When our Joe fan brethren to the North discovered the elusive third wave of Rise of Cobra Alpha vehicles, I’m sure emails started flying…luckily, my long time buddy Ed hooked me up real quick, and about 10 days after I was certain I’d never see Alpha Wave 3, I had a full set of them sitting in my grubby hands. So, of course, I’m gonna review ’em.
The first of four reviews are being posted today on the Rise of Cobra Review Page… check it out right here!
Yeah, I hope I’m not putting my foot in my mouth.
My family vacation is over, things have slowed down work-wise… so in celebration of SDCC and the upcoming Pursuit of Cobra launch, I am labeling the following three weeks “GeneralsJoes Review-A-Rama!” Patent pending…
For the next three weeks, up to the official Pursuit of Cobra launch on August 1st, I am going to endeavor to post at least one review per day every single day leading up to the launch. That’s right, over 20 reviews throughout the rest of the month! Can I do it? I have no Earthly idea. But I’m at least gonna give it the ole college try.
There will be Pursuit of Cobra stuff, a lot of catch up from The Rise of Cobra, and maybe an unproduced item sprinkled here and there. Heck, even a Blu-Ray DVD! I’m hoping real life is steady enough for the next three weeks to allow for this, if I can do it, I will.
Hopefully this makes up for some of the dead time over the last month or two… G.I. Joe is cranking up for a huge last half of 2010, I want to be along for the ride.
Anyone who wants to submit a guest review is more than welcome… good pics and a grasp of the English language are strongly recommended. Also looking for any input or requests…
Let’s give this a shot!
A GeneralsJoes commentor earlier this week pointed out an awesome YouTube user who has built some amazing dioramas and is using them to make incredible stop-motion animated features with G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra figures (amongst others).
He is a YouTube user named VisorHUNgary, and his channel can be found right here. There are a few videos showcasing the dioramas themselves, but the stop motion playlist is where it’s at.
I’ve mirrored G.I. Joe: Cobra below, but definitely check out his channel to see more details! This is some very cool stuff. Wish I had the patience to do something like this. A big thanks to commentor FredPerri for the info!
Wow. To say this article is eye-opening would be an understatement. Of course, it’s somewhat misleading as well… an Associated Press article posted on abc.com focuses on the merchandising behemoth that is Toy Story 3.
But also mentioned in the article were some of the top toy lines distributed from China over the past 18 months, and G.I. Joe Ranked #3. Toy Story 3 was first, Iron Man 2 came in behind, and G.I. Joe rounded off the top of the list.
This is stunning to me, and is a pretty loud wake-up call to just what the expectations were for G.I. Joe: the Rise of Cobra. In my mind, they were exceptionally unrealistic expectations. As popular as G.I. Joe has been over the past three decades, I think expecting a somewhat rushed film with an incomplete script to sell that many toys at retail was way beyond the scope of what G.I. Joe has been expected to do since the 80’s.
This is part of the reason why I say it’s not that G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra sold in terrible numbers, it was more that marketing expectations were so skewed that it was near impossible that The Rise of Cobra would meet those unrealistic goals.
Of course, I do find it quite curious that Transformers appears nowhere on this list…but again, I’m not entirely sure how their distribution works. Food for thought, at any rate. Thanks to Jeff Bohn for pointing me towards this article.
Looks like Hasbro is making up for some lost time. After a few months in limbo, a couple of days ago, we got a short Scarlett spotlight, which was the first Operation: HISS update we’d gotten in quite a while. Now this morning, it would appear that even though Hasbro hasn’t posted them on their site yet, MonkeybarTV.com has Episodes 4 and 5 posted for the animated series that has gotten quite mixed reviews.
Well, not so mixed. Pretty much just bad. But hey! Look! It’s Agent Helix!
Seriously, this is obviously made for kids…not much money invested in it…and not a whole lot of emotion either. But it’s always cool to see Joe characters come to life on screen, and I can’t help but smile seeing Helix running around alongside Snake Eyes in animated form. Check out the episodes at the links below. These actually have a nice little helping of action…and yes, it’s quite obvious they’re simply using the video game models to make these, but hey, I guess it’s something, right? Episode 4
Hasbro Toy Shop has just sent notification that they are featuring a brand new “Buy One Get One Free” promotion, and included in that promotion are several G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra products as well as a handful of Hall of Heroes items as well. Highlights (at least for me) are Accelerator Suit Duke, Reactive Armor Ripcord, “City Strike” Duke, “Paris Pursuit” Baroness, and both versions of the Cobra Para-Viper.
There are plenty of other items as well, you can see them all by clicking here. Even though many folks have grabbed this stuff already, some of these figures come with some fantastic weaponry, and the army builders are always in season…
