G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero

[Rollo Tomassi]

The translucent helmet for the Z-Viper looks kinda cool.

I had Lifeline as a kid and I always thought it was badass that he was a medic that had a silver .45 hidden in his medic case. It's like "oh hey, I'm the Red Cross guy and I'm just here help you guys -- BLAM BLAM BLAM!!!" suckas!!

[Ran]

I had him, too. He sometimes teamed up with 2-1B.

[anarky]

They revealed Big Boa today. The forum I was looking at was all raves. I thought the figure looked sort of... unfinished.

With you on the zombie, Ran. I'll probably get one, maybe two. Whatever their backstory is, I'm ignoring it. In my mind, these are corpses of Vipers (or, better yet, Greenshirts) that Mindbender stuck some mechanical bits in for the sheer "EEEEEWWWWWWWW!" factor of fucking around with the Joes.

[anarky]

Curiously, the local Wal-Mart doubled the number of Renegades figures they had within the past two days, and either sold or moved four Renegades Cobra helicopters.

Given the chaos in their toy department right now, and how long those copters have sat there, I'm guessing no one came in and bought all of them.

[Rollo Tomassi]

Did they get shuffled over to the Clearance aisle?

[Ran]

The Renegades wave and last wave of POC have been hitting here in decent numbers. Someone on Hisstank made a nice custom zombie out of that new toxic viper.


The Sting Raider from TRU is hitting Ross stores now for $10.99. I got one from TRU when they were on clearance there.

[unlimitedpudding]

is the rock viper partial to whitesnake while the techno viper just really into lords of acid or something?

[Ran]

The Hasbro site is selling the next wave for $83. I really considered ordering it, but I don't really want all of them. I'll just wait until they hit retail.
http://www.hasbrotoyshop.com/gi-joe-wav ... ST=SO&PG=1

[anarky]

Odd that the only one doubled is Zombie-Viper. I wonder if this is a case assortment. If so, the other new non-Renegades figures will be a bitch to find. I'm tempted. Really tempted.... Might wait and see if they have another X% off code and if this is still in stock.

[anarky]

Deal of the Day at HTS is GIJoe! 20% off and free shipping.

Too bad they literally have shit. You can get Arctic Destro, I suppose.

[anarky]

Went to get cat food today. I should do that more often. It seems I find a shit-ton of toys every time I do. My cat needs to eat more, goddammit!

Anyway, I found the entire new wave. I got two of the classic-styled Techno Viper (one for me, one for Rando), along with Renegades Tunnel Rat, Scarlett, Ripcord, Storm Shadow, and two of the Cobra Troopers.

Techno Viper is sweet. But every one I saw had a jacked-up Cobra sigil.

I didn't know the Cobra Trooper had two heads. I'm going to display one with each head. And the others have some nice custom potential.

Storm Shadow is fucking sweet. He has what looks like the same old backpack that stores his swords and has a fixed array of arrows. But they finally added a slot to hold his bow! He comes with so damned many ninja weapons, I could give one to every Joe I have and still have some left over. Well, not quite. But close. The styling is off from what I like SS to be (I'm one of five people nationwide who prefers him as a Joe), but he'll make an awesome extra ninja.

Ripcord, well, he's a nice figure. But he looks like no version of Ripcord ever. Maybe closest to the IDW version, I suppose. He's bald. And kind of bulky. Not at all like the scrawny guy with hair clearly shown on the package. But he'll make a cool... somebody.

Scarlett and Tunnel Rat are officially my default versions of those characters, since I pick the nicest-looking one that's close enough to the original version to pass. Scarlett's colors are obviously different, but more useful for a ninja-trained intelligence operative, I think, than the bright colors and high-heeled boots.

All in all, a bloody cool haul. I just wish they were being a bit more consistent about the use of the new ball-jointed wrists.

[Ran]

It is too bad HTS didn't have anything worth using their deal of the day code on yesterday. For 20% off, I probably would have bought that case.

I saw part of the new wave today, too. Grabbed a Techno Viper. The first one I picked up looked like it had everything, but the card was stapled back together. Luckily there was another one behind it. I also saw Tunnel Rat, Scarlett, and Ripcord. Not sure if i really want them, but I won't rule them out yet. Didn't see the Cobra Trooper or Storm Shadow.

Techno Viper is pretty cool, but I was thinking. He comes with a traffic cone (with a Cobra Insignia). I'm pretty sure that an evil terrorist organization would probably not care about safety, therefore skip the cone.

Thanks for grabbing one. Even if I bought one, I think he needs a partner.

[anarky]

It does appear the cones can interlock, which is sorta cool. Still, like you said, they're as odd as the "CAUTION" warnings all over the Cobra vehicles. Given that punishment for troops is being forced to work in the desert in shitty uniforms, and the really bad folks deal with toxic sludge that tends to zombify folks, while wearing low-bid uniforms that get them the nickname "The Leaky Suit Brigade," I always envisioned Cobra to have more of a "If you're standing too close to the exhaust vent of this rocket plane, go fuck yourself... oh, wait, you can't, because YOU'RE DEAD!" attitude.

Of course, I always envisioned them having more black, Hispanic, Asian, and female members, but Hasbro seems to not agree. Aside from that one dude (flamethrower? mine detector?) from the online exclusive desert set.

[Rollo Tomassi]

That's funny, I always thought the opposite. I imagined Cobra was full of rednecks recruited out of holding cells for drunk an disorderly, disaffected college dropout douches, dishonorably discharged Ohioans, bully jocks who lost their football scholarships, stuff like that. I'm not saying there weren't minorities in Cobra, but I mostly thought of them as white trash Bible Belt conservative dickweed haters that got sold a lie of easy money an violence from a smooth talking Used Car Salesman with a Hitler Complex.

[Ran]

I figured Cobra would be made up of a bunch of anti-government or elitist types, sort of like Nazis, the gun toting wackos in Montana, or the KKK. In the episodes of the cartoon I've seen on Hub, all of Cobra's troops are white guys. The only exception is when some of the Joe team gets sent to a parallel universe where Cobra rules the world. The Baroness has some female troops working for her.

The Range Viper from that Non-Target/Ross exclusive and the Shadow Tracker both are black. You would think the Red Fang Ninja would have been Asian, but they re-used a white guy's head instead.