Most folks who are thirty-something Joefans probably watched the A-Team back in the day…and while Galoob put out some horrible o-ring style A-Team figures way back when, BA, Hannibal, et al didn’t really get the action figure love they deserved.
Well, with the new movie coming out this summer, Jazwares picked up the license and is doing a very cool looking line of 4″ figures based on the film! Granted, these guys won’t look exactly like their 80’s counterparts, but it’s close enough. Of course, you could just forget about the figures and rejoice about the fact that THERE’S A *@#$@%! JOE SCALE A-TEAM VAN COMING OUT!
Seriously, pretty cool looking toys. Decent articulation, and the van absolutely ROCKS. Credit to the MTV Movie Blog.
So, I bit the bullet and pre-ordered this bad boy. I don’t buy many video games. At all. I think the last game I bought was Halo 3. But yes, I have pre-ordered this one (and will pre-order Halo Reach eventually as well).
To say I’m impressed by the level of detail, immersion, and gameplay evident in all the videos I’ve seen would be a massive understatement, and the latest producer’s video only cements that fact. There may be some minor spoilers in here.
I’m sorry, but this game looks amazing. This is the exact right way to do our 80’s properties proud. Pay some great homage to the vintage style, but reinvent and reinvigorate the brand in a new way for a new audience as well.
I think all we can hope for is that the Rise of Cobra sequel is powerful enough to warrant a game of this type for G.I. Joe, I think that would be a very cool thing. But until then, I’ll live vicariously through the Transfans.
Molten Monkey International LLC is proud to announce a line of action figures, vehicles, and playsets based on characters from an all-new original story. MMI has been working with distinguished toy designers Ron Rudat and Guy Cassaday to bring action figures back to their roots. Some of their amazing designs will be on display at the Molten Monkey booth. Guy Cassaday will be in attendance at the MMI booth to sign autographs and discuss anything related to the new toy line, his history with GI Joe, and his work with Tonka. Ron Rudat will also be present at the show as a special guest of Master Collector and Joe Con 2010. Guy Cassaday
Guy Cassaday’s extensive and diverse career in product design and illustration has contributed to some of the most significant American toy concepts in the last three decades including the redesign of the iconic Tonka Mighty Dump Truck. His career at Tonka led to the design of other construction vehicles, bringing to life his love of vehicle design. A brief stint at Playskool in Chicago led Guy to Hasbro, Inc. where he excelled as the premier GI Joe vehicle designer known for large vehicles such as the Mobile Command Center, Persuader, Sky Storm, Conquest and Rolling Thunder. In 1997, Guy launched Cassaday Design, Inc. and branched off into general consumer product design while keeping his hand in the toy industry. Ron Rudat
Ron Rudat started working for Hasbro Toy Company in 1971 as an illustrator, eventually working his way up to Senior Designer in his 28 year tenure. Starting in 1980, Ron was responsible for figure designs of the Real American Hero toy line continuing through the 1987 assortment. In addition, he designed accessories, vehicles, weapons, and many of the logos including the infamous Cobra logo. He now runs and owns Bright Ideas! Design, Inc. doing freelance for such companies as Hasbro, Mattel, Toybiz, among others. He and his son, Tristan Rudat, have also been working on a documentary telling the story of the artists and designers responsible for bringing GIJOE to life.
Don’t forget to stop by the Molten Monkey International booth at Joe Con 2010 in April, in Providence, Rhode Island. Hope to see you all there!
Okay, I’m a fringe Marvel Universe fan at best. The last time I read comics on a regular basis was the 90’s and while I survived Rob Liefield’s path of destruction through the medium as we know it, I did sorta lose track during the Spider-Man clone fiasco, and haven’t really looked back. Sure, I poked my head in on the Ultimate universe, the death of Captain America, and am sort of checking out Siege here and there, but that’s really about it.
Thankfully, for those unusual folks like me, there are the movies and the cartoons to keep me engaged. While most toy geeks lament the fact that the movies and animated series aren’t faithful to the comic roots, those funky nerds like me who don’t really care about the stories and care more about the core characters are able to be kept in the loop without having to worry about the past four pesky decades of continuity. The first Iron Man movie, to me, was the best in class for this recent outcropping of comics flicks (yes, I even rate it above The Dark Knight, heresy on the internetz, I know), and the sequel looks like it will be more of the same.
Even better, the toys for the sequel look to match the quality of Paramount’s tour de force as well. I’m sure the initial toys were probably just dandy as well, but they were six inches tall, which doesn’t fit into my current collection philosophy, which is the smaller the better because I have no space to store crap. Amazingly enough, Hasbro looks to have taken the detail from the six inch figures and squished them down into a 3 3/4″ scale…these figures are smaller, but damn do they look freaking amazing. PopEater.com has revealed a nice batch of these figures, accurate to the film, and while most of them look totally bad ass, the one I’m really focusing my love on is Samuel “Nick Fury” Jackson in some 3 3/4″ glory. Sure, we’ve all got enough Mace Windu’s to choke a stable of horses, but this Jackson actually uses some G.I. Joe parts! And he has a bad ass trench coat.
It’s pretty much the best 3 3/4″ figure ever made…
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I know this is barely G.I. Joe related, but news is a bit slow these days…gotta take some toy joy where I can get it.
Dammit. Yes, dammit. I’ve got enough stuff to spend my money on these days, and now Hasbro has to go and reinvent Transformers again, and once again make them bad ass.
I’m kind of a backwards Transfan…sure, I was fascinated with Generation 1 like any other kid of the 80’s, but my addiction to the toys began with Beast Wars, mostly due to the fantastic animated series that was running at the time. I managed a pretty close to complete domestic release collection of the Beast Wars line, and it remains one of the prides of my collection.
So, when Beast Wars morphed back into the more familiar vehicles and robots, while most Transfans cheered, I shrugged and moved on. The new stuff just didn’t seem to have the same magic to me. It started losing it during Beast Machines, and by the time the next run came out, I was surprisingly uninterested. Armada, Cybertron, Energon…all looked pretty neat, and I always stopped and looked at them in the stores, but ultimately passed.
Then, of course…came Transformers Classics. And once again, the hook was in me. I got an entire domestic run of the Classics figures (yes even the Botcon Seekers that enraged so many at the time)…and then came the movie. That damned movie. Actually, I liked the movie, but the movie designs did absolutely nothing for me, so I quickly let my Transformers fandom fade to the background yet again.
THEN… then came Transformers: Animated. Now, believe it or not, even though I loved Classics, I never got into Universe. For some reason, they just didn’t “wow” me. The Transformers: Animated stuff, though, that really captured my attention, and yes…I now have pretty near a full run of the uniquely tooled Transformers: Animated figures. No, I didn’t go for all the repaints and off-scale stuff, but I have one of every unique character from the show. Then Revenge of the Fallen arrived, and Animated slipped away (with the exception of Arcee, who is the last “hole” I consider in my collection). So, once again, my Transformers interest is satisfied without any cash leaving my wallet.
Now I’m sure everyone knows what comes next… yeah. The War for Cybertron. Dammit, Hasbro, why must you do this to me?
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I mean look at those! Well, don’t focus on Megatron too much, he’s kinda crappy, but Prime and Bumblebee are both fantastic. They take some great elements from the classic looks, yet manage to soup ’em up and change them up to fit a more modern space-age aesthetic. THIS, my friends, is how you reimagine. Mike Bay… take some notes. 😉
If you’ve been in a cave and haven’t seen the trailer for the War for Cybertron video game, feast your eyes:
Like it or not, enjoy the film or not, this is indisputable proof that a successful film franchise for our favorite toy brand is a GOOD thing. Behold the wonder of the Transformers: War for Cybertron video game trailer:
Like the G.I. Joe film, there are many Transformers purists who absolutely detest what Michael Bay has done to their characters and their toy brand, and many of them are totally validated in those opinions. But I can assure 110% that without that multi billion dollar success of the Transformers brand, a video game like the one above would have NEVER been even considered. I know we all have our issues with G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (yes, even ME), but in the end, all I want is for the brand to be successful to the world at large, because great things can happen.
Can you imagine if a game like the one above was being considered for G.I. Joe? Sure, the Rise of Cobra game was pretty bad by next gen standards, but so was the first Transformers movie game. I understand that G.I. Joe will never reach the wide audience and acclaim of the Transformers brand, but here’s hoping there’s enough gas in the tank that we can get some decent film follow ups, and some cool tie in media and merchandise.
