The Top 10 - 2023

2023 was a good year and a slow year.  Overall, site traffic was actually way, way up.  Pages were viewed over a quarter of a million times.  And,  there were over 400 comments posted on various profiles and articles.  Individually, though, post views were somewhat down.  Most profiles sat right around 200-225 page views.  But, a few items broke through and got some good engagement.  The theme of the year, though, is Super7.  They occupy 3 of the top 10 slots.  But, that's about all that's really happening in the 3 3/4" Joe world.  So, their popularity isn't surprising.  (Especially, with the "hate views" that Super7 stuff tends to get.)

Aside from that, there's nothing that really stands out other than the 2000 ARAHC Big Ben.  I have no idea why he resonated so well with the community.  But, he was the most mundane entry in this list.  The Black Major Steel Brigade Ranger and the 1991 Badger were the last two posts to fall just outside the top 10.  So, the year was more standard than others we've had, recently.  

So, onto the list of the site's most popular posts in 2023:

#10 - 1993 Street Fighter Blanka (328 Pageviews)

I haven't looked a ton of the Street Fighter figures from the vintage Joe line.  And, among them, Blanka is one of the most visually distinctive.  That added up to the 10th most viewed page of the year.

#9 - Satan - Plastirama Exclusive (342 Pageviews)

There was a time when this profile would have lapped the field.  But, those days are past and Satan, despite the current high pricing, is a bit passe in the Joe world.  This still was popular enough to break the top 10.  But, I thought it might have done better.

#8 - 2023 Super7 Tiger Force Shipwreck (380 Pageviews)

Shipwreck is the first of three Super7 appearances in the top 10.  This figure is neat due to the Brazilian origins of the design.  Super7 figures are what they are.  And, in 2024, Joe fans will see what the company can do with o-ring figures.  I fully expect them to just be sculpting similar to this figure but with the additional joints.  Regardless, I'll take their line as a supplement to my Joe collection and use it to fill out missing holes and such.  But, there's just no way I'll buy more than a handful of figures from the first few waves.

#7 - 2022 Super7 Ninja Ku (402 Pageviews)

The first Super7 figure I looked at clocks in as the 7th most viewed profile of the year.  Ninja Ku is well known.  But, being a Target exclusive, he was also clearance fodder.  And, that's how I got him.  We have seen from the Target computer that Duke, Snake Eyes, Ragnar and a blonde Cover Girl are planned for the first wave of o-ring figures from Super7.  (I expect there's more, unannounced figures to come, too.)  It will be interesting to see how they play at retail in late 2024.

#6 - Kickstart V2 (Red Laser Army) (405 Pageviews)

I miss Red Laser Army.  There was a hoax going around that he was returning.  But, he's focused on his Kickstarter o-ring line of ninjas that looks great.  Figures like this Kickstart version are a great supplement to a Joe collection.  You can use him as a different look for Snake Eyes or as a new character.  The blank slate is something we're missing in the line these days.  

#5 Rarities - Mega Marines Toy Fair Catalog (413 Pageviews)

Rarities month was a dud this year.  But, this Mega Marines Toy Fair Catalog post did break out.  It has tons of action and features some pre-production figures among the displayed toys.  I don't have much for Rarities Month in 2024.  But, it will still go ahead, even if it's just a handful of posts.

#4 - 2000 Big Ben (446 Pageviews)

Yeah, I have no idea.  This Big Ben is the compulsory oddball in every year's top 10.  The upside, though, is that this really is a great figure and one of the better repaints not only of that time, but in any era.

#3 - 2023 Soundwave Announcement (501 Pageviews)

In my 2022 Top 10, I mention there were rumors of a Soundwave with Zartan and Zarana.  Well, it turned out to be true.  The reveal of it was the third most viewed page of the year.  It was also the only 3 3/4" G.I. Joe that Hasbro released to retail in 2023.  For 2024, we have a Hawk/MOBAT that's confirmed and rumors of a Triple T with Sgt. Slaughter and another, unknown Transformer coming with Leatherneck.  All three sound like bigger duds than the Thunder Machine.  We'll see what we end up getting, especially since the smaller retailers that Hasbro duped into buying the Thunder Machine are currently sitting on really expensive stock that isn't moving and won't be buying any future offerings in this ill-conceived line.

#2 - 2023 Pilot Scarlett (589 Pageviews)

The Skystriker figures were the talk of the community upon their release.  And, this Scarlett did very well.  Now, the figures are both old news and relatively forgotten.  The aftermarket crash for the plane and the figures have left many collectors sour.  I have another Skystriker profile that will show up in the first few weeks of 2024.  So, we'll see how that compares.

#1 - The Cobra Mothership posts:

I followed the failed Cobra Mothership on a (mostly!) weekly basis.  Overall, the posts relating to the Mothership were viewed over 2500 times and it was the most popular subject on the site this year.  It's too bad that the ship failed.  Cool, big, expensive toys should get made every now and then.  And, when you consider that you could have gotten the Mothership for the same price as 2 each of the Megatron/Baroness, Bumblebee/Stalker and Soundwave/Zartan sets, it really puts the failure into perspective.  But, Joe fans are cheap.  And, we are few.  That's not a combo that sets you up for great success.  And, the Mothership's demise was just another knot in the string of dead bodies that the Joe line has left behind since the first reboot failed back in 2001.

So, that wraps up 2023.  Really, I ended up doing way more with  the site this year than I had anticipated.  But, I found some good photo subjects.  And, Super7 gave me some nice content in the 4th quarter that disguised my otherwise dearth of updates.  I've got some fun stuff ready to go in January and February.  But, I'm behind on picture taking.  This time of year is rough as everything is just brown and  uninteresting.  I'll find something, though.

I hope your year was excellent and wish you a happy 2024.  In November, we'll mark the site's 25th Anniversary.  At that point, I'll have been doing this for half my life.  Perhaps, that's a wasted life.  But, hobbies are just that.  We'll have lots to discuss in 2024, though, between new products, Black Major and Kickstarters.  Some of that will be good, some will be terrible and most will be the forgettable layer in between.  But, we'll cover it all.  We'll write it down.  And, maybe, some day in the future, that info will be a valuable marker of sentiment or fact regarding a release that would otherwise be lost to time.  

Until then, I wish you all well and sincerely thank you for stopping by to share the Joe hobby with me.

1997 Hawk - Random Photos of the Day

This week, we learned there is a General Hawk coming.  I'm not excited.  The reasons for that is that this new Hawk is not going to be better than the 1986 figure.  He's not going to feature at least an attempt at a different look like this 1997 figure.  And, he might not even be better than the 2005 Comic Pack figure.  Hasbro's re-makes of Joes have gotten steadily worse since they were debuted.  And, that's a near certainty to continue since we, as collectors, don't punish bad products.  So, Hasbro learns they can give us crap and we'll gratefully gobble it up.

Which really takes me back to this 1997 General Hawk.  The 1997 figures were the 15th Anniversary figures from the beginning of the vintage line.  Now, they are 26 years old and all us old, adult collectors recall finding them as adults.  And, at the time, we vilified these figures.  Sadly, we didn't know how good we had it.  The 1997 series is full of fun repaints that have aged quite well.  Even figures like Hawk, which didn't deviate too far from the original figure's colors, is still a very nice update to the mold and gives collectors something different to add to their collections.  

The main reason I enjoy this figure is that the colors are subtle.  Even in photos, it can be difficult to catch all the various colors that comprise this figure.  Lost in the dark jacket are some rich greens, subtle browns and some black.  The grey pants help offset the upper body and are a nice diversion from the green camo of the 1986 figure.  And, the details that are painted on the figure are convention level quality.  To think, we got figures like this for $3 each.  This Hawk, a completely repainted A-10 and an excellent Ace figure were sold for 1/4 of the price that two figures and a smaller vehicle cost today.  

While the sunburnt skin isn't my favorite, it's light years ahead of the pale, painted faces of the 2022 and 2023 releases.  It also gives some diversity to the skin tones of the Joe team.  That and the figure's accessories are the only main complaints. The Battle Gear 1986 helmet works for this figure, though.  And, back in 1997, it was both cheap and easy to find 1986 Hawk pistols.  So, it was a lot easier to outfit this figure in other accessories than it is today.

Back in 1997, I wasn't too high on that year's figure releases.  And, I passed most of them by to focus on vintage collections and POTFII Star Wars figures.  But, in short time, that changed.  And, in the ensuing decades, the year has grown on me and I now consider 1997 and 1998 to be among the best Joe years Hasbro ever produced.  They are full of great character repaints, main and obscure characters and lots of nice army builders.  It's unfortunate that the formula for success was never repeated.  I just wish some of the lessons learned from the late 1990's could be applied to the Joe line today.  But, that's just a pipe dream at this point.

1993 Flak Viper - Around The Web

By the time I was hunting down the final Joes remaining at retail in my area in the mid 1990's, most of the Cobra army builders were gone.  Figures like the Headhunter, Alley Viper and, especially, the Flak Viper mocked me from the cardbacks of the Joes I could still find.  The bad guys were long gone: sucked up by a combination of the first adult collectors as well as the burgeoning speculator market.  So, as the internet became a viable option to acquire old toys, my first focus was finding many of the figures who had I longed for just a few years prior.

The Flak Viper was among my most wanted acquisitions.  Fortunately, at the time, the 1992 version was pretty available and relatively cheap.  The 1993 version, though, was a bit harder to find.  Even carded versions weren't all that common.  In the ensuing years, though, the 1993 became more common.  And, today, remains among the easiest to find 1993 army building figures.

There's lots of good Flak Viper content out there.  The figure's stark colors, congruency with the 1992 original and excellent gear all adds up to a figure that is a lot more fun to own than you might otherwise think.  While I've managed to build up a small army of these guys, I still want more.  And, when the price is right, I still pick up a spare or two to keep building my forces.

1993 Flak Viper Profile

1993 Flak Viper by fun time at serpentor's lair

1993 Flak Viper by thedustinmccoy

1993 Flak Viper by Danish Dude

1993 Flak Viper by HCC788

Flak Viper at halfthebattle.com

1993 Flak Viper by thedustinmccoy

1993 Flak Viper by gvilla74

1993 Flak Viper by Slipstream80

1993 Flak Viper by nightforcetunnelrat

1993 Flak Viper by ronnie_trickshot

1993 Flak Viper by thedustinmccoy

1993 Flak Viper by gen_liederkranz

2022 Blue and Red BAT - Black Major

I don't much care for BATs.  I didn't like them when I was a kid.  And, the idea of robots hasn't really developed any additional appeal to me now that I'm an adult.  I like the 1991 BAT figure because the colors are great.  (The fact that no one has yet painted the 1986 BAT mold in 1991 colors seems like a hugely missed opportunity.)  But, I've never been overly fond of the 1986 BAT's design.  It's not bad, per se.  I just don't get the hype.  Even as a kid, I thought the figure was wildly overrated by other kids.  I just didn't see the appeal.

One of the upsides of being a rational person is that you can realize that something, while not for you, personally, can be something that most other people like.  And, with that knowledge, you can learn to take advantage of opportunities when they arise, even if they aren't something in which you'd normally partake.  Such was the case with Black Major's 2022 BAT releases.  He created a new mold and offered the classic 1986 sculpt in a rainbow of colors.  Most were small runs, dispersed among various resellers who marked up the prices to, in some cases, as high as $35 per figure.  But, the Black Major himself offered a special deal to those who pre-ordered.  They had the choice of 2 BAT colors and could buy up a small army for about $9 per figure.  I may not like BATs.  But, you don't often get the chance to buy even factory custom figures for that price.  So, I jumped at it and added a bunch of blue and red BATs to my collection.

I've always felt the BAT would lend itself to classic Cobra colors.  Black Major did make some Cobra blue BAT's back in the very early 2010's.  But, they were relatively hard to find and I never came across a lot of more than 1 figure where the price was right.  In the late 2010's, Red Laser Army made a couple of blue and red BATs.  But, their availability was problematic.  One seller even pulled some shady stuff and dragged Red Laser Army's reputation through the ringer due to their terrible offering scheme of some, otherwise, cool BATs.  So, there was never really any good options to pick up an army of the robots in the classic Cobra colors.  

Black Major fixed that in 2022.  Among the many BAT colors are this red and blue version.  There are other versions that are blue, red, orange, purple, green and grey.  In 2023, there are glow in the dark figures, some that look like Overkill and even niche homages like Boba Fett and Batman paint jobs.  Pretty much every collector desired paint job for BATs is now available.  But, for me, the staple for my collection is just the classics.  So, I plunked down the money and added a small cadre of these blue and red BATs to my collection.

Once in hand, these BATs are nice.  The blue is the lighter color you often find on blue factory custom figures.  It's brighter than classic Cobra blue.  But, it does nicely mesh with the multitude of Vipers, Alley Vipers, Night Vipers and Cobra Troopers that have been released by factory custom makers in the past few years.  They will integrate with classic army builders.  But, they do stand out among 1986 Vipers or 1983 Cobra Troopers.  On their own, though, they make for a formidable force.  And, they are a nice match for some of the 2022 and 2023 Hasbro Cobra Commander figures.

Now that I have these figures, though, I still find that my uses for BATs are limited.  The idea of battlefield robots always seemed boring to me.  You just turn them on and they move forward.  Sure, they can mow down people who don't have the explosive firepower to stop them.  But, that's fun a couple of times.  After that, the human element that is essential to storytelling simply fades away.  You lack the decisions that humans make which turn a carefully tuned exercise into chaos.  It's in that pandemonium that the actual story occurs.  Here, people become heroes and villains in an instant when a random decision they made (often out of fear or panic) turns out to be right or wrong.  This can deify incompetent leaders and vilify honorable people who made the right decision for the right reasons but it still went wrong for them.  

This is why I've always found robots like the BAT to be so mundane.  You can't really tell stories about them unless they become sentient.  And, in that case, the robot is then a human: at least from the storyteller's perspective.  The Battle Droids threatened to suck the soul out of Star Wars.  But, the Clone Wars humanized the Clone Troopers and elicited great stories by exploiting the personality and humanity of the Clones.  Turns out, they were a lot more interesting than simple robots.  Fortunately, vintage Joe story tellers didn't rely on BATs too often.  And, in cases where they did, the BATs were a faceless foil to showcase the heroism and bravery of people: not celebrate the mindless automation of poorly conceived robots.

But, I'm drastically in the minority on that point.  Most collectors love the BAT and there's an argument that he's the most popular vintage Cobra army builder.  People build massive armies of the figure.  Even if it's just to stand them in 2001-esque rows on some dusty metal shelf in their basement.  But, that's OK.  I like a lot of offbeat and obscure figures.  Others love the classics.  There's no wrong way to enjoy a hobby that has well over 2000 different figures to chase down when you include international releases and factory customs in the count.  

These BATs have the standard complement of accessories that were included with the 1986 figure.  There is the backpack and 4 arm attachments: hand, laser, flamethrower and claw.  The hand is red while the remaining accessories are all silver.  In addition to this standard fare, though, the figure also includes two additional accessories.  The first is a remade 1992 Eel weapon.  It doesn't make much sense with the BAT.  But, as an avid fan of the 1993 Eel, I have given the extra silver weapons from these BATs to my burgeoning 1993 Eel army.  The figure also includes a blue gatling cannon.  While the weapon is large, it is exactly the type of thing that robots could carry into battle as the size, weight and sheer force of the weapon would be less of an issue to a non-human.  I'm not, usually, a fan of the robot with stupidly big gun trope.  But, the gatling is in scale with the BATs.  And, the figure's claw can easily grip the weapon to make for fun posing.  

The figure quality on these guys is pretty good.  The joints are tight and the paint masks are crisp.  The figures have replaced the glued on lenticular with a painted Cobra logo.  The lack of sticker does take something away from the figures.  But, it's also one less thing that can go wrong.  The handle on the silver spear gun is a bit large...likely just a function of it's later introduction date.  But, the figure can still hold it.  The thumbs are more solid than  Hasbro's post-vintage offerings.  They are, though, still more pliable and less prone to breakage than vintage thumbs.  And, the figure has an added paint detail on the head that is the robotic Cobra logo.

The blue and red BATs haven't really taken off in the collecting world.  So many BAT flavors were produced in a short time that it was difficult for any one coloring to really break out.  You do see these blue and red figures show up in Joe photography moreso than other colorings.  But, the relative availability of them allowed for some people to stock up and then reduce their army.  As such, you can still find these figures in the $15 to $18 range.  If you're patient, you can even still find deals on multiples that will drop the price per figure below that range.  This is good, though.  I'm not sure that $40 aftermarket factory customs are really a good thing for the hobby.  And, as our numbers shrink and the desire to army build anything and everything has subsided, figures like this BAT remaining affordable is a decent byproduct that still allows newer collectors to enter the hobby without breaking their entire budget on just a couple of cool figures.

1993 Long Arm Around The Web

Long Arm is one  of those obscure figures from the line's final years who has found his fans.  While he remains a figure that most people ignore, there is a small contingent of collectors who use the figure frequently and keep him alive in the conscious of the community.  Long Arm's sculpt is great.  His colors are eye catching.  And, he'd have worked great in a variety of other subsets.  There's some cool content on the figure out there.  Check out the links below to see a portion of it.

Long Arm Profile

Long Arm at the Dragon Fortress

Long Arm by thedustinmccoy

Long Arm by Slipstream80

Long Arm by nostalkid

Long Arm at JoePedia

Long Arm at 3DJoes.com

Long Arm by gen_liederkranz

Long Arm by thedustinmccoy

Long Arm by Dragon Fortress

Long Arm by Slipstream80

Long Arm by thedustinmccoy

Long Arm by evilface

Long Arm at Toys From the Past

Long Arm by elmobfaelnar15

Long Arm by thedustinmccoy