It’s coming up quick. The latest G.I. Joe regional show in Des Moines, Iowa is coming up November 4th, 2017, and there are a bunch of great updates to share leading up to it!
November 4th at the John and Mary Pappajohn Education Center in Des Moines, Iowa, the show always promises to be a blast, and with its exclusive minimalist posters and what is apparently a set of great exclusives shaping up, this is one year you won’t want to miss.
When Boss Fight revealed the first look at their upcoming Skeleton Warrior, they included a little clue with their images, with what looked to be an official store image of the Skeleton labeled “Basic”. That started the rumor mill churning a bit, and today that rumor mill has been confirmed.
Boss Fight Studio revealed the first three figures in their new “Vitruvian BASIC” series today, a (hopefully) ongoing line of reduced paint apps and reduced accessory figures at a reduced price. Retailing at just 19.99 these three figures will be available for pre-order as of October 22nd at BossFightShop.com!
This is exciting news for army builders as these three figures have a great army building look and feel, and will also provide a less expensive alternative to potential custom material from Series 2. Check out the figures below, and make sure your trigger finger is hovering on October 22nd for these first three figures, then again on October 31st for the VERY limited release of the Skeleton!
As of a few days ago, the folks who backed the latest Marauder Task Force Kickstarter should have started receiving their “BackerKit” surveys, which allow backers the opportunity to tell the Kickstarter creator specifically what products they want (and if they want any add-ons).
But the Marauder Task Force Backer Kit came with a nice little surprise. Marauder has announced that along with the surprise Agency Ops figures that were added to the Kickstarter in the later stages, they will also be releasing female versions of the Agency Ops figures as well! Those figures were available in the Backer Kit and we should expect them to be in the store afterwards as well, which is very exciting news!
Check out the concept art below by the exceedingly talented Troy McKie, good friend of GeneralsJoes and fantastic toy designer to boot. Great stuff, and even more awesome things to look forward to with the release of the Task Force Kickstarter items!
While you wait, make sure to hit up MarauderInc.com and get all the gear your characters will need when they hit your mailbox.
This week the fine folks at Fresh Monkey Fiction posted the final installment of the Eagle Force “Shattered Peace” webcomic that I wrote and the always impressive Ryan Lord did the artwork for. To say working with Ryan and the Eagle Force guys was a pleasure would be a massive understatement. Ever since I was 8 years old I wanted to write comics, and the opportunity to craft the stories with these characters, both classic and new, has been an awesome experience.
You can check out the comics on the Eagle Force Returns Facebook Page and I’ve also mirrored all 18 parts below. I truly hope you enjoyed them and that they helped quench some thirst as we wait for these awesome characters to be in our hands in physical form.
Rest assured, though, this isn’t all. There will be plenty more Eagle Force related excitement to come, so stay tuned.
Some exciting and unexpected news from our friends at Boss Fight Studio today as they announced a new “Evil Skeleton” action figure that will be sold on BossFightShop.com as of October 31st!
It’s a nicely weathered skeleton with some terrific accessories, but even more interesting is one of the images that goes along with the info (posted exclusively on Infinite Earth).
If you check out the product photo you’ll see the Evil Skeleton is labeled as a “HACKS Basic” figure. Could this be the start of a new product line of figures with fewer accessories and dialed down deco? More news to come on this front, I’m sure, but for now, check out the great images of the upcoming Evil Skeleton below.
Limited to just a few hundred, the Vitruvian H.A.C.K.S. Evil Skeleton has all the same great features and functions that fans loved about the original, but will be available for just $19.99.
So, whether you’re looking to recreate the classic Skeleton Dance, or unleash an army of Skeleton Warriors that would make Todd Armstrong nervous, the Vitruvian H.A.C.K.S. Evil Skeleton is sure to be right up your alley!
Look for it to arrive on the Boss Fight Studio web store beginning October 31st.
Everyone will remember where they were the day The Full Force dropped a six hour marathon podcast on unsuspecting toy fans everywhere. Stuffed to the gills with MASK intel back to front, this fantastic podcast features interviews with Brandon Easton (writer of IDW’s MASK comic), Doug Stone (the voice actor behind the MASK of Matt Trakker) and a metric ton of other MASK content (as well as the latest G.I. Joe news from yours truly).
In all seriousness, this is a great episode with lots of excellent toy insight and it’s one you do NOT want to miss. Check it out on Podbean or embedded below, and make sure you’re hitting up The Full Force on Facebook for all of the latest news and updates!
Anyone who has watched an animated series from the 80s and 90s has likely watched something Larry Houston had a hand in. An exceedingly prolific storyboard artist, director, and all around animation legend, Houston was directly involved in much of the Sunbow product, and most famously was the storyboard director for quite possibly the greatest three minutes in animated G.I. Joe history, the opening to 1987’s G.I. Joe: The Movie.
Mike and I sat down and talked all about his work on G.I. Joe as well as other landmark animated series of the time and he was a fantastic interview.
The Hasbro Pulse website has posted a pretty awesome behind the scenes talk with G.I. Joe product designer Bobby Vala, which explores some of the thought and work that went into the ComicCon exclusive Missile Command Center! This is some great insight and has some awesome pictures showing some of the different steps Vala took to get to the awesome finished product so many Joe fans were grateful to finally receive after decades of lusting after the original online.
Check out the Hasbro Pulse article right here and huge props to Hasbro, our buddy Fred from JoeBattleLines and Bobby Vala for sharing some of the trade secrets with us. Great stuff!
Boss Fight Studio is surprising us all with an unexpected launch of their Boss Fight webstore exclusive Cerisier a Sakura Elvish Assassin! This figure was first revealed at New Jersey Collectors Convention, but it was unknown what assortment she might appear in.
Surprise! You can buy her TONIGHT AT MIDNIGHT for immediate shipping from BossFightShop.com.
New Vitruvian HACKS automatically makes the world feel like a better place.
Speaking of new Vitruvian HACKS, Boss Fight also reports that their Accessory Mini-Kits are in stock and will start shipping tomorrow. Ain’t life great?
“Guardians of the elven queen, members of this elite corps of archers bathe daily in dark ink, to maintain the gray color of their skin. Taking their orders directly from Queen Solan, they are her protectors and personal assassins. As a part of their duties to the queen, they take on an oath of silence. Their voices are removed permanently and irreversibly, using a magical spell. Their eyes have been altered so that they can see in pitch blackness. Moving undetectably and noiselessly, their natural home is in the dark. The last thing many an enemy of the Elves has felt is the cold blade of a Sakura Elf, silently draining their life away.”
And that’s a wrap. It always feels like the annual convention reviews are a sprint, with coordinating all of the images, the Photoshopping, the organizing and the page layouts, and then by the time the whirlwind week is over, there’s a feeling of some sort of satisfaction.
I have to be honest, though, I didn’t feel a whole lot of satisfaction with this one. Ultimately, most of the figures and vehicles felt underserved and overpriced, which is unfortunate.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s great that the Collectors Club is able to put together these figures for a fanbase that has no other outlet currently, but in looking back even to just 2015 the blatant and obvious degradation of quality is a shame. There were some highlights last year with Sky Patrol, several of them in fact, but this year everything felt pretty run-of-the-mill with very few exciting surprises. I felt there was a handful of serviceable figures that did the source material right, but there really was nothing that surprised, impressed, or blew me away. Perhaps I’m asking too much given the limited tooling supplies and resources available, but when the Club is asking nearly $1,000 for a set of exclusives, I gotta say, I expect more.
Anyway… the last three reviews can be viewed below:
