1997 Stalker - Around the Web

The 1997 Stalker is one of my favorite repaints.  It used a classic mold that was done right the first time, but did enough different with it that you have an updated take on a classic character.  This version is the perfect combo of good enough to replace a 1983 Stalker if you're missing him while also being a nice complement to the original.  Sadly, Stalker was about the only figure in the 8 figure Star & Stripes set who was created this way.  But, this leaves collectors a great piece to add to their collection today.  There's criminally little content on this figure out there.  But, here's the best I can find of him from around the web.

1997 Stalker Profile - 2012

1997 Stalker Profile - 2000

1997 Stalker by Scarrviper

1997 Stalker at Joe A Day.com

1997 Pre Production at YoJoe.com

Stalker by Slipstream80

X-Ray Eye - Power Commandos

There are many G.I. Joe knock offs out there.  Most were cheap items designed to simply be a military themed alternative for budget minded gift givers.  Some, though, are spectacular in the lengths they went to mimic Hasbro's successful, flagship brand.  The Power Commandos by the Lucky Bell company are one such knock off line.  They not only stole ideas like filecards, package design and characterization, but they also deliberately sculpted their figures directly after existing Joes and even copied Joe accessories and mashed them together to form new weapons that are instantly recognizable to Joe fans.  The effort to do this was commendable and the power commandos remain one of the more ambitious Joe knock off brands.  The first series of figures were packed in 2-packs of one good guy and one bad guy from the "Terror" faction.  Today, we look at the menacingly named X-Ray Eye.

As a kid, I didn't like knock offs.  To me, they didn't work with Joes and looked far too different.  On the cheap knock off figures, the entire ensemble was a poor rip off of Hasbro sculpting.  But, on the better knock offs, it was usually the head and gear that were dead giveaways.  Usually, the heads are not properly sized or lack the details of a Joe head.  The gear may be intricate, but it lacked Hasbro quality.  So, I had very few of these items in my childhood toy room and those that were received as gifts usually ended up lost or destroyed rather quickly.  As a collector, though, I've grown to appreciate what many of these knock off lines attempted to do.  Most made at least a token effort to offer something different from the Joe line.  And, while much of the figure construction still leaves these items absent from my collection, there are exceptions where the figures most closely mimic G.I. Joes.

The quality of the X-Ray Eye figure itself is fairly high.  The paint masks are very crisp.  And, you have green, silver, flesh, black, gold, blue and red for a total of 7 colors on the figure.  Very few vintage Joes ever featured that many.  I suspect that the gold paint on the figure's hands is every bit as brittle as gold paint used in the vintage Joe line.  The sculpting is also very precise.  Usually, you'd find soft details on other knock offs.  But, the Power Commandos are so closely modeled after Joe parts that they retain the hallmark Hasbro quality.  It's likely that these molds were either based on or created from actual Joe molds.  You can see the Tele Viper's chest bright as day on X-Ray Eye.

I find the heads to be of two camps.  The covered head, like X-Ray Eye, aren't too bad.  While they are bigger than vintage Joe heads and still look a bit out of place with vintage Joes, you can forgive the flaws since the countenances are covered and the head coverings could hide any number of things.  The human heads, though, are less well done.  X-Ray Eye's packmate, Submarine, has a pretty terrible head sculpt that looks like the knock off he is.  It ruins a figure that is a close proximate for the 1986 Cobra Viper.  X-Ray Eye's head, works, though.  The single eye covering is no more bizarre than any number of Cobras.  And, his colors work in combo to make for a decent looking bad guy.  (Terror characters are supposed to be from outer space.  But, X-Ray Eye has a distinctly human fleshtone which helps ground the character in a more traditional Joe role.)

It is in this capacity that I find value in X-Ray Eye.  Getting a new, named Cobra is now impossible.  Even the foreign releases have been barren for over 15 years, now.  So, figures like X-Ray Eye work as new bad guys who can keep Cobra fresh.  I see his axe as the figure's defining feature.  X-Ray Eye is more or a cross between a Halloween movie villain and a Cobra baddie.  I've gone down the failed executioner road.  But, that limits the character quite a bit.  So, I'm focusing on the axe as an ornamental weapon that only appears in close quarters combat.  Though, I'm sure I'll one day have a photo of X-Ray Eye chopping off the head of some poor Steel Brigade figure.

The Power Commando accessories are extremely odd.  In the CORPS! line, we saw some exact matches for Joe accessories appear: only with subtle differences.  (Flint's pack was missing a grenade.  Blowtorch's pack had a slightly different pattern on the tubes, etc.)  The Power Commandos took that a step further.  Their weapons are almost exact copies of 1/2 of two different Joe accessories.  These two pieces are put together into something new.  Any Joe fan will instantly recognize the weapons as Joe related.  But, will also see how the designers made them different enough to avoid any legal issues.  X-Ray Eye's primary rifle is a combination of the 1984 Baroness' rifle butt combined with the classic 1984 Firefly rifle barrel.  The claw attachment is the BAT claw with a stick added as a wrist attachment.  And, the big axe features BBQ's blade stuck onto Alpine's pickaxe handle.  There are tons more strange hybrids in the line that make the gear worthwhile as an addition to any collection, even if the figure's aren't your cup of tea.

To make collecting Power Commandos more fun, there are some figure variants.  The first wave of figures are common.  But, there were later waves that featured re-releases of the Wave 1 figures.  But, most of the 6 figures featured some type of variant.  For X-Ray Eye, the differences are subtle.  The variant figure features orange boots and a slightly darker red torso.  It's not much of a variant.  But, it exists, nonetheless.  And, if you don't have anything to do, it gives you an unsatisfying variation that will consume way too much of your time trying to find.

I'm not sure of the origins of the Power Commandos.  The figures were manufactured in China by a company named Lucky Bell.  They feature a 1992 copyright date and it seems perfectly logical that they fit into this timeframe.  The cards are all in English.  (Though, the Mexican overstock features Spanish language stickers.)  I am not certain as to where all the figures were released.  Many origins can be traced to South America.  But, this seems to be more a case of a product being dumped into any market that would take it.  The all English packaging lends credence to them being designed for the American market.  But, their similarity to G.I. Joe may have caused them grief at customs when the not coincidental designs were seen and reported to Hasbro.  It's another of those stories that we'll likely never know.

In my early collecting years, all Power Commandos were hard to find and somewhat pricey for what they were.  In the 2010's, though, large amounts of overstock Power Commandos began to appear: mostly in Mexico.  This lead to both greater availability and softer pricing for the first 6 figures.  The series two figures remain both rare and pricey, especially since a couple of them are dead ringers for 1986 Cobra army builders.  You can get a carded X-Ray Eye/Submarine pack for around $20 with a little looking.  You might even be able to find a loose, mint and complete figure for 1/2 that amount.  But, you can also still get a complete set of 6 carded figures for far less.  It's likely those will disappear soon as they aren't as prevalent as they were a couple of years ago.  So, now is the time to acquire these guys as we've seen recent examples of Joe adjacent items rapidly climbing in price as soon as some found stock is absorbed.

1988 Toxo Viper - Around the Web

The 1988 Toxo Viper was Cobra's first foray into biological warfare.  While the figure has its oddities, it has also endured as a classic design of the Cobra army.  The removable helmet and interesting pack/weapon combo are a perfect array of accessories for a well designed sculpt.  Despite collector sentiment against anything Eco Warriors adjacent, there is a strong amount of content available on the Toxo Viper.  Here's the best of him from around the web.

1988 Toxo Viper Profile

Toxo Viper by Golden Cobra 79

Toxo Viper at 3DJoes.com

Toxo Viper by JDoubleBigApe

Toxo Viper Pre Production at YoJoe.com

Toxo Viper by DreadnokDread

Toxo Viper Video Review by HCC788

Toxo Viper Photo Feature at Joe A Day

Toxo Viper by thedustinmccoy

1991 Low Light - Around The Web

Low Light became a classic Joe immediately upon his release.  The combination of sculpt, specialty and colors ingrained him into the psyche of the Joe community.  In 1991, Hasbro revisited the character.  And, while the trademark blonde hair was gone, the sculpt and design of the figure was easily on par with the original release.  This Low Light featured more gear and kept the dark color scheme that defined the character.  He remains a popular remake of a classic character.  Despite this, there isn't a ton of content on this version of the figure around the web.

1991 Low Light Profile

1991 Low Light at JoeADay.com

Low Light by JogunWarrior

Low Light at JoeBattleLines.com

Low Light by instachamp

2001 Pathfinder

I'm a Pathfinder fan.  On one hand, this makes sense since he's a good figure from a solid year of G.I. Joe releases.  On the other hand, though, Pathfinder was released long after I had stopped collecting toys and he never played a part in the comic.  (My only G.I. Joe consumption of the time.)  So, there's no real connection to the figure that explains my affinity.  Mostly, Pathfinder seemed exotic.  When I first started collecting Joes, all of the 1990 and 1991 figures were actually quite hard to find.  You never saw them in photos, beyond the fact that Pathfinder's head was often used in customs of the members of the LRRP that also included Snake Eyes, Stormshadow and Stalker.  When I first acquired a Pathfinder, it was as part of a large lot of figures that I had never owned before.  And, Pathfinder stood out among all the new acquisitions.  He remained a personal favorite for a while and kept his generally obscure stature in the collecting world until 2001: when Hasbro created this repainted version as the driver of a Toys R Us exclusive AWE Striker repaint.

At first, it was great to see Pathfinder.  In 2001, Hasbro hadn't really let the extent of lost vintage molds be known.  So, seeing a figure like Pathfinder gave us hope that many more exotic gems would follow.  (Spoiler, they didn't.)  But, in and of himself, Pathfinder was a good release that gave many collectors their first exposure to the sculpt.  Of course, though, he dark black and grey colors joined the muted look of his contemporaries and he faded into any group shot due to the over-saturation of various color hues.  But, seeing Pathfinder included with a vehicle gave hope that there was more great stuff to come in the line.

As a character, Pathfinder is a blank slate.  His sunglasses obscure his eyes and give him an eerie, mysterious look.  But, his specialty does not really lend itself to anything other than a standard infantryman who took on the dangerous work of blazing the trail for his team.  There's probably something slightly off about someone who would volunteer for point duty while wearing a massive buzzsaw that would be heard from miles away in a combat zone.  So, should I ever undertake a Pathfinder characterization, that will be my likely starting point.

This coloring of Pathfinder was largely seen as a "Night Force" incarnation of the character.  While there was nothing official to denote this, collectors of the era took the figure's colors in conjunction with the all black AWE Striker as a direct Night Force homage.  For that reason, this Pathfinder did see a bit of online notoriety for a couple of weeks.  But, that soon petered out and even the AWE Striker repaint fell off the radar.  There was simply so much going on in the Joe world of that time that new releases (unless they were spectacular) fell to the wayside once most people had them in hand.

Pathfinder has few variants for collectors to find.  There is the 1990 figure.  It has a European accessory variant, though the figure is the same.  The figure was planned for release in 1998 in a pack with Outback and Dial Tone.  But, that pack got cancelled.  We got this figure in 2001 and then a re-release of that same figure, though now with accessories in 2004.  The "Chocolate Chip" Pathfinder is a great miss for the collecting world as that set would have been great.  And, the 2004 figure could have been something different.  But, he was released in a set of two vehicles and three figures for $20, so there probably wasn't much budget to get something new.  Hasbro kept the Pathfinder mold after Funskool had stopped producing Joes, so there are no foreign repaints.  So, we get to enjoy two solid Pathfinder figures even if we could have gotten more.

While many vehicles from the 2000's have risen dramatically in price, the AWE Striker has not.  This is likely due to the mold's later overuse.  And, that disinterest in the vehicle has dragged this version of Pathfinder down, too.  Loose figures can be had for $1-$3.  (You'll pay around $9 for a 2004 version complete with the repainted accessories, though.)  You can get AWE Strikers with the figure for between $10 and $20.  Of course, neither the figure nor the vehicle are as common as they were a few years ago.  But, it's worth tracking down a version of Pathfinder for a couple of bucks.  He's something different, even if the 1990 figure is substantially better.  And, he's aged better than you would have thought back in 2001 just because we didn't see him again and the colors appeared with less frequency in subsequent years.