My Least Favorite Accessories

The Joe line is nothing but a string of classic, amazing toys.  There isn't a year of the vintage line that doesn't have a treasure or two.  And, frankly, the same is true of the repaint era.  But, mingled among the awesomeness of the designs are some duds.  And, they start from very early on.  So, this time around, I'll be looking at my least favorite accessories from the Joe line.  To be fair, I'm going to limit some of the JvC era weapons and gear.  Because, that time frame did get a lot wrong.  And, you'll see that some of my dislike of vintage weapons was reinforced and even augmented by those weapons overuse in the 2000's.  

1984 Baroness Rifle

So, I've disliked the Baroness' rifle since 1984.  When my younger brother got her in the early part of that year at a Value City Department store (I got Firefly!), I didn't know much about the character.  But, they had three new figures and he chose the Baroness over Roadlock.  (My youngest brother got Roadblock.)  When we got the figures home, Firefly's amazing gear amplified one of the best figures in the line.  Roadblock's gear was an amazing feat of engineering that magnified an otherwise mundane figure into an all time classic.  And Baroness' gear...well...it sucked.  Her overly large rifle simply didn't work.  And, it was just that it wouldn't fit with the slightly smaller female form used for the Baroness.  It didn't fit any other figure, either.  From the small handle to the oversized stock, the gun was simply not one that worked well with any figure.  And, when you contrast this to how amazing the rifle looked on the Baroness cart art, it was impossible to reconcile the differences.  What should have been awesome was just worthless in actual plastic form.  And, when the comparisons that circumstances dictated would be against Firefly and Roadblock gear: Baroness' rifle simply stood no chance.

As her gun wasn't up to snuff, the Baroness figure fell to a similar fate in my collection.  Back in the mid 1980's, it wasn't common to have extra accessories lying around.  So, it wasn't like I could give the figure a spare Destro pistol.  Battle Gear did help this...to a point.  But, I never liked the pairing of the blue pistols from the 1984 Battle Gear set with the all black Baroness figure.  Plus, since her rifle stretched out her hands, she couldn't even hold the Destro pistol.  So, the Baroness became an afterthought.

Fast forward to the repaint era.  The first two uses of the Baroness mold included her classic weapon.  And, I'm OK with this.  While the rifle sucks, it was iconic to the Baroness.  So, including it with her wasn't terrible.  The softer plastic of the 1997 and later figures also allowed the figures to better hold the weapon.  So, it had a slight redemption arc.  But, then, inexplicably, Hasbro fell in love with the rifle and started including it with many other figures.  The worst example of this was the Viper figures in Waves 1.5, 2 and 7.75.  People army built these Vipers en masse.  And, they were stuck with terrible, terrible weapons that didn't really work with the figure and weren't even close approximations of the Viper's classic weapon's look.  

And, I ended up with dozens of rifles that were useless.  When you take something you dislike and circumstances dictate you acquire an absurd, additional among of that something...well...that dislike to turns to spite and then outright hatred.  So, there's no salvation for the Baroness' rifle.  It's going to hold my least liked accessory spot until the bitter, bitter end.

1982 Grunt M-16

What!  Yes, I know this is an affront to the very essence of the Joe line.  But, I've never been overly fond of the original M-16 that came with Grunt.  From the beginning, it was a thumb breaker with a thick, round handle and a short, fat stock.  It was, easily, my least favorite accessory from the original 13 figures.  And, time hasn't been kind to it at all.  

My biggest example of why Grunt's gun sucks is that in 1985, Hasbro made a far better M-16 that was included with Footloose.  This weapon was everything the original rifle was not.  And, it forever rendered Grunt's weapon obsolete.  Grunt's M-16 can really only be used by 1982 and 1983 figures.  Anything released after that is just out of scale for the accessory.  If you think about the timeframe, the M-16 should have been the de facto standard for all G.I. Joe figures.  Instead, this role fell to Snow Job's XMLR.  The original M-16 just didn't work well with figures.  Grunt gets a bit of pass since it was his.  But, when you realize how good all the original figures look with Stalker's M-32, the limitations of the M-16 become even more apparent.  I've never gone out of my way to pick up spare copies of this accessory like I have for every other weapon released with the original 13 figures.  It just isn't something I find value in.

1988 Voltar's gun:

I very much dislike this weapon.  It's not the gold color.  Instead, it's just the overall design.  And, the fact that it can't decide if it's a pistol or a rifle.  In general, I'm not a fan of larger weapons that lack stocks.  They are hard for the figures to hold.  And, they always pose awkwardly.  As a kid, I wanted to like Voltar's weapon because it was new.  But, as I was older and out of Joes when my brother brought it home, my critical eye was more fine tuned.  And, the weapon never clicked with me.

In the 1990's, the weapon found tons of reuse on various weapon trees.  It was always a disappointment to get a cool, new figure and find out one of his weapons was from Voltar.  In fact, I have quite a few trees (or, I did, until the dog ate them!!!) where the Voltar weapon was still attached even after I had removed all the other accessories.  I simply didn't care for the weapon and would rather have old, beat up figures with no weapons than take the time to give them the spare Voltar weapons that I had on the trees.  I loathe the weapon to this day and don't use it with any of the 1990's army builders who included it among their gear complement.  It always looks weird and detracts from any figure holding it.

1991 Grunt Rifle

Hmmm, Grunt appears twice in this list.  I wonder if there's something there in my subconscious about the character.  Or, if Hasbro just misfired on his various weapons.  It's probably not Grunt, though.  As, my introduction to this weapon was on the 1993 and 1994 weapon trees that I tracked down in the mid 1990's.  At the time, I loved the "new" weapons that I found on these trees.  Having missed most of the 1988-1992 Joes, all of his gear seemed like it was newly designed for the figures with which it was included.  There were so many good weapons.  But, this overly large weapon that had debuted with the 1991 Grunt was not one of them.  It was too large, difficult for figures to hold in cool ways and just a blocky, uninteresting design.  I loved having overly powered weapons during this time.  But, I could never reconcile this Grunt gun.  And, it seemed like every 1993 figure I bought included it.  So, I had a ton of them and couldn't use them.

This weapon's appearance also made me realize that one of the reasons why I had this weapon and Voltar's weapon so much was because they were so ubiquitous in my mid 1990's purchases.  At the time, the extra weapons from the trees were appreciated because I had a shoebox of dingy figures who lacked accessories.  The trees solved for that.  But, when I got duds like this Grunt rifle, it was a wasted slot and my older beaters couldn't be weaponized for use against my new acquisitions.

2003 Chief Torpedo Rifle

Be honest...you had no idea what rifle was even included with this figure until you went to the photos below.  And, in full transparency, I'm not 100% sure if the weapon actually debuted with this Torpedo figure.  I didn't want to expend the energy to be certain.  It was included with a ton of  figures in the 2000's and is available in a multitude of colors  Regardless, I despise this weapon.  The reasons, though, are more nuanced.

At its core, this weapon, actually, isn't bad.  The detailing is amazing.  The scale is right on: even for vintage figures.  It's a rifle/grenade launcher combo without being too overt.  In short, it should be great.  And, that's what makes it so maddening.  This was one of Hasbro's best efforts on newly designed weapons through 2003.  But, it had a fatal flaw that rendered it useless.  It didn't have a stock that allowed for a figure to actually hold it.  So, every time you want to use it, it flops around in the figure's hands.  And, the end result is just a ridiculous looking pose where the weapons is about to fall to the ground.

So, you got this amazingly sculpted, new weapon that was included with a ton of figures, but had no practical uses at all.  To this day, I cringe when I see this weapon  being used with figures.  It just looks so out of place.  I look back at that era and wonder what might have been.  Imagine the Neo-Viper's AK-47(ish) rifle, but with the level of sculpting and detail you see on this Chief Torpedo gun.  It might have competed for the best accessory in the line.  But, that wasn't meant to be.  There are some decent accessories from the JvC era.  But, this wasn't one of them.

Honorable Mentions:

1985 Tomax and Xamot pistol

The 2000's lead me to despise this weapon.  The pistol is comically large, doesn't look good with most figures and is out of scale for the figures with which it was always included.  But, you know who it does work perfectly with?  Tomax and Xamot.  As a kid, I loved this weapon for them.  I would only use it with them and they would only use  it.  To this day, Tomax and Xamot occupy a place in my display case: both with raised pistols to show them off.  So, you can't really have the Crimson Twins without the pistol.  And, I love it for them.  But, I HATE it for any other figure.

1990 SAW Viper Rifle

We now know that Hasbro screwed up the scale on this weapon.  And, it was not intended to be as large as it was.  It's still terrible.  And, there's really no redeeming it.  But, at least it was a production screw up instead of an intentional design.  Again, though, this weapon is made worse by the differences between it and the portrayal of the SAW Viper in various media.  In the comic, the SAW Viper loomed large for about a year.  He was always drawn  with more realistic weapons that made him look like a bad ass.  While the figure doesn't quite live up the comic image, either, the weapon included with the figure is a colossal  letdown.  Even in a smaller scale, it just  didn't live up to the visuals from the comic.  Fortunately, much better machine guns did come out, later.  So, if you can find some of those, they are a drastic improvement for the SAW Viper.

2004 Comic Pack Hawk Pistol

If you look at my list of favorite accessories, you'll see it's dominated by smaller pistols.  There was something about the delicate nature of such a small piece that captivated me.  In the 2000's, Hasbro introduced working holsters to the Joe line.  It was a concept I'd wanted since I was a kid.  Some of them worked great.  Others...didn't.  But, Hasbro did make a nice armory of new pistols.  Sadly, though, this 2004 version didn't work out so well.  It looks great.  But, the handle is just too big for figure's to use.  It will break vintage thumbs and stretch out repaint era figures.  The worst thing about it, though, is its legacy.  This pistol lead to factory custom makers using similar designs.  Instead of redoing something cool like the 1986 Hawk or 1987 Chuckles pistol, they reused large handled designs from the 2000's.  And, none of them can be used with the figures.  I have a bin full of these pistols that will either snap the thumb or simple not go into the hands of factory customs.  The weapons look good when they're lying around.  But, they are useless.

Before the end of the year, I'll wrap my favorite accessories.  The last entry includes some doozies.  In the meantime, let me know what weapons you hated.  You know you have them.  So, vent away.

The Zeroes - Mark IX

When I started to write this Zeroes post, I thought I must have made an error.  Last year was Mark VIII...meaning this would be the 9th year I posted something like this.  There was simply no way that could be true.  But, I didn't skip any numbers and this really is the 9th year I've looked at the site's least popular posts.  

The past year has been interesting.  I get lots of daily traffic.  But, individual posts don't get nearly the attention they used to.  Before, 600 or more hits were common within a few days of a new post going up.  Now, it's well under 200.  Despite that, overall site traffic is up.  The massive archive on a currently active blog seems to help drive search results.  And, in turn, funnel some visitors to the site.  

The upside, though, is that engagement is higher.  Posts tend to get more comments.  I'd rather have a smaller, more engaged audience than a broader one who is passe.  I love seeing discussions and the points made in the comments.  (I appreciate the corrections, too.)  So, I'll take that over some fire and forget moment on a crappy social media site.

With no further adieu, here's the worsts performing new posts of the past year:

Cobra Trooper Driver (Red Laser Army) - 284 Views

The days of Red Laser Army profiles getting big views has passed.  A few years ago, they were surefire hits.  But, as it's been 7 years since he last produced figures, the popularity of his releases has faded into memory.  You rarely see the Red Laser figures used in photos.  And, those who do appear tend to be the same 5 or 6 figures.  And, this Cobra Driver isn't among them.  Which is too bad since this is a decent release.  It doesn't do all that much.  But, it doesn't have to.  You now have a driver that looks like every custom Cobra Driver that was kitbashed and painted up back in the 1990's.  But, that's OK.  This guy was supposed to fill a niche.  And, he does that admirably.

Grey Night Viper (Black Major) - 255 Views

People like the Night Viper.  And, generally, they also like Black Major figures.  But, this one was an older figure.  And, for many long time collectors, these types of throwbacks can be passe.  This is a great color scheme for the Night Viper  mold, though.  And, it deserved a better fate.

1984 Copperhead - 249 Views

This was my second look at Copperhead, the first being more than 20 years ago.  The figure has held up quite well.  But, he didn't seem to capture anyone's attention.  Copperhead appears to retain about the same level of popularity that he's always had.  Which is to say that people appreciate him.  But, they're not going out of their way to make him their favorite.

1982 RAM - 229 Views

Usually, 1982 items do fairly well.  The RAM did not, though.  Part of that may have been the time of year.  For an iconic part of the line, the RAM didn't garner much attention.  Maybe it will take on more interest the 2nd time around.

Gatilho - Python Patrol Airborne - 213 Views

I'd been trying to write an updated Gatilho profile for about 7 years.  I had to proofread it a bunch of times to make sure I got all the historical math correct as I'd talk about the original profile like it was 15 years old instead of 20.  Regardless, the days of figures like Gatilho making a splash seem to be gone.  The figure is common enough that many collectors own it.  And, the character has appeared a few times in other sculpting styles.  So, he's not as unique as he once was.  

G.I. Joe #36 - 201 Views

With my figure reserves running low, the vintage comics are an area I'll expand into more and more.  They are a treasure trove of alternate looks for many characters.  And, re-reading them is proving to be a soothsaying exercise due to Hama's writing.  As for this issue, it didn't do great numbers.  But, I still have fond memories of it.  So, comics will be a thing you see more in the next 12 months.

So, that wraps up last year's duds.  This year's Rarities Month did pretty well.  I was happy with the content.  I've got some profiles mostly ready to round out the summer.  But, I still haven't acquired any new Joe figures in over 18 months.  I don't really miss it, to be honest.  And, as I find more and more figures starting to discolor, my desire to expand my vintage collection is really waning every day.  I'm finding more interest in ephemera and looking at oddball coincidences I can find in the line.  Those are fun to work out.  Hopefully,  I'll get the photos for them before my collection goes back into storage...again.  Hopefully, that will be settled by the fall and I'll be able to get some photos before all the leaves are gone.

Until then, continue stopping by to check out new features, photos and profiles.

Rarities & Oddities Month - 2025

I'm putting together Rarities Month for this year.  And, I don't really have much left.  The last few years have been a seller's market in the Joe world.  We've seen fewer and fewer items change hands.  Guys are holding onto things as they acquire them.  20 years ago, people would buy a rare item, hold it for a while and then sell it to buy another rare item.  Now, they just hold onto everything and keep acquiring.  It makes for a stagnant market.  So, we don't have the deluge of rare and oddball items hitting the marketplace.  Those that do, though, are often hidden in private uber-groups of select, well heeled collectors so that people like me don't make the information public.  So, this year is going to focus on some different aspects of the hobby.  There's going to be some pre-production photography, catalog imagery and other ephemera.  So, stop by throughout the month and check it out.

My Favorite Accessories - Part 2

Part 1 of this series looked at my favorite weapons from childhood.  This time around, I'll be looking at some of the gear that really drove my second phase of collecting.  This period, technically, covers 1988 through 1997.  During that time, I only was able to find a few figures.  So, you're going to see a cross section of accessories.  And, a few classic items will be missing because, while they were released during this period, I didn't acquire them until 1998 or later.  Some of these items appeared in my early teen years when I wasn't collecting or buying Joes, but my youngest brother still was.  So, the limited exposure to them made them loom larger than they otherwise might have.

Early Adult Favorites:

1. Duke/Stalker/Others MP-5 inspired rifle

As I returned to Joe collecting in the mid 1990's, I spent most of my time tracking down the remnants of the line at various retail stores.  Among the first figures I found was the 1993 Duke.  This is a solid figure.  But, the main source of interest in him was the "new" weapons on his tree.  While I was passingly familiar with Muskrat's shotgun (someday I'll tell that story...), the other weapons were ones I had never before seen.  As far as I was concerned, they were completely new sculpts.  It was the MP-5 inspired weapon that piqued my interest, though.  It looked great with Duke.  It was somehow both compact and large.  This was accomplished by having the overall footprint be small while giving the weapon a larger barrel.  I turned this into a story element.  These newer weapons became "Generation 4" weapons.  They were more powerful and could carry more ammo than earlier weapon designs.  As they were new, they were limited to only the highest ranking Joes.  Eventually, Cobra got some and gave them to elite troopers, too.  As I got more and more 1993 and 1994 figures, the weapons became less special.  And, with more colors in tow, the MP-5 like weapon became one of my favorite standards across my Joes.

Even today, this is my favorite weapon to use with 1993 and 1994 figures.  It exists in a plethora of colors...some rarer than others.  But, you can get it in black, gold, yellow, purple and other colors with a bit of looking around.  It remains one of my key weapons.  And, I'll always pick up a new one if the price is right.  I have unfulfilled plans of being able to outfit the entire 1993 carded lineup with these weapons for a photo at some point.  I'm not quite there on the right number of them in my collection, yet, though.

2. Annihilator Pistol

I first saw this weapon at the home of some family friends who had some younger children.  I remember it being awesome.  Around 1995 or 1996, I found my first Annihilator at a flea market in southern Ohio.  I picked him up for the rifle.  Once in hand, it reminded me of the awesome weapons from G.I. Joe #36 back in 1985.  In short order, I bought as many Annihilators as I could find.  The figure was "new" to me and I loved the portable helicopter.  I saw them as the airborne division of the Alley Vipers and they made up a key ingredient in my early notion of Cobra urban death squads.  With plenty of his weapons in hand, I had them available for use with any other figure I wanted.

And, with them in hand, my fascination with the weapon ended.  It was difficult to make the weapon look good with other figures.  And, it was a bit bigger than I had remembered.  It was less of a one handed pistol and more of a two handed weapon that switched up my notion of the weapon's versatility.  I still find it the necessary weapon for Annihilators.  But, I've long since sold off my army of that figure.  I have a couple of spares of the weapon, though, still hanging around.  I'll use them with another figure from time to time.  I do need to get a photo of it in the hands of a Fred to mimic that old comic.  

3. Hit & Run  Rifle

This one is a bit of a cheat.  I actually did own Hit and Run when I was a kid.  I bought three 1988 figures before I quit toys.  And, Hit and Run was one of them.  I immediately fell in love with his rifle.  But, I didn't to use it very often as I left  my Hit and Run hanging on a wall at my grandparents' house shortly after I got him.  Once the figure was recovered, though, my Joes were put away.  So, it was on rare occasion when I'd get them out.  Inevitably, Hit and Run would be among the figures chosen, though.  Part of it was the sheer quality of the figure.  Part was his amazing rope & grappling hook bag.  And, the final piece was his rifle.  Everything about it seemed perfect.  It had a long clip to store extra ammo.  It was compact enough to be used in close quarters.  And, the figures just held it perfectly.  I wanted to use it with pretty much every one of my favorite figures during this time.  But, I had just one sample with no way to acquire more.

That changed in the mid 1990's as weapon trees began to proliferate.  The real joy was finding extra samples of this rifle being included on weapon trees of 1993 and 1994 figures.  With this discovery, I was able to acquire an excellent rifle in a variety of colors.  As the weapon was my preferred rifle for the 1994 Shipwreck, I came to see it as a standard rifle used by all sorts of Joe themed army builders.  So, having it in cream with Snow Storm and even red with Outback allowed some consistency on the weapons used by the troops who supported the Joes.  Note that this weapon is often confused with the 1992 Shockwave rifle.  They are similar, but not the same.  Also, some late run 1994 figures featured the rifle but with a blocked out trigger guard.  Those aren't bad.  But, I do prefer the original design.

Now the rifle is ubiquitous.  And, I had so many of them that it's become a bit passe.  But, the early 2000's brought some weapons into the mainstream to a point where they started to get stale.  Hit and Run's weapon was one of them.  And, while I still love it, I don't see it as the staple for every figure as I once envisioned nearly 30 years ago.  But, I do still find uses for it and you'll see it being carried by other figures in some photos around the site.

4. Bullhorn's Mask

My youngest brother got a Bullhorn in 1990.  I believe he was  the only 1990 figure that we ever had.  While his rifle was amazing and everyone still goes ga-ga over his weapon case backpack, I found the real value in him was his gas mask.  I love gas masks.  And, as a kid, I lamented that the only ones you could get were either Ripcord's airmask or Lifeline's rescue mask.  I gave them to pilots, troopers navigating gassed caves and just to anyone I wanted to look cool.  But, they had limitations (like the hose you had to plug in for it to look good) and always left me wanting more.

Bullhorn's mask, though, solved this problem.  It was a self contained piece and was sculpted with the air filter right on it.  When placed on the figure's head, Bullhorn could be a faceless army builder.  I now had a way for more figures to be outfitted with protective masks.  Unfortunately, though, the specific design of Bullhorn's mask made it so that it was form fitted for Bullhorn's head.  And, that made it difficult or impossible to really use the mask with a variety of other figures.  And, this limited the mask's use.  But, the overall design still works.  I've since found Bullhorn to be a more boring figure than I'd remembered.  The mask, though, overcomes this and keeps the figure relevant to me.  I just wish it was a little more flexible for use on a wider variety of figures.

5. Spearhead's Rifle

I do not know how this weapon entered into our collection.  We never had a 1988 Spearhead.  But, at some point, his rifle appeared among our toys.  It was likely left by one of my brother's friends.  As soon as I saw it, though, the rifle simply enthralled me.  Mostly, this was because it was new.  But, also, the rifle featured a couple of key design elements that I found among the cooler features of Joe accessories.  First, it had a bayonet.  But, we'll talk more about this, later.  The second, and more important feature, was the strap.  I had long loved strapped weapons.  They allowed your figure to carry their weapon without having to always be holding it in their hand.  I never like my Joes climbing a rope if they didn't have a strap on their gun because it wasn't realistic to just have their weapon magically appear at the top if they didn't have a means to carry it.  It's weird what unrealistic elements bothered me when I was a kid and which didn't affect me at all.

Back to the bayonet, though.  While I really liked bayonets, the piece on Salvo's rifle made the weapons footprint rather large.  And, at some point in the early 1990's, I wanted a knife for some figure.  The bayonet on Salvo's rifle was of sufficient size to work as a knife for a figure.  So, since the weapon wasn't key to any complete figure in my collection, I snipped off the bayonet and gave the knife to someone.  The paired down rifle was then smaller and looked even better with the figures to whom I gave it.  At various points, I've found the snipped bayonet and wondered who's knife it was.  Usually, I then remember that I cut this off from the original weapon.  I'm 99% sure that the bayonet is still sitting in a plastic baggie of superfluous edged weapons stored in a shoebox in the basement closet.  And, you'll see the snipped version of the rifle in a photo below.

In the early 1990's, I gave this weapon that mysteriously appeared in our home to a figure who also had a similar origin: Salvo.  I don't know where Salvo came from.  And, our figure just had the helmet.  So, it was another likely leave behind from some unknown friend of my brother.  But, Salvo and Spearhead's gun just seemed to mesh.  And, without having Salvo's real accessories, it made sense for him to have this borrowed weapon.  So, between 1991, or so, and 1999, Salvo always carried Spearhead's rifle.  In fact, if you can find really old Salvo photos on the site, you'll see him carrying it.  To this day, I more associate Spearhead's rifle with Salvo than I do with Spearhead.  But, that's because Salvo is an awesome figure and Spearhead is...not.

Really, these were the dark days of Joe.  I didn't collect for several years.  And, when I got back into things, I was chasing the dregs of the line at retail while also scouring out the not ready for primetime flea market scene that define the pre-internet days.  You didn't find a lot of Joes back then.  And, those that you did find were often those from my childhood years.  Meaning they were figures I already owned.  So, it was hard to find items I didn't have already.  

There were many more, better accessories that were released in this time.  But, I didn't really acquire them until my collector phase began in earnest around 1998.  We'll explore those in the final installment in a few months.  Until then, though, what are some of your favorite accessories from this time?  Let me know in the comments below.

1992 Flak Viper vs. 1993 Night Creeper - Brothers in Design

A few years ago, I was cataloging some new acquisitions.  I spread the figures out on a white plastic lid and take pictures to document them before they join the rest of my figures in various drawers that are segregated by year and affiliation.  Two figures in the bunch, though, drew my eye.  I happened to place one above the other.  At first, I noticed how their accessories were the same color.  But, upon closer inspection I found that these two figures shared more than just common hues of their gear.  At first glance, the 1992 Flak Viper and the 1993 Night Creeper could not be more different figures.  But, they share quite a bit of common design.

One of the hallmarks of the Joe line is compatibility.  Not only were things like accessories and vehicles designed to work with any figure, but the figures themselves were designed to complement each other in terms of the colors chosen.  This is why you'll see instances where figures released years apart use plastic of exactly the same color.  This trend started with the line's initial release year and carried over through 1994.  Most collectors lose sight of this compatibility as the line progressed.  But, it's still there.  And, the similarities between the Flak Viper and Night Creeper showcase that the designers reused color combos and sculpting elements that worked well.

The most visual clue to the figure's similarities is the blue base used for each.  The blue color is identical.  The color matches on the figures as well as on the accessories.  As such, you can interchange their weapons and still retain the same visual appeal.  Each incorporates the blue into the main figure coloring, too.  In fact, the blue forms the accent color for both figures.  Really, the only difference in color between the figures is the green on the Flak Viper and the purple on the Night Creeper.  

Going deeper than the blue, though, you see that both figures utilize the same shade of grey as well.  While it's more prevalent on the Flak Viper, the same hue is used to mute the Night Creeper's purple and blue.  The crazy part, though, is the Night Creepers lower arms.  The grey there is broken up by lines.  These lines perfectly match those used on the Flak Vipers vest.  Were is possible to swap the Night Creeper's lower arms with those of the Flak Viper, the Flak Viper would appear as if he were designed with the Night Creeper's arms.

There are a few other design similarities as well.  First, both figures feature a massive chest that is crossed by a strap.  For the Flak Viper, it's his overalls.  For the Night Creeper, it's a bandolier.  But, both start at the bottom right and cover the left shoulder.  Both of their arms feature short sleeves over a grey undershirt.  And, both have elaborate gloves on their hands.

In addition, you will note that both figures feature details on the upper arm, right above the swivel joint.  These adornments are unnecessary.  But, help to hide the joint and give both figures more bulk in their arms.  The construction of the arms on both figures is remarkably similar.  It makes both figures appear more bulky and adds details to break up the mold and make it appear more substantial.

The final point of similarity is in the helmets.  While this one is a bit more far fetched, both helmets are blue with a visor of a different color.  (Black for the Flak Viper, red for the Night Creeper.)  Each helmet has a design in the center with smoother lines on both sides of it.  While the helmets are definitely different.  You see some of the same design elements on each.  Hasbro knew how to make an action figure look cool.  And, they could incorporate artistic creativity inside standard templates that they knew would translate to a toy kids would love.  

Having noticed these similarities, I now want a Flak Viper in 1993 Night Creeper colors and a Night Creeper in 1992 Flak Viper colors.  Both would make for excellent toys and would complement each other very well.  I'm probably the only person who would want this.  But, the fact that these figures are so similarly colored really makes me want to see each figure in the other's color scheme.  

I'm sure there are more examples in the line of figures who, at first sight, appear totally different but who are, actually, very similar in their design.  It was a bit of kismet that lead me to see these two figures and how similar they were.  So, if you have some other examples (The Interrogator and Sonic Dial Tone are another.), please post them up in the comments.

Dogs

I have dogs.  I've had dogs for 25 years.  In that time, they've done relatively little damage to my collection.  Shortly after we moved into our first house back in 2000, our first dog came walking out of my Joe room with a Tomahawk chopper blade in his mouth.  I took it from him with no damage and he never went after another of my toys again.  That crop of dogs lasted from 2000 through 2018.  They left my stuff alone.

In 2020, we broke down and got another dog.  She is a rescue who was found wandering a reservation in New Mexico.  She's a great dog who is nothing but sweet and loving.  Her one flaw is that she does like to chew on plastic.  However, she's been pretty choosy in what she goes after.  Our boys have left toys on the floor for her whole life.  But, eventually, something got her attention and she did start to chew on certain items.  

Every now and then, she'd pick up a spare Lego.  Mostly, she'd play with it in her mouth.  But, then, she chewed up a couple of Clone Troopers.  Those were tough to lose as the boys loved them.  She got in trouble for it and we gave her more of her own chew toys.  But, every now and then, the temptation was too great and we'd find another Clone or a Batman figure chewed up in the living room.  (She really liked Clones for some reason.)  We used as an occasion to teach the kids to pick up their stuff.  

As a collector, I'm a spreader.  Rather than keep things nice and neat, I'll often spread things out on tables, desks, chairs and floors.  I do this to quickly sort things.  But, it's also a way for me to find something I'm looking for.  I have tons of unsorted baggies and shoeboxes of various parts and pieces from the Joe line.  So, it's not uncommon for me to have several areas covered in toys.  When I get busy, these things might sit out for months.  They're in the basement, out of sight and out of mind.  The dog goes down there.  But, she's never touched anything of mine.

Yesterday, though, I had a bit of time and really wanted to replace a couple of worn out shoeboxes that held some parts.  So, I brought two old boxes of stuff up to my office to work on moving to a new box during the day.  One of the boxes contained all of my unused weapon trees from figures I opened back in the '90's and early 2000's.  I love weapon trees.  I think they're really fun.  And, I kept a lot of them still on the sprues as I liked the look and wanted to have them around should I ever need them.  These were in a box in the basement that wasn't covered.  The lid of the box had gotten broken in one move or another.  So, I wanted to get them into a new shoebox with an attached lid.

I brought them up, moved them over and sorted the other baggies in the box.  (They were filled with various Battle Gear weapons.)  I arranged the trees by color.  In the old box, I had the black weapons on bottom, then grey, silver, purple, yellow and red.  In the new box, for just some variety, I switched and put them in reverse order with the black weapons on top.  I got the box all packed up.  But, I remembered that I had a couple of other baggies of Battle Gear weapons in the closet.  Before I closed the box lid, I wanted to go get those weapons.  I wasn't in a hurry.  As the afternoon wore on, it was time to get the kids from various practices and meets.  It's a multi-hour process.  So, I left.

When I came home, the house was dark.  As I turned on a couple of lights in the kitchen, I could see something on the floor on the living room carpet.  Immediately, my heart sunk.  These could only be some of my toys.  I turned on more lights.  And, sure enough, my dog had decided to go into my office, remove some of the weapon trees from the open shoe box and chew them into oblivion!

Because of the series of innocuous decisions of the day, she grabbed all my favorite black weapon trees along with the grey and silver.  The black trees are more nostalgic to me.  I've had them for 30 years, now.  They are common and replaceable.  The grey tree, though, was from the 1994 Payload figure.  Not an easy one to track down.  At least I have a spare set of loose weapons for the figure.  The silver tree, though, was one I hadn't placed when I looked at it earlier in the day.  It had a silver MP-5.  This mold is one of my favorite weapons.  And, I didn't recognize it in silver.

It was only after I posted about it that General Liederkranz gave me the horrifying news that the silver tree is from the 1994 Ozone figure.  Ozone might be the single rarest Joe released on a card.  He's gotten stupidly expensive.  And, I only have a loose one because I was able to pick up a spare carded version for a couple of bucks back in the late 1990's.  I never took his weapons off the tree because the tree was rare and I liked the look of the silver.  And, now, it's gone.

Here is the aftermath:

Fortunately, she seemed to focus her chewing on the more substantive stands.  So, while those were largely destroyed, a few weapons did make it out intact.  Most notably, the silver MP-5 managed to survive with little to no damage.  So, small blessings.  Here's what was somewhat salvageable:

I was fortunate.  Right next to the box with these weapon trees was a drawer full of 2023 Black Major figures.  She could have eaten those instead.  I think there's something about the softer plastic that she really likes.  That's why she eats Clones but really leaves the much more common Legos alone.  

So, a tough day for my Joe collection.  A tough day for me to learn some lessons, too.  It certainly could have been worse.  There were pieces of sprue all over the living room.  And, I'm sure she ate a lot of plastic.  But, she seems OK over 12 hours later.  I gave her extra food to help process the plastic through.  And, I'll find brightly colored waste in the yard when I start mowing again in a few weeks.  But, I can buy more toys, should I want them.  And, the dog is tough.  She lived on her own in the desert for quite a while.  So, we'll be OK.  It was just a surprise to walk into last night!

My Favorite Accessories - Part 1

I look at my collection in distinct stages.  The first, of course, is my childhood.  This covered 1982 through 1987.  The second phase is the pre-internet days of adult collecting.  For me, this was 1992 through 1997, give or take.  And, then the final phase is my adult collecting years that have occurred since I found the Stars & Stripes set in December of 1997.

As a kid, it was nearly impossible to get extras of specific weapons.  Your only options were to buy another figure or two to get the gear.  Or, really hope that a friend of yours happened to hate that particular item and you could trade him something you didn't really care for in exchange for the item you did want.  The notion of having several extras lying around was pretty much a pipe dream and impossible for all but the richest kid.  

During the mid 1990's, it was also somewhat difficult to just buy accessories.  You'd often find guys with grocery bags or shoeboxes full of Joes.  And, they'd say something along the lines of "it's too much work to figure out who gets what gear"  (there was no YoJoe.com back then).  But, at the same time, none of them would sell individual gear.  They were too afraid that you'd buy the one super rare item and they'd miss out on 4 extra bucks in later years.  1990's scalp culture was weird.  The thing those guys would do, though, was sell you the whole bag or box of figures for what, now, seems a really stupidly low price.  Sure, there'd be no female figures or Snake Eyes in the lot.  But, that was fine because you'd end up paying a dollar or two per figure.  So, you could get extra gear, but you'd get the figures to go with it, too.

The early days of internet collecting were nice as guys would pretty much trade any accessory straight up for another that they needed.  So, for a few years, you could easily trade a spare Alpine rope gun to get a Shipwreck pistol.  But, as the 2000's dawned, things like that mostly disappeared.  By then, collectors had realized which gear was the most desirable and hardest to find.  And, as the 2000's turned into the 2010's, you had the rise of online dealers who would sell individual accessories and Ebay stores that did the same.  Sure, you'd pay a premium for a 1982 Uzi.  But, they'd often sell very nice stuff from later years for cheap prices.  You could still get the charcoal Recoil rifles from later editions of the Steel Brigade for under $5 up through this time.  

Since then, the price of gear has steadily gone up.  Certain weapons that were once desired (like Snake Eyes' Uzi) did see demand tempered a bit as repaint era options became readily available. I didn't need to seek out extra 1983 weapons to arm my terrorist contingent because I could easily get 2000's era accessories that worked just as well and were a fraction of the price.  But, other gear got stupidly expensive.  Things like Flint's shotgun (that, really, were never hard to find) got really pricey as dealers flocked to the market and marked things up in the post 2018 Joe world.  Now, I'm glad that I have a lot of extra gear.  Because there is no way I'd accumulate my armory at today's prices.

For today, I'm going to focus on my childhood favorites.  There is a lot to read here.  So, I'm going to break this walk down memory lane into different parts so they are more manageable.  Here is part 1:

My Childhood Favorites:

1. Flint's Shotgun

There's just something about this weapon that always spoke to me.  It was an original design and unlike anything that had come before it in the line.  The notion of a shotgun toting badass hearkened back to the Westerns you'd see on weekend afternoon TV.  

On a boy scout trip, some of the adults were shooting skeet.  I gathered up a dozen or so spent shells and cut slits in them so that I could affix them to suspenders or a belt like Flint.  When we'd play guns in the neighborhood, I'd wear the shells over a vest.  It's amazing to think we used to run around the neighborhood, toting very real looking toy guns with real spent ammo on my chest and no one batted an eye.  This is probably the one thing that's most changed between my childhood and that of my kids.

As a kid, I lost Flint's shotgun all the time.  My original figure's disappeared at some point during his run.  In 1986, I replaced my original with a new one so I'd have the rifle, again.  That winter, we went to visit my grandparents.  We'd play in their basement.  The floor was cold, hard concrete.  But, they had about a dozen carpet sample sized rugs that we'd arrange as islands or somesuch and structure our adventures around these.  We were playing down there one afternoon and my younger brother somehow kicked Flint's shotgun off of one of these carpets.  I frantically searched for it for hours.  I picked up every carpet, got a flashlight to look under the cabinets and swept the floor with my hands. But, that Flint shotgun was gone.

A while later, my grandmother told me over the phone she had found a green gun in her basement.  She put it in her room, thinking it might be important to us.  I was sure it was Flint's shotgun.  But, when we saw her again, I was disappointed to find it was not.  Instead, it was a broken machine gun from one of my dad's old, cheap plastic soldiers.  So, the remaining years of my childhood Flint's life were spent with him wielding the weapon from the Night Landing Craft, a Snow Serpent's AK-47 or the Ripcord rifle from the Tactical Battle Platform.

When I started collecting, getting a complete Flint was a priority.  As Flint was super popular, though, he'd be in a ton of the lots I was acquiring in the late 1990s.  Usually, I'd get his gun, too.  Over time, I bought a bunch of loose Flints from online and local sellers.  I had up to 8 of them at one point.  Even after my collection  purge, though, I still have 5 originals plus at least 5 loose and 5 more carded Funskool versions.  What I can not do, though, is give Flint's shotgun  to another figure.  It just doesn't look right.  So, while I love Flint's shotgun, it is reserved for Flint and Flint alone.  

2. Alpine's SMG

What's interesting is that many of the weapons on my childhood list feature stories about me losing the weapon.  The reason for this is that the experience was traumatic since I loved the accessories so much and I often would no longer use a figure once his original gear was lost.  For Alpine, the main story is one of loss.  But, there are also two stories of redemption.  

Alpine was one of the earlier 1985 figures I acquired.  I remember that I already owned him by the time I got Snake Eyes in April.  And, I have cold weather, early spring memories of playing with him and the Eel on the front steps of my parents' home.  Being an early arrival, though, meant that I was less careful with him than I should have been.  In short order, I lost his pistol and broke his grappling gun.  As the figure was cool, though, I replaced my original Alpine some time in 1986 so I once again had a complete figure.

In the fall of 1986, we were playing with our Joes outside with some kids down the street.  We rarely played in their backyard as it was small and didn't have a ton of great places.  But, their dad had recently cleared out a small thicket of trees near their back fence that bordered the alley.  So, on this day, we set up an adventure there.  Among the figures I had was Alpine.  At some point, I took his gun out of the figure's hand and set it down on the soft, dry dirt.  The gun instantly disappeared.  It was gone.  I searched for quite a while, moving dirt, etc. to no avail.  My Alpine's gun was gone.

About a year later, we were playing soccer in their yard.  The ball went back into this thicket.  I went to retrieve it.  And, as I went to pick up the ball, I saw my Alpine's gun in the dirt!  By this time, we had given up toys.  But, I did show it to everyone and asked if they remembered when I had lost the gun.  I put the pistol into my pocket and added it to my stash of Joes when I got home.  Over the years, my youngest brother broke into these stashes and removed key figures.  During these thefts, my Alpine was taken and his pistol disappeared again.

In 1997, I was working a job post college and living at my parents' house until I moved to Arizona.  During this time, I dug out all my childhood toys and started displaying them on the shelves in my childhood room.  One night, as I was heading to bed, I happened to notice something weird about the SnowCat.  It seemed there was an asymmetry in the open spaces on the black underbody beneath the lights.  Upon inspection, the difference was that my Alpine's gun was wedged into the part!  No idea how it got there.  But, I had a complete Alpine, once again.  It was the same gun from the dirt thicket because the grooves of the weapon were still filled with the fine dust from a decade earlier.  With this recovery, my Alpine was again, complete.

Over the years, I've picked up one or two extra Alpine pistols.  It looks good with a variety of figures.  And, I'll often use it with other 1985 releases as a way to bring some visual diversity to a photo.  It's a weapon I still enjoy.  I wouldn't mind if I had another four or five of them.  But, I'm very happy with the number in my collection, today.  Each time I see it, I'm reminded of finding that dusty gun in the back of our friends' yard.  It's a great connection to the past.

 

3. Hawk's Pistol

I view this pistol as Hawk's.  It actually debuted with  the 1985 Keel Haul, though.  But, since I never had a Keel Haul, I had no idea that he came with a gun.  So, I view this weapon as Hawk's and Hawk's alone.  Originally, this Hawk figure first belonged to my younger brother.  And, while I did use him quite a bit, my brother was hard on the figure and lost his pistol.  This hurt as I loved the weapon and often used it with other figures.  I gave Hawk the M-203 from Leatherneck and made him a younger leader, more akin to the role meant for Duke, instead of the grizzled general.  This made the Hawk figure much more useful and kept him a key player in my collection.

Sometime in late 1987, I went to a local toy shop in my neighborhood.  It was a small, independent store that was mostly a hobby/model shop who also sold toys.  They were expensive.  But, it was just a few hundred feet away from the comic book store where I spent many, many hours of my youth.  I stopped in one afternoon and found they had marked their Joes down to $2.99 instead of the usual $3.99.  I didn't like paying that extra dollar.  Their entire stock was 1986 figures...including Hawk.  I didn't buy the figure that day.  For some reason, I felt I needed parental permission to buy a figure, even though I spent my lawn mowing money with impunity at the comic book store.  When I got home, I mentioned something about the figures being on sale to my mother.  She made a flippant comment about how it was my money and she didn't care how I spent it.  So, on my next trip to the comic book store, I dropped by Ed Shrock's Toy and Hobby and bought myself a new Hawk.

I kept this figure, though, as the younger character from before.  And, Hawk, once again, got the M-203.  I had 2 of these weapons.  (It's next on the list!)  So, that freed up Hawk's pistol to be used by other figures or in other situations.  Crankcase was the main recipient of the pistol.  But, I would also use it in specific scenarios.  So, if a Joe got caught without his weapon at the end of a firefight and he had a sculpted pistol on his leg or chest, Hawks' pistol would stand in for the sculpted weapon.  The Joe would just use it that once.  But, it allowed for me to finally put to practical use some of the sculpted details on my favorite figures.

Today, the weapon remains a favorite.  I have a couple.  I never felt the Hawk pistol was all that hard to get.  But, when I liquidated all my extra Hawks, I sold them complete with the pistol.  I think I kept one or two extras that are available.  Though, one is always with Crankcase.  Hasbro had the mold for the weapon in the 2000's.  It was included with the Convention Hardtop.  But, it never appeared again.  Instead, we got crappy new sculpt pistols in the Comic Packs that the figures couldn't hold and that were just too stubby to be any fun.  I only imagine what it would have been like to get a dozen or more extra Hawk pistols in that era.  I'd have kept them all.

4. Leatherneck's M-203

Leatherneck's rifle had a lot going for it.  It was a bit bigger than the weapons from prior years.  But, I liked that about it since it made the weapon appear more deadly.  The main  calling card, though, was the affixed grenade launcher under the barrel.  This gave the weapon more utilization possibilities and made Leatherneck effective against both infantry and Cobra vehicles.  I always wanted more of the weapons.  In the summer of 1986, though, I lost my original Leatherneck in the bushes in front of grandfather's house.  My cousin, who lived next door, never found the figure.  And, I went months with no Leatherneck.  At some point before the end of the year, I bought another Leatherneck figure.  My main reasoning was that when I returned to Buffalo and found my original figure, I'd have a spare gun to give to other figures.

When I went back to my grandfather's in the summer of 1987, though, my Leatherneck was no where to be found.  I know the bushes were evergreen.  But, the volume of snow they received could have left him shoveled away.  So, I wasn't to get that spare rifle.  But, fortunately, the end of 1986 and early 1987 gave me another avenue.  For Christmas of 1986, I got the Mission to Brazil set.  This included a desert themed Leatherneck with the same rifle as the original.  Naturally, I kept that accessory with the figure.  But, when I really wanted the 1986 Hawk to have the rifle, I'd equip the desert Leatherneck (now a Marine army builder) with the 1984 Battle Gear Zap Bazooka.  But, then, in 1987, a new Battle Gear set was released.  Frankly, this set sucked like the earlier sets with poor colors and missing gear.  But, it did include a brown version of the Leatherneck rifle...a color that perfectly matched the Mission to Brazil figure.  So, the army builder was given the Battle Gear accessory and I had a spare M-203 to give to other figures.

As an adult collector, I discovered that the weapon was later released in black, too.  But, I also found the weapon had fallen out of favor.  I didn't see it as a team standard any longer.  I did give a black one to Recoil for a bit.  But, once I had a charcoal Steel Brigade rifle, Recoil didn't need the M-203 any longer.  And, by the time superfluous weapons were included with repaint era figures in the 2000's, I ended up with a baggie full of extra M-203s that I don't use at all.  It's a precipitous fall for one of the top weapons of my childhood.  But, Hasbro made too many better weapons in subsequent years.

5. Mutt's Mac 11

Mutt belonged to my younger brother.  And, he didn't take care of him.  In short order we lost the mask, nightstick and pistol.  At one point, I found the Mutt figure in the bottom of an antique wardrobe that was in my brothers' room.  Since I had pulled the figure out when it was fairly dark, I always thought that Mutt's pistol must have been  lost in the bottom of that piece of furniture.  I searched it many times.  In fact, I searched it as recently as 2013 when my mother finally moved out of the house and was giving the piece away.  No Mutt's pistol.  There were a bunch of old Legos, though.

Having lost such a cool gun always made the weapon mythical to me.  Add to that the weapon's silencer and it was a perfect accessory for Dreadnoks, Cobra leaders or even just Snake Eyes.  In 1985, I finally got a bright green Mutt's pistol in the Battle Gear.  And, despite the color, I used this weapon extensively.  I'd give it to Zartan.  Or, some nameless bad guys would use it to assassinate Hawk.  I'd place the weapon in the cockpit of the Whale where either Cutter or Shipwreck could grab it as a backup to shoot boarding Eels. It had a ton of uses.

But, I never got another black version of the gun until I was an adult collector.  While I upgraded pretty much my entire 1985 figure collection, I didn't do the same with the 1984's.  Mostly, this was due to the fact that the '84's were pretty sparse at the retailers I frequented in 1986 when I was spending to upgrade my figures.  But, also, the '84's were somewhat old news by then.  I was more interested in getting some of the newer characters back into my collection since they were the staples of the comic and cartoon.  So, a complete Mutt didn't rejoin my collection for over a decade.

Now, I have just two Mutts: both with the pistol.  But, I also have Mutts from Europe and Brazil.  So, I've got several of the pistols.  I think I have a spare or two still hanging around.  You'll find photos of the pistol being used by Scarlett, Snake Eyes, Headman and others.  It's a fun weapon to use as an alternative pistol.  I still think the silencer adds a sinister element to the weapon.  

So, that's a look at the weapons that drove my childhood.  While I liked most Joe weapons of that era, these were the ones that most spoke to me.  They were the ones that were the subject of daydreams of bins of gear being available to me.  Now that I can do that, I've found that I still flock to many of these weapons and never pass them if they're offered cheaply.  (Which doesn't really happen any longer.)

I'll continue this series at some point.  It won't be next week.  But, probably this year.  This was a fun jog into the bowels of my formative Joe years.  It's good to dig into that well of memories every now and then as it helps keep some of the feelings fresh.  Let me know your childhood favorites in the comments below.