G.I. Joe A Real American Hero

[DARTH ANIBAL]

I pity you guys who didn't grow up with 12" G.I. Joe....No Cobra, no laserblasts, no "now I know" crap. Just guns-n-stuff.

You mean the dolls?

I kid.

The vintage toy store I sold my GI Joe collection to a few years ago (I had every figure and vehicle except the Flagg and the giant two part space shuttle launch complex thing) recently sold a Flagg, brand new in its box with the original like $109.99 price tag on it. They got $10,000 for it.

$110? Was that really the retail on that? That seems cheap, even by '80s standards. I swore that thing was like $300.

The Ferret ATV was one of my favorites and I had to mail away for it along with the hooded version of Cobra Commander. 4 to 6 weeks of waiting for a package to arrive was like a small eternity to a kid, but man was it worth it on both counts!

4-6 weeks at that age was like the months long wait for some props now.

COBRA Raven. It's a lovely amalgam of the M-21 (reconnaissance drone-launching variant of the A-12/SR-71) and the Firefox. It is my eventual goal to have a proportional one in 1:72 scale with my other aircraft.

Honorable mention to the Dragonfly, as it began my decades-long love affair with the AH-1 Cobra (oo -- irony!).

Both of my favorites, there. The Night Raven remains the champ to this day.

 

[Laspector]

Well, his Joes were in scale with Barbie, so he probably had a really sweet dreamhouse for them to play in and a cool pink corvette to drive.

Well, I personally didn't have the Barbie stuff, but the cute little girl next door did. And yes, we played "naked dolls" alot!

So again, another point in favor of the big JOES!

 

[DARTH ANIBAL]

Well, I personally didn't have the Barbie stuff, but the cute little girl next door did. And yes, we played "naked dolls" alot!

So again, another point in favor of the big JOES!

 

[Gimpdiggity]

$110? Was that really the retail on that? That seems cheap, even by '80s standards. I swore that thing was like $300.

Yep, that’s what I thought, too...the $109.99 had to be wrong, surely it was actually like $249 or more.

What was really odd to me was I’m PRETTY sure the price tag was from Menard’s...which I’ve always known as a home improvement store.

 

[JoeG]

I remember one year on either my birthday or at Christmas my aunt telling me that she had almost bought me the carrier, but my mom put the kibosh on it. She bought me the X-19 Phantom instead, which was still pretty damn cool.

 

[astroboy]

I genuinely liked the second G.I. Joe movie. The one with the rock

 

[Sluis Van Shipyards]

I just looked through the photos at yojoe.com trying to pick my favorite vehicle. As a kid it was definitely the Rattler because it looked like an A-10. Now, its so hard to pick.

Same here! I never got the blue one, but finally got the tiger striped version they put out later. After I had that al the others were grounded. I had the Sky Striker, the Raven, the Phantom, and the Rattler. After I saw Top Gun I got ticked the Sky Striker's wings would only swing forward when you put the gear down so I cut the gear off with wire cutters so I could swing the wings when I was flying it around.

 

[JoeG]

Oh man, the Tiger Force Rattler! I remember that one. I called it the Bumblebee. I wish I still had the A-10 snap tight model I chopped up and turned into a Cobra Rattler. It was pretty rough, but I loved it.

 

[Gimpdiggity]

If any of you guys have access to a 3D printer, there’s a dude over on Thingiverse that has made models of a lot of G.I. Joe stuff.

Jabberwock's Thingiverse Profile

I bought a Makerbot in 2013 and joined this site in February 2015. The first 3D model I ever designed/printed was in 1994 on a machine the size of a car that cost around a million dollars. Now I can make the same part on a machine small enough to fit on my desk at home. It's a good time to be...

www.thingiverse.com

I printed and painted several. They’re good models, but my printer is fairly limited so I can’t do a lot of intricate details.

 

[Solos blaster]

I had more than a few figures growing up but few vehicles. I did have the tiger striped ferret, a second hand Raven which didn't have any missiles or the bottom half of the cockpit but I had the bottom portion of some building set that fit nearly perfectly. Construx maybe? I had some weird VTOL thing from Destro's Iron Grenadiers or whatever they were called. I always wanted the Rattler and Water Moccasin, the HISS tank, they always looked the coolest. GI JOE may have been the good guys, but Cobra always had the coolest vehicles. The W.H.A.L.E was awesome though.

Yea it WAS Contrux!. The wedge shaped cockpit portion from the front of this toy would perfectly friction fit into the Raven so I could still have someone pilot it lol.


Also, been watching a few of the episodes on Youtube and man, all I can think of is their budget must be crazy!! They go through skystrikers and most other vehicles like crazy. Probably average 2 lost per episode lol.

 

[Gimpdiggity]

So you guys might get a kick out of this.

When I had my collection, my dad and I played with them a lot. Like, so much that we regularly took inventory of figures to make sure we had no soldiers MIA. With a sandbox out back, a pool, and numerous areas in the house as part of the battlefield, it was easy for guys to get forgotten while they were in a strategic ambush position.

Every few weeks we’d have a few missing, then they’d turn up the next inventory. I guess both my dad and child me thought the other was finding them and putting them back.

It wasn’t until years later I was catching up with an old friend that lived down the street from me with his brother. Their parents were really religious, and wouldn’t let them have “violent” toys...so what they had done for years was each take one of my figures home every time they came over, then the next time they’d bring those ones back and each take a different one.

So our missing figures were actually being taken hostage by kids down the street, who were using my collection as some type of GI Joe public library system.

I thought it was pretty funny when I found that out.

 

[Solos blaster]

So you guys might get a kick out of this.

When I had my collection, my dad and I played with them a lot. Like, so much that we regularly took inventory of figures to make sure we had no soldiers MIA. With a sandbox out back, a pool, and numerous areas in the house as part of the battlefield, it was easy for guys to get forgotten while they were in a strategic ambush position.

Every few weeks we’d have a few missing, then they’d turn up the next inventory. I guess both my dad and child me thought the other was finding them and putting them back.

It wasn’t until years later I was catching up with an old friend that lived down the street from me with his brother. Their parents were really religious, and wouldn’t let them have “violent” toys...so what they had done for years was each take one of my figures home every time they came over, then the next time they’d bring those ones back and each take a different one.

So our missing figures were actually being taken hostage by kids down the street, who were using my collection as some type of GI Joe public library system.

I thought it was pretty funny when I found that out.

A related story....

My aunt hated guns when I was a kid and she also babysat us(she ran a daycare), over a couple summers and Christmas vacation. I think I was in 1st and 2nd grade. Anyways if I or the other two boys about my age brought our figures or vehicles over she would take their weapons and missiles away from us and put them in sandwich bags until we were picked up. We were heartbroken but we quickly learned to use the sculpted guns on the figures and vehicles. She got annoyed still hearing the "pew-pew" sounds but at least we had no guns :/ .

 

[DARTH ANIBAL]

I genuinely liked the second G.I. Joe movie. The one with the rock

I thought it was MUCH better than the first. Still, not really good, but it played like a live action version of the cartoon. As long as I think of it that way, I can tolerate it.

 

[astroboy]

I thought it was MUCH better than the first. Still, not really good, but it played like a live action version of the cartoon. As long as I think of it that way, I can tolerate it.

I absolutely loved the scene when Jonathon Price got all of the other leaders to detonate their nukes

 

[Paul Andrew]

That cartoon was terrible and I love it.

 

[Sluis Van Shipyards]

I absolutely loved the scene when Jonathon Price got all of the other leaders to detonate their nukes

Yeah that was a cool scene. I didn't have a problem with those movies other than trying to make them realistic instead of using vehicles that looked like the GI JOE vehicles. I mean you have someone named "Lady Jaye" and everyone acts like that's normal, but oh no don't have a goofy looking vehicle! Also Adriane Pallicki deserves a standing ovation for that dress. The Snake Eyes/Jinx mountain part was outstanding and felt like the cartoon.

 

[Psab keel]

That's a great point too. With a concept like that, why didn't they just go over the top and make the vehicles look like the ones from the show? I mean the characters were already doing some pretty outlandish things, why not just go full boar?

 

[DARTH ANIBAL]

That's a great point too. With a concept like that, why didn't they just go over the top and make the vehicles look like the ones from the show? I mean the characters were already doing some pretty outlandish things, why not just go full boar?

Wasn't there at least a H.I.S.S.? It's been years, and I only saw the movie twice, but I feel like I remember one in there.

 

[JoeG]

There was, but it looked like this:

 

[DARTH ANIBAL]

There was, but it looked like this:

View attachment 1300672

Still, pretty cool.