Things get interesting when the retail shelves are bare, especially at Christmas time. It seems almost criminal to have a holiday season with nary a single G.I. Joe item to be found on shelves…but such is the unfortunate dichotomy that comes with a Hollywood marriage. The brand can live or die with the fate of the film, and for 2012 at least, G.I. Joe is a non-factor.
Hopefully with 2013 and the coming of G.I. Joe: Retaliation that will change. In fact, online stores are already offering pre-orders for the first two waves of G.I. Joe: Retaliation product, currently slated to hit in February. But with all of this G.I. Joe “down time” I got to thinking.
Over the past few years we’ve seen a LOT of great G.I. Joe toys come and go, and sometimes they either went too quickly, or they were somewhat difficult to get a hand on due to exclusivity.
Purely for the sake of discussion, and for the sake of gathering information, I took further advantage of the Survey Monkey tool and created a quick survey. Looking back through the Pursuit of Cobra, 30th Anniversary, and the 7-Packs, which figures were the best figures that you had the hardest time finding? What figures did you love the looks of, but were disappointed that you couldn’t get your hands on?
The best example I can think of from my own perspective is a figure like Shadow Tracker, who I think is very cool, and was also very hard to find. The same could be said of Renegades Storm Shadow. However, figures like Zombie-Viper or Jungle-Viper were good figures, but not as hard to find. Of course your mileage may vary…that’s kinda the point of the survey. 😉
Essentially what I’m asking is if you could get access to some recently released figures again in single card form, which figures would you prefer? Check out the Survey Monkey survey below and share your thoughts! If you need any refreshers on which figures were in which waves, more than just the list below, check out the GeneralsJoes review sections:
The problem with City Strike Destro was the fact that he was left out of the revision cases that hit everywhere after that first wave came and went. Target got the revision case a half-dozen times at least but didn’t get the initial wave with Destro at all. Same with Renegades Storm Shadow; I have still never seen one of those that wasn’t a photo online. I seem to recall Recondo was also really tough to find since it was short packed, but it was available here briefly.
OAFE theorized that Renegades Storm Shadow had a short “print run” because the parts were used for all of the Retaliation ninjas. Makes sense.
Interesting theory, but with all of the part swapping these days I’m not sure it still works that way. Heck, with how many figures use Shock Trooper or PoC Snake Eyes parts, what figures are made up of those specific parts doesn’t seem like a limiting factor any more.
maybe only some molds have multiples and SS didn’t yet? that POC Snake Eyes hit first and it seemed to have took time before multiple figures were put out once all using the parts. I could be wrong though.
Shadow Tracker, Low-Light, Skydive, and Destro all hung on pegs for weeks at Walmart stores here. I bought a set for a pal and ended up returning them when his Walmart loaded up with that wave the very same day. All my Zombie-Vipers, however, came from BBTS or a friend in Arizona. I only saw two at retail, and since that was after my BBTS loot had arrived, I shipped them to a friend in Texas who never saw any at all.
My area was completely the opposite. I never saw wave 4,5, or 6 on the pegs anywhere, but I
found at least 25 Zombie Vipers between Wal-Marts and TRU’s.
Wow, that’s amazing. I don’t think I’ve heard of anyone who had easy access to those Wave 4 figures. Very cool. My local Wal-Mart doesn’t carry a single G.I. Joe figure, and hasn’t for years, yet somehow they ended up with a lone Zombie-Viper on the pegs. I was kinda surprised about that, especially because no other figures from the assortment were there.
I actually had a similar situation with a Zombie viper. The movie figs came and gone quickly, there were not even pegs for Joe anymore and just a couple a months ago one showed up by itself labeled as clearance with several other clearanced toys. I am guessing an army builder had regrets?
Need a category of “wasn’t interested in the figure, but then again I never saw it anyway.” That’s specifically for Rock-Viper. 🙂
My answers probably changed pretty significantly in recent weeks, as the 30th Anniversary figures (save Renegades Storm Shadow and the final wave) are all over the pegs in Canada at Marshall’s and Winner’s. They’ve been whittled down to Iron Grenadiers, Hazard-Vipers, Stalkers, and the Wave 2 Renegades stuff, but there were tons of 30th Cobra Troopers, Vipers, and Steel Brigades on the shelves as recently as three weeks ago.
I’ve heard that. I also heard that drug stores in the US have started getting more later assortment figures, and folks seem pretty happy about that.
Yup, it’s been a good couple of months before the holidays – lots of army-building for way below regular retail price. I shudder to think how many Hazard-Vipers Hasbro produced, because those damn things just NEVER seem to go away. They sold well, but I think Hasbro thought they’d be a big seller to kids due to the bright colour scheme and kept re-issuing them.
For anyone who cares, the Skystriker is now on clearance at Marshall’s Canada – $23. Still not as cheap as it was at Zeller’s before they closed down, but not bad. From the looks of things, they’ve sold through their stock of the Crimson HISSes, VAMPs and Black Dragons, at least as far as the four or so Toronto-area stores I hit are concerned.
Still have Zellers here until March and theyve had Joes at $4.99 per figure and vehicles like the 30th VAMP at $16.99 Ive bought over a hundred troop builders and two dozen VAMPS over the past 6 weeks. Best Joe time I’ve had since the 80’s! My bank account disagrees but what else is new 😛
You’re lucky – the only things I was able to find at the ones I checked were the Skystrikers and a bunch of Movie Snake Armors and Jet Packs. I grabbed as many of those that I could find, but by that point the store looked like a tornado hit it.
I’ve actually not seen a ton of Hazard vipers, in fact outside of the zombie viper and the POC viper it’s the trooper builder i’ve seen the least of.
I agree, I never saw a rock viper, but never wanted either one. As Justin pointed out, several formerly ahrd to finds have shown up at drug stores, I scored my Hawk, and both of my Hazard vipers at wal-greens. I still encounter hazard vipers, just not a major army builder.
After a year that began with a wheeze and then 6 months of nothing, I’m definitely open to repaints or straight forward reissues, gear swaps or repaints of any post-25th anniversary figures at this point, as long as they don’t ship with a ratio of five Renegades Cobra Commanders to one of everything else. There are plenty of figures I missed, and plenty of figures I would buy again for custom fodder or simply to have in a different environmental camouflage scheme – Urban camo Snake Eyes or a desert themed Lowlight, for example. My personal wish list would be for Mercer, Falcon, Lifeline, Resolute Flint, Stalker, Dr. Mindbender, Renegades Duke, POC Firefly, Zandar, with Steel Brigade, Retaliation GI Joe Trooper, Zombie Viper, Shock Viper, 30th Viper and Range Vipers included in each wave as troop builders.
That would be cool. It would be interesting to see Hasbro actually release a full assortment of really desired figures without any specific “peg warmers” in the bunch. I like your list quite a bit, some very good offerings in there. The Range-Vipers were something I didn’t even realize I might want in single pack form until I typed their name in the survey.
I may be the oddball, but I’d prefer the range viper from the ROC/POC vehicle pack. I assumed though it is the blue one everyone else wants.
I’d prefer the vehicle paint scheme for Range Viper as well, or a new one, but I’ll hypothetically take what I can hypothetically get.
I would be all for the wave 4 figures hitting again, I never saw the wave at retail once. i have seen a lot of Skydive and Shadow tracker since then, though, at WalGreens, etc. I’d love repaints of the Destro and IG in the classic color scheme. I think Jungle Duke would be awesome to see around again, same with Firefly.
Yeah, if I had to choose a group of figures from that list it would probably be Wave 4. I got them all online, but I never saw any of them in stores, and would love the chance for more folks to get that chance.
Those end of line waves are always, always, ALWAYS problematic. I didn’t even hesitate before ordering those online. I think I’ve seen a couple of Zombie Vipers in the wild, but the Joes from that wave basically don’t exist up here. Heck, I didn’t see much of the Crazylegs wave, either.
I never ever saw Crazylegs or the Rock Viper in a retail store.
I don’t see Hasbro re-releasing any of them. So overall “no opinion” I guess.
I never saw Waves 4,5,6 or the Renegades Storm Shadow wave at retail. And of course those weren’t the cases I bought online. I figured Hasbro would treat a major character like 30th Storm Shadow like Snake Eyes 54 and he’d be in revision cases and all over. So far the Marshalls and Maxx around me have only had the 12 inch joes and one had a Skystriker. I’m disappointed Hasbro has let Joe linger for so long without anything. You’d think they’d do an online exclusive or something just to keep fan interest up. BUt everything is on the secondary market, and I’m priced out.
First off I don’t collect the Joes at all so I don’t even have an opinion. That goes for ALL the Renegades figures as well, couldn’t stand the animation style of that cartoon and figures based off that same style – bleh!
Now COBRA had a few gems in the POC and 30th waves that I would like to see again, but only troops, no unique characters. Primarily the Viper, Cobra Trooper, Renegades Cobra Trooper, and Rock-Viper. But if they were to be made available again they’d need to be in different colors (darker this time, black and purple, less blue) and the Rock-Viper should get a proper held sculpt. The Crimson Horseman driver from the Crimson version of the HISS VII tank should get a single card release, just rename him something else and give him some new colors. Also I think the Range-Viper, Lamprey, and Strato-Viper from the Cobra Island Defense set should be single carded, in their original colors.
If anyone is interested, TRU is offering a 50% discount on Black Dragon, Crimson HISS, and Skystriker vehicles for a limited time. Spend over $50 and everything ships free. Great way to army build your fleets before these disappear.
On-topic: my favorite, never-seen-in-stores wave was Lowlight, Shadowtracker, Skydive and City Strike Destro. The revision wave with Lifeline, Sci-Fi, Airtight, Law & Order and Techno-Viper was a close second because of the awesome updates of the vintage figures. That wave was readily available, thank god. But all of those figures were packed to the gills with awesome, relevant accessories, and showed that Hasbro really could pile on the fun gear.
The only reason I ever scored a Rock-Viper, 30th Viper, Croc Master and Crazylegs was because a friend spotted them in Wal-mart one afternoon, and called to ask which ones I wanted, then he just wandered around the store with those figures sitting in his cart, waiting for me to show up 20min later to buy them. I never saw those “in the wild” again.
Thanks, Justin, for this Survey, it’s a good reminder of the lopsided distribution I witnessed around my East Coast area. In the end, most of what I couldn’t find in stores (Wave 4, etc) I tracked down at online retailers.
You know what would be cool to see? For Hasbro to take popular versions of some of the characters in Retaliation that had figures in PoC/30th/Renegades and release them in a special case assortment in Retaliation packaging. Imagine a case with v54 Snake Eyes, Renegades Storm shadow, Cobra Shock Trooper. Maybe throw in a few new redecos for characters who didn’t get releases then like Ret Roadblock as RAH Roadblock with maybe Resolute’s head. They could also include those versions of Flint and Lady Jaye from the concept case too. Maybe make them exclusives to Target or Wal-Mart or something.
Some of the joe’s i could not find.
I just found the zombie-viper!
Actually, I’d like to see the mysterious re-paints of Blowtorch and Croc-Master that Hasbro CLAIMS were released…….but I’ve never heard of anyone that has found them, and certainly not in any numbers that suggest they were a running change to those two figures. What did happen to them?? I wonder if anyone really knows?
In Canada, we saw pretty much everything in my locale. The only figures seen only once were POC Recondo, and Temple Guardian Snake-Eyes in my area. The first of wave 5 wasnot seen much around here.
POC stuff like General Hawk, Jungle Bats etc were plentiful here, and actually so plentiful they were discounted last spring at my local TRU several times to get them out the door
I was thinking the same thing. I actually like that Blowtorch repaint and once in awhile I search for it on ebay.
I’m still pissed off I never got my Pythonized Croc Master PoC repaint! 🙁
I’d agree with wanting to see the repaints. I’m still baffled as to why the even put the original two in the line anyways. My guess as to why we didn’t see them? hasbro told the factory to make the running change, and they just didn’t. The memo got lost somewhere.
Justin – just a suggestion, but you need to do a kind of “venting / what have you bought” thread like this once in a while. Gives everyone a chance to blow off some steam in a bit more levelheaded manner than they’d do on one of the other forums. 🙂
The POC and 30th line are my favorite Joe figs hands down. They are exactly what I wanted as soon as I saw the 25th line. They are awesome updates of old favorites and also new characters with great articulation and accessories. Personally I would like to see Low Light and SS re-released because they are awesome figs and are hard to come by. What’s the deal with money bags Destro? That fig is going for like 50 bucks on ebay.
Perhaps slightly off topic, but the figure I’d want them to rerelease the most is Alpine. That figure was absolutely impossible to find and goes for insane prices online. I’d love for them to make it available in some form…
I agree he was next to impossible to find at retail, although I was lucky to find one at Marshalls. Its just these insane distributions Hasbro has been engaging in. Its like they don’t want to sell products
Can’t sell a product if stores don’t want to order it. Hasbro makes the toys and gets them to retailers distribution centers. From there it’s out of their hands. If you can’t find anything in a local store, that’e either because your store wasn’t sent anything by its distribution center or your store didn’t order anything.
Agreed. Although he was easier to find, I’d also love to see a Leatherneck re-release, since they never got him right.
I managed to snap an Alpine, and didn’t want him and traded him off. I’d prefer an update, but for so many have my fellow collectors, I think Hasbro would be smart to rerelease this guy, he is really sought after.
Really like the POC/30th Cobra Troopers, Vipers and Steel Brigades, but I’d love to see some tweaks. I want to see Steel Brigade with the Shock Trooper body. The combat shirt look appeals to me more than the turtleneck torso. Hasbro should also use the update 25th Airborne pack as opposed to the 25th Duke pack, which looks outdated. The Vipers look more modern if you use the Cobra Trooper body as the base. The red forearrm guards are canon, but I didn’t miss them when I made the swap.
I’m grateful for the survey! This group of action figures is the reason I restarted on GI Joe, but I’ve been so frustrated, because finding almost everything at retail was a struggle. I’m still missing wave 1 CC, wave 4 Destro, all of the Crazylegs wave, and Renegades SS. So of course I’d like another crack at any of those. From wave 6 I’d only care to see Crazylegs being repackaged and sold again; the others aren’t so necessary. I too would love the see Python Croc Master, and Jungle Camo Blowtorch! I agree that Alpine from the 25th would be a great idea. All of the last two waves of 30th (except Rip Cord) are still worthy of rerelease, since they were nearly impossible to find. I know I would still buy more Zombies. I would also buy some single-carded Dreadnoks (especially Road Pig), since I couldn’t spring for the set. As 30th wave 1 demonstrated, reissued Cobra troop-builders are never a bad way to go. And finally, I would remind Hasbro that there is a lot of easy money in a smart repaint. Falcon from the Marauders set could easily be reworked into something more worthy of the name, and I wouldn’t mind a Night Force Crazylegs.
All Falcon needs is some paint on his torso and some webgear.
http://www.joecustoms.com/customs/customs_specific_item.php?kind=figure&id=11393
Yes. Bam! There it is. I’m not a customizer. Do it, Hasbro!!!
P.S. My #2 Dreadnok choice would be Gnaw(gahyde). I’d also love to see a solo carded Mercer.
I completely understand the confines of the survey but wanted to add my two cents in case Hasbro reads these. I think some vehicle drivers released on single card would be neat, the obvious choices would be POC Mech Alpine and Sand Scorpion that were inches away from production. Ashiko and HISS Scout Driver would probably be good addition to that and I can certainly agree with the alternative Blowtorch and Croc Master. I would also consider package styles.
I’d get behind Mech Alpine and Sand Scorpion! If for some reason they can’t bring back 25th Alpine, that would be an acceptable compromise.
After Retaliation finishes up, I think Hasbro should follow it up with a literal “retread” of POC. Oh, sure, call it something else, give it a different premise, but tailor the figures and gear just like POC. That way they can use figures like the Mech Alpine and Sand Scorpion.
If they want a theme, call it G.I.Joe/COBRA: Land, Sea and Air–and theme figures ( like they did with POC) based on those environments.
None of these should be re-released before 25th Alpine. Especially since PoC and 30th figures were readily available in stores and online.
Here in the UK, they haven’t sold Joes at retail sice 2002, except for RoC stuff that didn’t sell very well.
I would’ve liked to have seen PoC Recondo re-released. I get my stuff online at a specialist shop, and like an idiot, I didn’t pre-order him back in ’10, as a result I only got him last month on Ebay with a PoC Spirit for £45 – that’s about 72 USD!
Last year, my Marshall’s and Ross stores were packed to the gills with Joe product. This year – not at all. I scored a Crimson Hiss, but as far as figures, the well in Southern CA is dray as a bone, as far as I can tell. I’d love to get hold of a Rock Viper, a few more Zombie Vipers, and definitely a Renegades Storm Shadow, but I’m resolved that it probably won’t happen, at least not without inflated after-market prices. As well, I marked a lot of items as “obtainable”, but that was through BBTS as oppossed to retail. I never saw a City Strike Destro, Lowlight or Shadow Tracker ona peg, and to hear that others have seen them warming pegs blows my mind.