2023 Fail Safe

I regret backing the Skystiker.  It's been a year since it shipped and has now aged into the community.  And, I should never have bought it.  At the time, I thought that several of the figures from the set were going to be $100+ on the secondary market.  That didn't happen.  In fact, many of the figures are stupidly cheap.  So cheap that many people who speculated in the set have stopped selling the figures because some were selling for below the retail cost of Pulse era retro figures.  As such, the $500 I spent to get two of the Skystriker sets would have been far better spent buying up the figures I wanted on the aftermarket.  Sometimes, you make a bad decision, even though it's based on the best information available at the time.  But, the real regret over the Skystriker is that the figures are just piss-poor quality.  Which is a damn shame because a figure like Fail Safe should have been one of the better releases we've seen in the entirety of the 2000's.

When I say piss poor quality, I'm specifically speaking to the materials used on the figures.  I do think that all of the Skystriker figures were designed well.  The team took absolutely no chances on them.  Which means that the figures are all solid.  But, there's also nothing that really stands out.  Each figure kind of feels like he's been released before in some way.  But, in a line that loves its repaints and homages, that's what collectors tend to buy.  The main issue is that the plastic used is very soft.  You can definitely tell that Hasbro never really intended for collectors to actually open the figures.  This indicates a massive lack of understanding of the 3 3/4" collecting community.  We've never been a carded first group like Star Wars and Marvel collectors tend to be.  We are openers first with a 2nd carded version being the exception rather than the norm.  

And, that's why the poor plastic bothers me so much.  I actually want to use these figures in photos and dioramas.  I'd love to have them displayed around the collection.  But, they just aren't quite up to snuff.  I'm afraid of paint loss just from using the accessories.  And, some of the gear is so poor that you can't even get it onto the figure without risking breakage.  I have no use for figures that I can't use.  I've never felt that Joes were worthy of an artistic display when they were still in their packaging.  Really, I kept cardbacks because I was too lazy to cut out the filecards that I did want to keep.  I never felt the card artwork was anything other than a sometimes reference point for subtle nuances of the toy mold.  

One of the most damning indictments of the Skystriker is that you simply don't see it in photos...anywhere.  While the Instagram G.I. Joe community is much smaller these days than it was even just in the late 2010's, it's still large enough to spot trends and see which toys have caught on with collectors.  And, the actual Skystriker hasn't.  Really, the only part of the Skystriker that's caught on with collectors is the Cobra Ramp Rat.  (You also see the Mickey Mouse Cobra Commander from time to time.)  You never see dioramas with the actual plane.  And, with about the same number of Skystikers out there as here were 2000's era Toys R Us exclusives, you should see the planes appear in the online content that is still created.  But, to be fair, I never even put my planes together.  I checked the parts, pulled out the figures to open, segregated the missile loading vehicles and haven't even bothered to look at the airplane pieces in the year since I buried them in a basement closet in February of 2023.  

The one success of Fail Safe is the head.  Hasbro utterly failed to produce nice heads in the 2000's.  They were too big, too small or just didn't fit the body on which they were placed.  It's really surprising how consistently bad the new heads were between 1998 and 2010.  But, Fail Safe's is OK.  It's heavily based on Ripcord's head.  And, that's probably why it works.  They just used a solid design, made some tweaks and called it good.  But, that made it a success.  This figure looks like he could have been released in 1984.  And, that's about the highest compliment you can give to newly sculpted pieces on retro Joes.

It, of course, fails because the head is painted.  Painted heads suck. They look terrible, scuff easily and generally make the face just look flat and fuzzy.  And, since Fail Safe has a very nice helmet, putting the helmet on and taking it off is likely to  wear down his face paint over the next few years.  Hasbro will simply not give up on painted faces, even when they are comically bad like the Baroness and Zarana.  The only upside to Fail Safe's helmet is that it's made of absurdly flimsy plastic.  So, it's less likely to scrape the paint away when you want to actually put it onto the figure's head.

The rest of Fail Safe is pretty nicely blended.  The flight vest is well detailed.  It's reminiscent of the 1992 Ace body...only if it had been sculpted a decade earlier.  The best part of the figure's torso, though, is that it features some solid paint applications.  It features blue, silver, black and two shades of green.  The colors blend well together.  Fail Safe isn't going to draw much attention to himself with his coloring.  But, the muted tones suit the figure's specialty as well as any other color combo.  I'm worried about paint chipping on the soft plastic.  Until then, though, Fail Safe is a nice match for many early Joe vehicles, including more traditional flying machines like the Dragonfly.

One of the great nuances of the Joe line is that there is a definitive color palette split between the vintage Joes of 1982-1994 and the repaint era and later figures that have come since.  Two main differences are that the later colors are flatter and less vibrant.  Even if you look at 1982 releases, the colors are powerful and eye-catching.  In 1997 and later, there were some really nice colors.  But, they had a flatter finish that mutes them.  So, even sets of figures that feature a rainbow of colors still tend to blend together.  The designers of vintage Joes have often spoken about how the appearance of the entire line on a retail shelf was of huge importance to them.  They, specifically, chose colors that complemented and accentuated each other to create a pleasing visual experience for the customer.  In the post vintage Joe world, though, the figures are more designed to look similar than they are to be part of an overall tapestry.

This has lead to a schism in the two lines.  It's tough to mingle vintage and post-vintage Joe figures because the base approach to color was so different.  There are some figures that do look good together.  But, the combos are a lot harder to find than if you mingle Joes from 1983 and 1993 together.  The Pulse releases also skew towards the post vintage color approach.  While Fail Safe features a wonderful hue of green, it is also rather flat in finish.  So, he looks great with 1997 and later figures.  Bu, when posed among 1984 figures, he tends to stand out as an oddball.  I'm certain that the softer plastic that been used on the post-1994 releases is part of the difference in appearance.  But, I also think that some of it is purposeful choice.  Hasbro was lead to believe that collectors wanted "gritty, realistic" colors...even though that was never the aesthetic of the vintage line.  But, Hasbro went with it and the glossy finish that made the vintage figures so eye-catching was tossed aside.

Fail Safe included just two accessories.  One was a newly sculpted pistol that really doesn't work.  They should have resculpted the 1986 Hawk pistol or the 1987 Chuckles pistol for the figure.  But, the new weapon features a handle that's too large and that makes it look incredibly awkward when placed in the figure's hands.  The other piece of gear is a redone 1983 Airborne helmet.  It's really nice.  It is so nice that it works way better on the contemporary Night Force Ripcord figure.  The green matches Ripcord's hue and breaks up the figure's appearance when he has the green helmet instead of his included black version.  I'd have liked an air mask with the figure as it makes no sense that the Skystriker's main pilot would require a pressurized flight suit but his battery mate wouldn't even need an additional oxygen supply.  But, a Ripcord airmask works on the figure.  It's just disappointing that a premium release didn't include a better complement of accessories.

In handling the Pulse era figures, it's pretty obvious that it's a softer, cheaper grade of plastic than vintage.  It's very similar to the plastic used between  2000 and 2007.  And, that's going to be a problem.  The figures from the repaint era are not holding up well.  Discoloration is common, even on still carded or packaged figures.  This is likely to also occur to the Pulse era figures.  Fail Safe will be interesting.  His green color is less likely to yellow than, say, the blue color used for Scarlett.  But, we'll see how the upper arms hold up as that's the first area we see degradation on the repaint figures from 15 to 20 years ago.  But, even Hasbro's flagship Star Wars lines that use similar plastic tend to discolor.  It's just the nature of the materials.  And, a likely inevitable end for all figures that were made from it.

As 2023 began, I was certain we'd see another 3 3/4" Joe Haslab.  The Skystriker performed well.  And, the aftermarket malaise was not yet known when Hasbro would have been designing the follow up.  But, Hasbro shifted and moved all their resources to the 6" scale.  And, it's hard to argue with the results as the Hiss Tank and Dragonfly have both funded without any hint of hesitation.  The people who work on the Joe line will better pad their resumes with toys like those than  they will with recreations of 40 year old toys in a dying scale.  And, the complete and utter failure of the Cobra Mothership also calls into question whether the 3 3/4" collector base could support another Haslab to the tune of 17 thousand units.  It sucks that we'll never get an updated Whale, Rattler or Moray to replace the ones rotting away in our basements and attics.  And, I don't really get any joy knowing that we did get a plane with no play value.

So, I figured Fail Safes would start out around $70 or more for a carded figure.  And, I also expected them to climb to over $100 after a year.  That...didn't happen.  Now, you can easily buy a carded figure for around $40 shipped.  If you can find someone selling it at auction, they'll go for $15-$25...usually near the lower end.  After 20 years, we've seen the Toys R Us figures climb to stupidly high prices.  But, I doubt Fail Safe will follow that trend.  In 20 years, Joe collectors will be mostly retired with many staring down their 70's.  Yes, that's right.  We're now closer to our 70's than our 20's...even if we feel like our 20's were yesterday and our 70's are light years away.  But, 70 year olds won't be buying collectibles for speculative prices. And, let's face it, a lot of us will be dead and gone with our collections tossed away for pennies on the dollar as our kids and grandkids won't want to deal with the incredible hassle of liquidating a collection of crumbling and yellowing toys.  

It's still possible that this figure will find some aftermarket life.  There was a massive speculator buy in for the Skystriker since a lot of Star Wars fans had some money to spend when the Rancor failed just days before the Skystriker funded.  And, that speculative stock is lowering.  Slowly, the top figures from the Skystriker set are getting bought up.  But, there's still plenty of Fail Safe's out there.  And, if there's an event that forces more collectors to liquidate duplicates and unloved items, we'll see a flood of Skystrikers coming into the market once again.  But, if you can get a cheap Fail Safe, you should.  He's one of the best "new" figures Hasbro has done in the past 25 years.  He's not perfect.  But, he's good enough.  And, these days, that's about the best you can expect from Hasbro's attempts to salvage the legacy of the ARAH style Joes.