Rarities - Funskool Red and Yellow Beach Head

Early Funskool figures feature a lot of weird colorings.  Funskool had a bit more carte blanche to create toys for their home market.  Slowly, though, Hasbro intervened and dictated the appearance of certain figures and characters.  So, offbeat color designs on some of the earliest Funskool figures were changed so that the characters were a closer match to their appearances in cartoons, advertisements and the comic book.  

Among those early oddballs are a Beach Head with a red head and a yellow vest.  There's no reason given for the color change other than Funskool liked bright colors.  Even the figure's card artwork is unchanged from the standard colors.  But, the drastic red and yellow make for a visually disconcerting Beach Head figure.  The color palette was changed for Beach Head.  And, the more common Funskool appearance is the lime green figure that's become my default for the character.

The Red and Yellow Beach Head remains expensive.  For a time, he was among the most expensive figures in the entire line.  He's still up there.  But, he's lost some of the lustre that he enjoyed in the mid 2000's.  

There are dozens (maybe even hundreds!) of Funskool Beach Head variants.  Some, like the red and yellow figure, are sweeping changes that are instantly noticeable.  But, even within the figures from the 2000's, there are slight color changes between production batches.  You'll find brown eyes, black eyes, dark grey explosives, light grey explosives and every hue in between.  His leg camo colors can vary from barely perceivable to outright distracting.  Beach Head might be the most varied figure in the entire line.  So, those who love him have a lot to track down.  But, this red and yellow figure remains the most popular and expensive of those variants and isn't a figure you see much of these days.

Rarities - Pre-Production T'Gin Zu

The 1993 vehicle assortment wasn't much.  Most of the entries were pretty bad.  And, the Ninja Force vehicles were among the worst.  As such, the drivers of those vehicles, T'Gin Zu and the Red Ninja are relatively hard to come by.  Few people collect them in earnest, though.  So, their scarcity is largely offset by lack of demand.

It is that disinterest in the figures that allows for oddities like the original paint job on T'Gin-Zu to slip by collector's eyes.  And, the fact that it's prominently displayed on the back of the 1993 Pile Driver box just shows how little of an impact a figure like T'Gin-Zu has on the collector zeitgeist.

Below, though, you see T'Gin-Zu's original paint job.  It is much more orange than the production figure.  It appears to be a straight re-use of the 1992 Stormshadow paint masks, just in orange in yellow.  And, frankly, it makes for a better figure.  This all orange version would have leaned into the neon-ness of the '90's and created a figure that would have found at least a few fans among the more accepting collectors who grew up in the '90's.  Instead, Hasbro kind of chickened out and gave us a more muted T'Gin-Zu offering.

As a bonus, the pre-production figure also appeared in the 1993 Toy Fair catalog.  The more you look at it, the more you realize it's a shame we didn't get this coloring.  The production T'Gin Zu isn't a figure anyone really prioritizes.  So, having him be even more outlandish would have made him more fun.  Maybe we'll get a factory custom that's like this.  It's out best hope for ever seeing an homage to this unproduced design.

Rarities - Remco Ice Wonder/Yeti

Remco made an eclectic group of o-ring figures.  They were designed to be a cheap, non-licensed alternative to G.I. Joe figures that were available at discount chains.  (Many were K-Mart or Sears exclusives.)  Many of their early figures were, well, terrible.  The sculpting was bad, the quality was crap and the figures were boring.  But, as the company matured, so did the quality of their action figure offerings.  While I feel Remco peaked with their S.I.T. series, the reality is that many of their later designs are excellent.  Sadly, they are still defined by lower quality materials and wonky hands.  But, there's some interesting figures for collectors to discover.  Among them is the character of Ice Wonder: also known as Yeti.  Below are some samples that have captured my interest.

My main draw to this figure is the eerie similarity he has to Sub Zero.  But, the Remco figure debuted first.  While the idea of white and baby blue coloring on an arctic figure that also features a fur hooded coat isn't all that unique, the fact that Hasbro pretty much copied the exact design for Sub Zero seems like less of a coincidence and more an instance of influence.  But, all the military toy lines of the era seemed to borrow from one another.  It was just, usually, all the other knock-off companies copying Hasbro instead of vice-versa.

Once the figure appeared on my radar, I began to notice that he existed in a few different forms.  He was released in at least two different series: American Defense and U.S.  Forces.  (There might be more, Remco is a morass of poor documentation with few resources available.)  The few I've found seem to be named Ice Wonder for U.S. Forces and Yeti for American Defense.  But, again, there could be lots of variations among the packaging and naming, too.

Here you can see a carded Yeti and Ice Wonder:

The figure itself is full of variants.  Among them are different waists, heads with either a flesh colored neck or a white neck, and a sea of lower leg variants where the fur collars are positioned differently or don't exist at all.

Here are some head and waist variants.

Here is a figure with no fur collar on his boots.

Here is one with offset fur boot collars.  One is set at the knee and the other is set just below the knee.

Here is a sample where the fur boot collar is right above the ankle on both feet.

I'm sure there are more variants out there.  In the early days of Joe collecting, it wasn't uncommon  to get a lot of someone's childhood figures that would also include some Remco offerings.  As those collections were bought, sorted and resold, the Remco figures were removed.  Most were just tossed into junk bins as they had no collectability.  The result is that now, it's kind of hard to find decently conditioned Remco figures.  And, you tend to have to pay for them.  Back when you could buy a shoebox full of these guys for $4, it was fun to track down variants and various releases.  Now, it's more expensive that the end result is worth.  

Remco releases can be a challenging rabbit hole for a collector, though.  The Joe line is fairly well documented.  (Though, finding the documentation is now becoming hard due to the walled gardens & private communities.)  Something like Remco can keep you occupied for years as you try to track down all the various incarnations of their releases and all the variants within each one.

Rarities - 2004 Comic Pack Cobra Trooper (Alternate Head)

In 2004, Hasbro resculpted a Cobra Trooper.  4 of them were then released as part of a Toys R Us 6 figure pack.  For $20, you got an army in a box.  Later in the year, Hasbro announced a new product: Comic Book packs.  For $10, you'd get three classic Joe figures and a reprinted issue of the Marvel Comic.  It was a novel idea and made for great products.  When the first images of the figures dropped, collectors were ecstatic.  Most of the designs looked like renditions of the characters they had always wanted.  Sadly, the Comic Packs were not a retail success.  Part of that was too much repetition in the early packs.  The other was collector malaise was setting in after a solid three year of brand growth.  

Lost in the details of the actual figures, though, was that the Cobra Trooper from the first Comic Pack had changed.  The pre-production images had shown the Trooper using the mold from the Toys R Us pack.  It made sense as Hasbro had spent the money to resculpt the new figure.  But, upon release, the actual figure brought back the classic chest and head from the original, 1983 Cobra Trooper.

Supposedly, Hasbro had found the mold for the original Cobra Trooper and Officer.  They were a bit sketchy on the details.  But, we now had the original head back after more than 20 years.  The story went that the TRU mold wasn't in the same factory as the Cobra Commander and Baroness molds.  But, there were many stories that Hasbro never verified or denied.  The end result, though, was a new parts combination for the Cobra Trooper that hadn't been released before and would return in the 2005 Night Watch set, too.  The 2004 Cobra Trooper and Officer parts combo would never appear again.  An odd fate for what was Hasbro's most successful Toys R Us exclusive set.

Personally, I never cared for this Comic Pack Trooper.  While the colors weren't terrible, his accessories were.  And, I have never liked Cobra Troopers with bare hands.  The Comic Pack Cobra Officer, who uses the same color scheme as this Trooper, is one of my favorite army builders of that era.  The difference being and appropriate rifle and gloved hands.  Little details go a long way.  The promo photo also shows two weapons that didn't end up being included with the pack: the 2 1992 Shockwave rifles posed with the Baroness and Trooper.  The production Baroness also included a knife that's not shown in the promo photo.

I do think the TRU Trooper mold was better than the mold used for the production Trooper.  The smooth arms and large waist didn't do the figure any favors.  The TRU Trooper used bulkier Thunder arms and a waist that was designed for the figure's legs.  In this case, the pre-production mold would have been better.  I'm not sure I'd still have any of them.  But, it would have been a better figure than the original mold based figure.

Rarities - Brazilian Duque

Most collectors are familiar with the Brazilian Tiger Force exclusives.  The Tiger Force Shipwreck (Marujo) and Airtight (Ar Puro) have been among the most popular Brazilian exclusives since the 1990's.  What is often forgotten, though, is that there is another member of the Forca Tigre: Duque.

This character is most often forgotten because, upon first glance, it's not all that much different from the 1988 Duke figure.  But, the Estrela figure has some differences that make it stand out.  Most noticeably, the 3/4 sleeves are missing.  Instead, Duque gets new lower arms from Ripcord.  So, he has full length sleeves.  The colors are slightly brighter than the Tiger Force Duke.  And, instead of the classic M-32, he includes a version of Crazylegs' rifle.  He doesn't include the stock, though.   In addition to his helmet, backpack and binoculars, he also came with some face paint for Brazilian kids to paint themsevles up in Tiger Force camo.

Duque is a figure that's always been relatively easy to find.  This is likely a function of him just being less popular than Ar Puro or Marujo.  But, you can find mint and complete versions with relative easy.  But, Brazilian dealers tend to overprice him.  And, they try to command similar prices for Duque as they get for Marujo and Ar Puro.  The figure just isn't that popular, though, and often goes unsold for high prices.  As Brazilian Joes go, Duque is firmly in that middle ground of something that has just enough of a variant from the Hasbro figure for you to notice.  But, not so much that he rises to the level of full on Brazilian exclusive characters like Ar Puro or Marujo.