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Joe DeClassified Booth at the Edmonton Expo was beyond awesome

This past weekend was the Edmonton Comic and Entertainment Expo, which featured a terrific appearance by the fine folks at JoeDeClassified.

They posted a wealth of amazing art and pre-production items, and provided some images for folks to check out, even those of us who couldn’t attend.

Check out all of the images over on the JoeDeClassified Facebook Page, I’ve mirrored just a couple of them below.

Joe DeClassified Exclusive Sightline vintage style figure details

Quite possibly the coolest item to come out of JoeCon 2017 was the vintage o-ring style Sightline which was available at the JoeDeClassified booth throughout the convention weekend.

They gave out the figure all weekend long and many fans were able to take advantage of the offer, but they still have a few hundred figures left over.  Naturally, many fans (especially those who couldn’t make it to Orlando) were wondering how they might get their hands on one of these fantastic looking figures.

JoeDeClassified has revealed the info!  Hop on over to the DeClassified Facebook Page to find the full details on how you can try and get your very own vintage style Sightline figure.  I think DeClass is handling this perfectly, finding a way to get this great action figure into the hands of kids, DeClass supporters and G.I. Joe fans everywhere as fairly as possible.

The full details can be found below.

The Much-Anticipated Sightline Post:

As mentioned previously, Joe Declassified has approximately 400 Sightline figures to give away. This was almost wholly unanticipated. We expected most if not all of the figures to be given away at Joe Con, and the intention of the figure WAS to be a Joe Con exclusive. Since that didn’t happen, we’ve been batting about solutions with a few primary goals in mind:

1. Get Sightline into the hands of as many kids as possible. Our mission is to promote the brand, and a huge part of this is to engage a new generation of collectors.

2. Distribute Sightline as fairly as possible. We realize that not everyone will be happy with our process no matter what we choose, but believe us when we say that we’re going to do our level best.

3. Solve the logistical hurdle. As the G.I. Joe community’s only not-for-profit, we’re not exactly rolling in cash. Mailing out 400 individual figures, even at the most conservative average of $4 each, would cost us $1600. That’s a price tag we cannot afford.

All that said, we have some priorities for distribution that need to be waded through before we begin to send out figures to the masses. Also, we have realities that you may not be aware of:

1. We cannot sell the figures. Our arrangement to use the Sightline name precludes us from selling them. Yes, having you “donate” directly for that purpose is still selling. We honor the spirit of our agreements, not just the letter. You may, of course, donate at any time, and in doing so support future projects, but it will have no impact on you receiving a Sightline figure or not.

2. We required financial backers in order to make this work. Some of them chipped in CONSIDERABLE amounts of money to make this project happen, and do not themselves have a figure.

SO…..our current distribution plan is:

1. We’ll be sending out a figure at our cost to the remaining backers who do not have a figure (9 of them).

2. We’ll be making a few available to our staff that participated in the planning process, who also have not yet received the figure they invested their effort into.

3. We will make figures available to Gary’s close friends. We know who they are.

4. We plan to make a SIGNIFICANT amount available at shows later this year – Assembly Required, Toy de Jour’s G.I. Joe day in Chicago, etc. This will allow us to hand many directly to children. Probably 1/2 the remaining figures will go out this way.

5. To those that have donated to Joe Declassified prior to 13 June 2017 – Many of you donated money over the last decade with no expectation of any direct return, so you will be eligible to receive a figure. We will contact YOU to determine if you wish to have a figure, but will need you to cover the shipping costs.

6. Contests! We’re going to run several contests, to ensure that anyone who doesn’t otherwise get a figure has a shot. Customs, art, writing, scavenger hunts, trivia, etc. If you’re not good at one thing, we want to find something you can participate and compete in. We do plan to deliberately aim several of these at children. Winning the contests will make you eligible to receive the figure, but you’ll need to cover shipping.

There are a couple ground rules to also be considered:

1. If you received a figure already, you are ineligible to receive another.

2. There is no “list” for you to get on. We appreciate the interest in this figure, but our inboxes have been flooded with PMs from fans asking for one and frankly, we won’t be taking these requests into consideration as we continue to distribute our remaining figures. We appreciate your support and are impressed with your dedication to G.I. Joe, but your level of fan-hood will not be a deciding factor.

3. This process will likely take us MONTHS. Patience will be a virtue. Each step of the way, we will need to re-assess costs, processes, quantity remaining, and account for production errors. Please remember, this is all volunteer labor done by guys with day jobs.

We also plan to auction off several items in the immediate future to directly benefit the Capua/Head family. We have Jason Sobol’s original Sightline art and Artist’s proof, the hand painted Sightline prototype, and 2 Alyosha customs of the Goggled One himself that were donated to us for this purpose.

We’ll keep you in the loop as we go!

First carded image of Dollar Store Storm Shadow repaint

With the almost infamous Dollar Store G.I. Joe figures only being spotted sporadically throughout the United States at various Dollar General stores, there are a lot of questions about the mysterious repaints that Gyre Viper showed us quite a while ago.  Are these variants of current product?  A second wave?  A Family Dollar exclusive?

Most of these questions we do not know the answers to (but will hopefully find out at JoeCon next week!) but Gyre-Viper has now shared with GeneralsJoes a carded image of the upcoming Storm Shadow repaint.  Obviously taking a page from the T’Ginzu book, this great looking version of Storm Shadow is shown here in packaged form for the first time, revealing that these are being designed and packaged just like the first wave, with no real alterations.

For potential confidentiality reasons, Gyre-Viper will not be sharing the date stamp, or assortment number, considering these are as of yet unreleased items and things could have changed after he got his hands on this sample.  He does mention that the code names are exactly the same, and the back of the card is exactly the same (showing the original paint schemes, not the repaint colors) which seems to indicate that these are indeed variants or running changes, and are not a full fledged second wave of product.

Quite an interesting look at a series of figures that there seems to be more questions than answers about.  I really look forward to talking to Hasbro next week to see if we can get more details.

Speaking of Gyre-Viper and the Convention next week, if you’re going to be in New Orleans make sure you check out the Joe Declassified booth!  If you love unreleased product, pre-production product and just finding out some great hidden details about the entire history of G.I. Joe you won’t find a better place to do that than at the DeClassified booth.  With some awesome figures on display and some genuine fans of the hobby manning the booth it will be a fantastic opportunity to see some cool toys and talk to some cool people.

All of the information about the DeClass booth can be found right here on JoeDeClassified.com.

Make sure you check it out!  Hopefully I’ll see you in New Orleans.