by generalsjoes | Sep 15, 2009 | G.I. Joe, G.I. Joe 25th Anniversary, G.I. Joe Toys, G.I. Joe: The Movie
Awash with repaints and retools, the next wave of Alpha Vehicles consists of a mostly blech repaint of a mostly blech vehicle, the Lava Pod, however, the Volcano-Viper looks all sorts of kick ass. Pretty funny how he uses the same tooling as the arctic Ice-Viper, yet the ultra-hot weather specialist still looks right at home. A bad ass head sculpt and mask don’t hurt.
The Rockslide is no great shakes either, but the digicam Dusty looks pretty nasty as a great modern update for the familiar old favorite. Hopefully the final version comes with his head scarf, I can’t recall if we saw it during the various convention photo shoots. My least favorite of this underwhelming trio is the TigerClaw, a haphazard repaint and retool of the already haphazard Snake Trax w/ Scrap Iron. But what really bums me out here is the vehicle driver. If they’re going to give us a Leatherneck in green camouflage, couldn’t they at least have made it a pure homage to the ’86 version, rather than this strange dark forest camo? At least that way they’d make the old school folks happy…instead, we get a bizarrly kitbashed version that is unchanged from the original other than a different camouflage scheme that still doesn’t look like the right camouflage scheme. The figure isn’t really a bad one, I guess…he does have some neat military elements, but I can hear those complaints coming a mile away.
Ah, well, at least he’s got the fixed Duke arms. Check out the images below.
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by generalsjoes | Sep 13, 2009 | G.I. Joe, G.I. Joe Toys, G.I. Joe: The Movie
Mysterious Stranger over at JoeBattleLines just posted new images of his recent purchase – a Rise of COBRA G.I. Joe SkySweeper w/ Air Raid. And… wow. I just officially fell in love with this vehicle.
I’ve been avoiding the repaints, simply because I have most of the originals, and with the price of vehicles these days, I just need to be more selective, but they made enough tooling changes on the Firebat to really make this an awesome new vehicle…and being at the Alpha price point to boot, this is a no brainer. The enhanced engines, the landing skids…small changes, but they make an absolute WORLD of difference. Add in the figure, which is a very nice repaint of Resolute Duke from the 5-Pack, and this is definitely a set worth buying, especially for that price. Interesting that Air Raid’s file name and file card indicate that he’s Airborne, but still a minor issue for a very nice looking figure. This is an absolute winner!
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by generalsjoes | Sep 12, 2009 | G.I. Joe, G.I. Joe Toys, G.I. Joe: The Movie
Over at JoeBattleLines, MaxPower has stumbled across the KMart Exclusive 4-Pack at his local California K-Mart and was kind enough to snap some pictures of what can be found inside. The set comes with:
- Desert Camouflage Heavy Duty
- Duke (in MP Uniform)
- MARS Weapon Officer
- Neo-Viper
Heavy Duty is the best of the bunch, just because he comes with the best of the gear from the two previous versions! He’s got the machine gun and pistol from the Weapons Specialist (as well as the backpack w/ straps), but he’s got the heavy machine gun and grenade launcher from the Reactive Armor version.
The two COBRA’s are colored up in a strange dark brown/bronze shade which doesn’t appeal to me a whole lot, though each of them come fully equipped with their original weapons load. Duke is just kind of a toss in, I think. I’m not crazy about the MP/Zartan figure, and we’ve already got a decent desert camouflage Duke. Anyway…retail was apparently $27 or $28. Keep your eyes out if you’re interested!
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by generalsjoes | Sep 12, 2009 | G.I. Joe, G.I. Joe Toys, G.I. Joe: The Movie
Duck over on the JoeBattleLines forums has reported that he received a pair of Dragonhawks from HasbroToyShop, and there are different paint applications on both. One of them has distinct black trim on various parts of the copter like the stabilizers and engine covers. Check out his reports here, and I’ve mirrored the images below.
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I also have to echo Duck’s thoughts in the thread that the Dragonhawk is actually a really cool little helicopter regardless of its size. If you can think of it as the evolution of the Locust rather than the next Dragonfly, I think you can appreciate it a lot more. If folks had the Night Attack Chopper and use that as the primary assault copter with the Dragonhawks acting as smaller, quicker support crafts. In fact, Count Blacktron did the same thing in an image below.
Regardless, the copter is neat, regardless of its size. The $25.00 is still a hard one to absorb, considering the Locust was a lot less back in the day, but still a neat vehicle for what it is.
by generalsjoes | Sep 10, 2009 | G.I. Joe, G.I. Joe Toys, G.I. Joe: The Movie
Chrysophylax from JoeCustoms comes through again with a nice pictorial and review for a recently released Rise of COBRA figure, this time the Arctic Snake Eyes. I haven’t gotten my hands on this one yet, but he looks pretty cool, I gotta say, especially for an arctic figure.
Check out the hosted images below.
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