by generalsjoes | Jul 10, 2012 | 30th Anniversary, G.I. Joe, G.I. Joe Collectors Club, G.I. Joe Toys, G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero
Continuing my “Top Ten” countdown of the items we saw last weekend in the Concept Case at the G.I. Joe: Convention. With my number 10 entry, I focused on the G.I. Joe: Renegades Scrap Iron with his melted face and awesomely animated body style.
For my ninth entry, I went back into the archives… generally I’m not a fan of simply re-releasing figures as they appeared two decades ago, with only minor alterations, but the figure I saw in the case made me rethink that idea. Besides, I’m a huge fan of those crazy 1989 army builders, so I couldn’t help myself.
9 – G.I. Joe: 30th Anniversary HEAT Viper
HEAT Viper is just one of those crazy figures you can’t help but love. Bright yellow, purple, and with his trusty missile-boots he has all the earmarks of the wacky Cobra Troopers of the late 1980’s. I was actually pretty amazed at just how well Hasbro translated that crazy design to the modern style.
Using the 30th Anniversary Airtight tooling and what appears to be a resin sculpted HEAT Viper helmet, Hasbro is able to replicate the look and feel almost perfectly. It does appear that some sculpting modification was done to get the purple strip down the front of the figure, but beyond that, this would be a pretty straight forward kit-bash. In talking to Dave, one of the genius sculptors for Hasbro, the HEAT Viper head was sculpted and appeared in his display case at the Convention, but it has not been “tooled” yet. However, he also had sculpted a Crimson Guard head for a tour in Providence a few years back, and that head ended up getting tooled and used.
Anyway, since we have Alley-Viper, and will soon have Night-Viper, it seems only appropriate that we add HEAT-Viper to the growing ’89 trooper ranks. Can Frag-Viper be far behind?
Check out the images below.
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by generalsjoes | Jul 9, 2012 | 30th Anniversary, G.I. Joe, G.I. Joe Collectors Club, G.I. Joe Toys, Pursuit of COBRA
Twitter friend of GeneralsJoes Twitziller has provided an awesome service to folks who are pounding through the Concept Case survey I posted this morning! I’ve been hearing folks complain a bit about having to check an image, go back to the Survey, navigate through the gallery…
Well, Twitziller designed an entire Excel Spreadsheet with embedded mouse-over images, and sent it along for GeneralsJoes readers! This will hopefully make it even easier for folks to compare images and document the rankings before answering the survey questions.
A huge thanks to Twitziller and check out the Spreadsheet below. Use the Download link to grab it for yourself!
[gview file=”https://generalsjoesreborn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Poll-Reference-Sheet.xlsx”]
by generalsjoes | Jul 9, 2012 | G.I. Joe, G.I. Joe Collectors Club, G.I. Joe Toys, G.I. Joe: Renegades
So in conjunction with the launch of the Survey that will hopefully gather some good data from G.I. Joe fans throughout the internet, I figured I would have a series of articles covering my own personal top 10 figures from the now infamous G.I. Joe Convention “Concept Case”.
Since the survey is running for two weeks, I’ve elected to feature one entry per day, Monday through Friday until the first round of the survey is done. This is not designed to sway anyone to my particular viewpoint, just to show how I’m thinking and why.
Out of the vast number of great looking figures we saw on display, I narrowed my favorites down to ten. Let’s kick this off.
10 – G.I. Joe: Renegades Scrap Iron
Everyone knows by now that I’m a huge G.I. Joe: Renegades mark, but I will admit that the figure showings in the concept case for G.I. Joe: Renegades were pretty underwhelming. Sure, the unmasked Storm Shadow was pretty fantastic, but beyond him we had a preposed Duke and Snake Eyes (who were vehicle drivers in case you were not aware) and a random masked trooper alongside what appeared to be Duke in a Blast Suit. No Roadblock, no Destro, no Baroness…
However, we did get a Scrap Iron! It’s obvious this Scrap Iron was shown incomplete, as he was initially supposed to have a heavy armored vest by the looks of the figure. Even without that component, though, this figure rocked. Large, armor-covered arms and legs, great articulation as well as a new and different design, all topped off by a fantastic new head sculpt, appropriately scarred. In all honesty, the figure itself was neat enough, but I was totally swayed by seeing a new character in G.I. Joe: Renegades form. I still weep a little inside when I think about what might have been for G.I. Joe: Renegades, and this figure managed to twist that knife just a little bit deeper.
Check out the images below.
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by generalsjoes | Jul 9, 2012 | 30th Anniversary, G.I. Joe, G.I. Joe Collectors Club, G.I. Joe Retaliation Toys, G.I. Joe Toys, G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero, G.I. Joe: Renegades, Pursuit of COBRA
That’s right! With a huge thanks from GeneralsJoes reader Chris, who greatly assisted in setting this up, we have launched a SurveyMonkey survey based on what Hasbro showed in the Concept Case at the G.I. Joe Convention last weekend.
Please keep in mind, this is not a Hasbro sanctioned poll or an official data gathering system! This is all being done by GeneralsJoes, and is simply a way of gathering some empirical data to send off to Hasbro. According to Marketing Director Joe DelRegno, Hasbro will likely be launching their own online polling system as well, but rather than wait for that to be coded (I believe they only made the decision to do it last weekend, based on the overwhelming response from G.I. Joe fans) we figured we’d get a leg up and start this sucker early.
As we’ve seen many times in the past, toy collecting is very much a “what have you done for me lately” scenario, and with a desire to strike while the iron is hot, GeneralsJoes is doing their own survey while emotions are raw and at the surface. You can either click the banner above to check out the survey page, or click right here.
Linked on the survey page is also a very easy to follow gallery of all of the unproduced items shown with clear identification. Chris and myself worked hard to make this as simple and straight forward as possible. Please check it out, and please take a few minutes to answer. I know this isn’t official, but the data from this survey will be gathered and sent to Hasbro, so there WILL be a voice. Let it be yours!
by generalsjoes | Jul 6, 2012 | G.I. Joe, G.I. Joe Collectors Club
During the G.I. Joe Collectors Club panel, Brian spoke about his desire to get the online store up and running as soon as possible, and it looks like they might already be making some progress. Fun Publications sends along the following email update regarding the Club store:
This quick update is going out to all members of both clubs.
It will still be a couple more weeks (we don’t know exactly how long as we are waiting on the host to finish their work) until our dedicated store server is online.
Once it is ready to go, we will let you know that products in the store have be made active and you will be able to order items from the clubs again.
We do not anticipate that all items will be available in the club stores on opening day so please have patience as we finish the migration from the old e-commerce site to this one.
In addition, to try and avoid a denial of service issue (because of the volume) we will only bring one set of products online at a time.
We will email you when we are going to bring the products online. We are anticipating being ready to go the week of July 23rd, but that could change.
Thanks to both groups for your patience and the two great conventions this year!
Brian
Hopefully once the store goes online there won’t be any technical issues and we can move forwards towards the Figure Subscription Service! Fingers crossed.
by generalsjoes | Jul 4, 2012 | 30th Anniversary, Dollar Store, G.I. Joe, G.I. Joe 2, G.I. Joe 2: Retaliation, G.I. Joe 25th Anniversary, G.I. Joe Collectors Club, G.I. Joe Convention, G.I. Joe Retaliation Toys, G.I. Joe Toys, G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero, G.I. Joe: The Movie, JoeCon 2012, Pursuit of COBRA, Show and Convention Coverage
And no, I’m not talking about bringing home toys. I’m talking about intangible things. Opinions, feelings, impressions, etc…
I felt quite lucky throughout the weekend to be able to spend quite a bit of time with various folks at the Convention. Whether it was speaking with Lanny or Brian from the G.I. Joe Collectors’ Club at the Golden Ticket dinner, or speaking to Hasbro at the Charity Casino Night dinner and on the sales floor. I was left with a series of impressions, both good and bad, and I’m not certain folks who weren’t there could grasp that through the convention coverage.
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