for an Evac redeco in the Movie toyline. However, this was replaced in the toyline by Movie Evac, a remold of Blackout. Bill Rawley later utilized the unused deco sheet as the starting point for Universe Blades, which is why the color layout isn't accurate to Blades's classic appearance. -
Imagine the seekers as Japanese zeroes or the Autobots could of been army vehicle Hound still a Jeep but Prime could of been an army truck and Warpath a Sheran tank?
The problem I have with the idea of all-military TFs is the unity of military design. You think there's a lot of tanks in Universe now? Fully half the characters would likely be tanks, with another massive portion being jets... the same exact tanks and jets. Then you start dealing with the fact that there's only 3-4 colors that most of these vehicles could realistically be... by the time you get through the 'original' six Seekers and half the Autobot cars, you're looking at a staggering amount of repetition.
This is the same problem that I have with the idea of a TF/GI Joe Crossovers line. I want it to happen, but I don't want Joe vehicles that turn into TF characters. I don't want Hasbro trying to sell me the Rattler 8-9 times, with just a new shade of color on the robot parts to let me know it's a different Seeker. I don't want 8-9 Rattlers in different colors of the rainbow either; I only have to look at the Star Wars line and all those Jedi Starfighters to see how ugly that looks. On top of that, the Joe vehicles with their copyrighted names are practically characters in themselves- Just call the Rattler a new character named 'Rattler', or the Skystriker a new character named 'Skystriker', and so on... that works for a good majority of the vehicles, and Hasbro has tons of little-used names they could apply to those that don't have vehicle names that work (or repaints of the ones that do) with no problem.
At it's core, I think there's a uniqueness to TF designs, which I think clashes with the uniform nature of the military. As a story in a comic book or something similar, I think it works, but put into practice as a toyline of any real length... not so much. I'm sure Hasbro would love being able to sell every mold multiple times with minimal alterations, but that's not the line I want to collect.
I'm not trying to knock the idea, because to a degree I do like it. It's just that when I start thinking about the inevitable monotony of the toyline, it kinda breaks down for me. That's just my opinion though.
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Seriously, there's one very easy way to gauge the overall success of a toy line, and it's not how hard it is to find: It's seeing how much shelf space is devoted to it compared to other toy lines from year-to-year. Transformers, Star Wars, and even Power Rangers tend to have lots of space devoted to them, because they're very healthy and popular, long-term brands. G.I. Joe generally gets about half as much space, if that, because it hasn't enjoyed any seriously mainstream success since the 80's. The reason some waves have been (relatively) hard to find isn't because they're selling so fantastically well: It's because there's less of the product out there compared to other lines (and even then the line still has semi-pegwarmers). Look at some of the things that have come out for Star Wars in the last year: The big AT-TE and Millennium Falcon. For all those "classic Joe" fans who want to even think of seeing a new Terror Drome or (god forbid) FLAGG again, you really should be rooting for this movie. Because that's the kind of success the Joe brand will have to have before Hasbro will devote that kind of money and effort to tooling things like that.
Yup... this is the sort of thing that I try to impress on people who want more pegs devoted to Joe at the local Wal-Mart. The current Joe line is not kid-friendly enough for that, and like it or not, kids determine what gets shelf space. The current line is more analogous to McFarlane; his lines are targeted at collectors so completely that he's lucky if he even gets three pegs at Wal-Mart.
The Joe line isn't quite at that level, of course, but my point is that it's closer. In order to get the big-ticket items and lots of shelf space, the line either needs to move in the direction of Transformers, Power Rangers, and Star Wars (all three, I will point out, are FILLED with the sound effect, light-up, missile launching features that some people here claim kids don't like), or go completely to the collector route, which would entail even less shelf space then it gets now, lots of stuff only being available through specialty retailers (often at huge markups), and pretty much guarantee never seeing big-ticket items again.
Experience says that Hasbro isn't very good at the latter. The movie line is more kid-friendly, which almost instantly promises more shelf space, and more product to fill it. As I said before, we don't have to like the kid-oriented stuff that comes out- but we do need to recognize that catering to the kids is likely to get us, the adult collectors, more of what we want.
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All that having been said, Slaughter was fine for the 'toon, where things were lighter and cheesier, and the Joes (quite frankly) weren't quite as competent or realistic as their comic counterparts, but there was a reason Slaughter wasn't used much in the comics...and when he was it was rarely in a "Drill Sergeant" role. I don't begrudge the people that like Slaughter and I think he's a notable part of the Joe mythos and would certainly be worthy of inclusion in the 25A line, but in any sort of semi-realistic environment it really doesn't make sense for a group like the Joe team to have a DI lording it over them.
True... of course, in the Sunbow cartoon, the "Elite Special Missions Force" consisted of guys like a sailor who was picked up in a bar full of the enemy, a shirtless/barefoot stuntman who was wandering around a warzone in the arctic, and a Green Beret who apparently got his rank out of a Cracker Jack box.
Maybe they DO need a drill instructor after all... @hmmm@
PS: Since the other thread got locked: Rumor has it that a 25A scale Slaughter is coming, but from Jakks' Pacific in the Build-n-Brawl line rather than from Hasbro in the G.I. Joe line. Probably about as close as we're gonna get to a 25A Slaughter anytime soon.We've been talking about that since page 2 of this thread.
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I've gotta ask... the people who put the 'civilian' characters on the table... Would you REALLY buy them? If you're walking down the aisle at Wal-Mart and you see a DVD set that's Duke, Cobra Commander, Roadblock, and Honda Lou West, are you honestly going to snap it up and fork over $20? Are you really going to take it home, put it up in your collection, and gush about how we should get more characters in a military-themed toyline who have no combat abilities whatsoever, and were largely forgettable background characters in a single episode, and most often only there to provide a 'face' to the people that GI Joe protects?
And when we received the inevitable three repaints of that civilian character and their component parts were scattered throughout the line wherever Hasbro thought they might fit, would you still be excited? When a civilian character or two were the only new things in an upcoming wave that was otherwise repaints, would you even care anymore? More importantly, would everyone else?
I'm not trying to knock anyone's wants here, simply ask the hypothetical. For a lot of fans, 1982-86 (sometimes 87, depending on their thoughts on the movie) are the only years that really 'count', which can be directly attributed to the Sunbow cartoon. But even with that in mind, civilian characters would carry such limited appeal (even if a DVD of the episode they were in was included with each one to let the buyer know who they are) that I really think only the most hardcore Sunbow fans would even want most of them, let alone actually buy them. Right now, it appears that Hasbro has trouble justifying 'staple' characters that we know and like (where oh where is Dr. Mindbender?), let alone random civilian guests. I feel that the average consumer (and even the average Joe fan) are going to raise an eyebrow at a random non-soldier figure in a war toyline, and walk away. There's really no doubt in my mind that the most unknown Joe, even one made up for the cartoon like Sparks, would sell MUCH better than George Landisberg, even with both characters having an equal number of episodes to their credit and neither actually engaging in combat.
I realize the question is 'what would you like to see' as it's own hypothetical, not 'what do you think Hasbro would actually make', so again, I'm not challenging the validity of the wants. Please don't take these comments as insults, but as a a bit of realistic follow-up. I'm asking the questions of: Do you think we'd really get them? and Do you think they'd sell, not just to you, but in general?
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"Q: Aside from Grand Slam, which '82 GI Joe bears a sports reference?"
The Fridge - Physical Training Instructor - William "Refridgerator" Perry
Available via mail order in 86 - 89
By the way I got mine in 2006... #US1#
The question specifies an '82 Joe. As you note, he was not an '82 Joe.
Sorry, but that one's obviously incorrect.
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I think we were just being insolent because we couldn't answer the question. Where would we find the answers?
Well, I googled "GI Joe Extreme" and the second link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_G.I._...reme_characters
Had this to say about Ballistic (the second character on the list):
Due to this publicity (and network standards against have gun-related character names), his codename was changed to Eagle EyeSeemed pretty simple to me.
But I'm not trying to start a fight about it or anything. There's no point and nothing to be gained by that. The topic is '80s Joe toys', so let's go with it. The question on the table (copied and pasted from above) is:
"Q: Aside from Grand Slam, which '82 GI Joe bears a sports reference?"
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With the 25th line going on hold for the movie, I didn't really expect them to keep making ARAH-style figures in this line.
Never had any interest in them myself, but I hope they come back later for the people who were liking and collecting them.
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They are both bought. They also have solid repaint potential. I'd LOVE to see Ransack done up in Insecticon colors.
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"Nougabot"
@loll@
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Toon question: what were the names of Roadblock's aunt and uncle and what was the name of the franchise they bought?
A: Sarah and Caleb Bronson. The restaurant chain was Red Rocket- their particular restaurant was later renamed "Joe's Place".
What is the name of the Joe action figure, that appear in just one episode of the original series? @firedevil@Ya gotta answer a question before you can post one. In the interests of not leaving a challenge undone though...
A: Heavy Metal in "The Pit of Vipers".
Q: Aside from Grand Slam, which '82 GI Joe bears a sports reference?
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I just picked up the Pyramid of Darkness set and the Snake Eyes has been replaced with someone else. It wasn't someone opening the package and inserting some other figure. The plastic insert was shaped the right way and the figure was rubber banded into place. It looks like a muddied evil Cobra version of Snake Eyes but without any weapons. I have no opened it, since I have no idea if this is a rarer version of the set, so I don't know the name of the figure from the file cards, but I have never seen this character before. Can anyone help me ID this guy?
Pic?
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Redcat you got number 5 wrong!!!
I was never into Extreme, questions from that era shouldn't soil this thread!!!
Here's a question: Name the Trucking Company that Honda Lou owned in the Revenge of Cobra mini-series!! Easy one!!
Actually, your right, Extreme SHOULDN'T be included, because it WASN'T 80s Joe. It came out in 95.
If you wanna get picky, the thread title also says the Q&As should be about 'toys', yet no one has raised any fuss over questions about the cartoon and comics... including the one my question was thrown out in favor of.
And okay, I can accept that the game doesn't cover 'peripheral' stuff, like the Devil's Due comics, or things that are speciously related like Sgt Savage and Extreme, but limiting it to the 80s seems rather arbitrary in the first place, as that doesn't even cover the whole of ARAH.
So are there consistent and reasoned 'rules' to this, or not? I don't want to sound like sour grapes here, but crying foul and bringing in the rules when someone doesn't like the question is a lot different than establishing and following the rules.
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Fantastic work, Tom. An interesting balance between the 'biker punk' and 'espionage agent' elements of the character.
Kinda reminds me of the first 25th Zartan, which despite the complaints others lodged against him, I liked for exactly that balance.
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kinda has a Sean Connery type look to him. Which would fit a romantic Villan so to speak.
Totally, I wouldn't be surprised if that artist used a picture of Connery from his Bond days as the model.
Makes sense. Destro is Scottish, too. It seems rather fitting.
As I have always understood it, the mask is a very high-tech piece of gear. In addition to optical and audio tech built in, the mask itself has been seen to have enough underlying "structure" to it to suggest that its wearer can emote and display facial expressions. The character has been drawn in the comics in this way at times, but NOT shown in the cartoons this way.The assumption is that any seam lines on the facial plates and contours are so finely tooled that they are very hard to see unless very very close. This would also support the idea that the mask is an expensive high-tech piece of gear as well.
The only reason it mostly appears as more of a mask than a actual human face is because Detsro wants to maintain the legacy of the appearance of the mask--as its a family symbol, after all.
Right. In later issues of the comic, it was shown to have infrared and nightvision, voice modulation, and even a HUD (heads-up display) readout with time, navigation (specifically, maps of his castle, complete with booby traps), and a battle computer that fed him info on his enemy's fighting styles and combat maneuvers so that he could adjust and enhance his own battle prowess.
...then you take the facial expressions and the (lack of) size for all this into account, and the idea that it's this genius piece of work, and that he saves the best thigns for himself, becomes rather apparent.
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Q: Marvel Comics GIJOE: A Real American Hero #1 has one prominent distinction as a comic book, what is it?
A: I believe it was the first comic book to be promoted using television commercials (which were REALLY intended to sell the toys, just like the comic itself, but that might be splitting hairs...).
I'll throw out a softball this time to make up for my earlier toughie:
Q: Which GI Joe Extreme character had to requisition for a name change, and why?
Any 25th Anniversary figures that have pleasantly suprised you?
in G.I. Joe
Posted
There's another great scene in the comics (issue 43) that features Barbecue. The Joes are being attacked on the Transportable Tactical Battle Platform, and Shipwreck says "Those blasted Cobras are tearing my base apart!" Barbecue, axe in hand doing damage control, retorts "No, they're shooting holes in it and setting it on fire-- I'm the one who's tearing it apart!"
Sadly, those are probably his two best scenes... but they're definitely memorable!
Honestly, a lot of the little details and just a decent (not great, sometimes not even good, but always decent) selection of characters has kept me pleasantly surprised. All the way back in the Cobra Legions set, when I found out that Hasbro had included a regular helmet and gun just on the off chance someone would rather have another Trooper than an Air Trooper... that was the moment that cemented my love of this new line. It sopped being something I picked up out of nostalgia, and started being something I actively became obsessed with.
Hasbro keeps giving us neat little nods. The Arctic Snake Eyes for the comic fans, the DVD set redecos for the cartoon fans (finally, the Lady Jaye we all remember!), Ninja-Ku and Glenda for the really obsessive fans... and Matt Trakker, just because they could!
If I had to pick one that really got my attention, I think it would be the HISS Driver. Yes, you heard that right! Like most of us, I got him because that HISS isn't going to drive itself, you know? The old one was this skinny little shrimp, but not this one. I started looking at the fun details, the working holster, the way all the parts came together... this guy had attitude. He doesn't drive a tank because someone had to, he drives a tank because he loves to blow things up! He gets his kicks hearing the guns go boom, watching the explosion, then rolling over whatever's left! Just a great, deceptively simple figure all around.