#859 G.I. JOE - BREAKER and ROCK ‘N ROLL (1982)

Getting figures from the first wave is not that easy. They are more fragile than the average figure, and are often found with broken thumbs, and include extremely small accesories (lots of transparent visors in their helmets, or like in the Rock´N Roll case, a small bipod that are easily lost.

I got Breaker a long time ago in an exchange with a fellow collector, and Rock ‘N Roll was recently bought to an eBay seller from Greece. With these two, I can already make one entry dealing with the first wave of G.I.Joe.

As in most action figure toylines, the first wave is rather small, toy companies do not want to make a great investment, if they do not know for sure that the toyline will sell well. Sometimes they use simplified designs to reduce costs, or even change some parts or make them with different cheaper materials.

In the case of G.I.Joe: ARAH, the first wave consisted of 9 figures, later expanded to 11, plus a few vehicles (with 4 drivers) and a mail-in figure. The way to save costs here was to re-use body parts from one figure to the next, and so, almost every figure has the same waist, there are only a few chest parts, and even some heads are used more than once.

Moreover, almost all figures are camo green and, still, it is possible to recognise all figures because of their distinctive features. At the beginning, G.I.Joe wanted to keep the spirit of the original G.I.Joes from the 60s and the 70s: they are all quite military, although with some news: Beside size, figure type and the obvious stuff, the most important is probably that now, there would be a group of bad guys belonging to a terrorist organisation trying to rule the world, and this opens the chance to introduce much fictional characters, plots and weapons. At the begininng it was maybe not intended, but as the waves were released, the characters and their bios were each time more and more fantastic.

Of course there´s the straight arms (and the not-yet-improved shoulders)... I guess Hasbro was thinking in saving some money here, since the swivel arm articulation was already used in some toylines before. The swivel arms requires a greater number of parts in the arms of the figure but it is more stable and has a better durability.

When the toyline proved itself to be profitable, Hasbro released all figures again with improved swivel arms and shoulders (the whole arms were new designed, and the crotch was made less bulky). That was in 1983, all swivel arm versions of the figures in wave 1 are known within collectors as v1.5, that is more or less a variation of the v1s.

FACTS and FIGURES:

• Name: BREAKER v1  and ROCK ‘N ROLL v1
• Toy Line: G.I. Joe (Wave 1)
• Year: 1982
• Company: Hasbro (U.S.A.)
• Size of the figures: 9,5 cm (3 3/4'')

#836 G.I. JOE – R.P.V. (EUROPEAN EXCLUSIVE) (1988)

I recall as if it was yesterday the day I got this vehicle. It was one of those rare (or well, not so rare) chances in which my mother bought me toys. It was one of the small vehicles from the 1988 line, and thus not very expensive, but it surely costed around 1000 pesetas (6 Euro). I remember opening the box while still on the car and trying to mount it on the back tray of the car (at the time children could travel with no security belts or whatever safety restrictions).

I never had many G.I.Joe vehicles, so the R.P.V. was part of many adventures and I played hours with it.

As you can see from the pictures it is a small vehicle that looks quite heavy and slow. I used to play that the Joes had to scort it from here to there and the Cobras tried to ambush them to steal it. I like the idea of an incredible powerful rocket in such a small vehicle, but, of course, this is quite ridiculous form the perspective of an adult collector.

Many collectors will recognise the vehicle, but not the colour, since this grey version is an European Exclusive item. In the U.S. it was released in some kind of light brown, kind of desert brown, which I think is a worse choice.

The tank had capacity for one figure. It has one side seat, which is something I dislike about it. In the box it is Hardball that drives the vehicle. From this seat, and attached to a long black flexible cable, there is a mini-radar unit, that I usually carried under the missile launcher, as I imagined this mini radar may be even slower than the tank itself.

Although I still keep the tank I got as a kid, I later could buy one new in box, although not sealed (the seals deteriorate and leave the box open after many years), but still unassembled. The artwork of the box is truly great, but actually “mirrored”. The back of the box displays the actual toy over a black background (later waves would use dioramized pictures, see for example #478, #624 or #714)

FACTS and FIGURES:

• Name: R.P.V. (EUROPEAN EXCLUSIVE)
• Toy Line: G.I. Joe (Wave 7)
• Year: 1988
• Company: Hasbro (U.S.A.)
• Size of the figures: 9,5 cm (3 3/4'')

#809 GI JOE – DESTRO v3 and FIREFLY v3 (1992 and 1993)

The next two figures also come from different American waves. Destro was originally release in 1992 and Firefly in 1993. In 1992 there was another Firefly figure which was identical to this one only the balc parts were instead grey. To my knowledge in Spain we only had this one, as it happened with most figures that were released in consecutive years with similar but different paint schemes (this was kind of common those last years 1992-1993-1994)

 

Destro was finally released with the iconic dress including that big red “thing” behind the head that was always used in the cartoons and that none the first or the second versions had. The v2 was the first Destro available in Spain, and with golden head was not very similar to the cartoon character, so this figure is kind of a must-have. The accessories look fun to play with, but is the classic gadget that adult collectors despise.

Something similar can be said about Firefly. It was the first Firefly available in Spain, an to us, it was kind of a very secondary character. We never knew the cool v1 until many years later with the internet. The accessory is again kind of ridiculous (but surely fun to play with), and that green uniform is not very appealing to adult collectors, but all-in-all a nice figure to have, especially in Spanish blister!.

The cards seem to be accurate translations, not as it happened with other characters from these same years (and some earlier). The only difference is that the original card says “When the time is right, he uses his Blade Launcher weapon for maximum effect against…” is translated as “When the weather is fine …”. This made me suspect of some “invented facts” for Firefly’s filecard, but it is only an error in the translation.

 

FACTS and FIGURES:

• Name: DESTRO v3 and FIREFLY v2
• Toy Line: G.I. Joe (Waves 11 and 12, respectively)
• Year: 1992 and 1993 (respectively)
• Company: Hasbro (U.S.A.)
• Size of the figures: 9,5 cm (3 3/4'')

#808 GI JOE – BIG BEAR v1 and GRUNT v3 (1992 and 1991)

The American 1992 G.I.Joe suberies was released in Spain in 1994. The sales were already declining, and the figures were made in much shorter runs than just 2 or 3 years before. That makes these Spanish blisters currently very hard to find, but not necessarily very valuable, since many collectors (and I know a few) stopped collecting figures with the (American) 1990´s wave.

This is not the last wave released in Spain, since there was another one released in 1995 which included the Star Brigade Armour Tech figures (6) an its vehicles (3 with 3 more figures) and the Street fighters sub-series, which were only available in American cards.

In any case, the Spanish blisters are always very special to me and during many years, I got to buy these that I am presenting today.

Today I will present Big Bear and Grunt and tomorrow two surprise Cobra members.

The main characteristic of the blisters from this year is a yellow frame on both sides of the card, and the “Battle Corps” logo right right of the big G.I.Joe logo. The blisters for G.I.Joe and Cobra figures are identical except for the background colour of the filecard, which is blue for the first group and peach for the second.

Well the first figure Big Bear was already shown in a previous entry, so I won’t write more about it. Please visit this entry (#690) for more information and a snow diorama which I think it is well done.
The filecard for this figure had to be reformatted to fit the rest of the series, since the American included those “numbers” identifying weapons by name and other accessories. That is whay there seems to be so much free space there.

The second figure Grunt is the third reincarnation of this character. Curiously was one of the first figures released in 1982 and had a second version with swivel arm one year later, but since then, the name was never reused until 1990 I do not like this figure especially, since it is quite a generic soldier with no specific remarkable distinction, and not even very interesting colours or weapons.

The figure was available in Spain not with the rest of series 10, but with the equivalent of series 11.
Both cards are pretty accurate translations of the American ones written by Larry Hama.

FACTS and FIGURES:

• Name: BIG BEAR v1 and GRUNT v3
• Toy Line: G.I. Joe (Waves 11 and 10, respectively)
• Year: 1991 and 1990 (respectively)
• Company: Hasbro (U.S.A.)
• Size of the figures: 9,5 cm (3 3/4'')

#774 G.I.JOE – SUB-ZERO, STRETCHER and ROCK VIPER (1990)

Interestingly, this is the first entry dealing with G.I.Joes from the 1990’s wave (which made number 9). This wave is considered by many to be the last greatest on the ARAH era.

The reason is simple, the main series (that is, leaving out sub-teams like the Eco-Warriors or the Air Commandos) are figures with great sculpts, nice paintworks (many colours in the same figure) and realistic colours. You probably know that G.I.Joe fans are sometimes quite purist when it comes to flashy outfits and strange filecard stories.

Subzero is, in my opinion, one of the best figures in this series: immaculate white uniform, lots of accesories and nice story/filecard. It looks like a real snow trooper, very realistic, some might say.
The small grey missiles and the rifle's bipod are often missing due to their size. The backpack can carry the rifle.

Stretcher, on the contrary, is one of the figures I dislike most in this series. It is supposed to be a doctor, like Lifeline or Doc, but the uniform is strange and the accesories are quite ridiculous (some kind of air skiff to cross swamps and water surfaces). The mini-vehicle has fragile "legs" and the control bar and plastic windshield are also very easily broken.

Rock Viper is considered one of the most interesting Cobra troopers and is usually among people´s favorites. I like very much his rock camo and climbing accesories (the rifle is unfortunately oversized), but I think Hasbro should have released it without moustache. Many people armybuild it, and it looks bizarre when every guy in the troop has one. This figure has a very fragile crotch.

Something most people don't know about Spanish filecards is that starting in 1990, many filecards have been rewritten an tell completely different stories from our favorite heroes. One example here i Stretcher/Tórax, whose story is all made up. Not a single fact from the original filecard has been respected.

In the case of Syb-Zero, only the name and birthplace have been changed.

The translations are also sometimes not 100% accurate, but what I meant in the previous paragraph is not a translation error, they are completely new stories. This makes Spanish cards somehow very interesting for other international collectors.

EXTRA: More pictures of loose figures

FACTS and FIGURES:

• Name: SUB-ZERO, STRETCHER and ROCK VIPER
• Alternate Name: BAJO CERO, TÓRAX y VÍBORA DE ACANTILADO (Spanish)
• Toy Line: G.I. Joe (Wave 9)
• Year: 1990
• Company: Hasbro (U.S.A.)
• Size of the figures: 9,5 cm (3 3/4'')

#714 G.I. JOE- ARTIC BLAST with WINDCHILL (1989)

This vehicle was released in 1989. When I first saw it, I thought it was the coolest concept for a G.I. Joe vehicle ever, but today I don’t like it very much. Most people I know think similarly. Where do you go with such an overpowered sleigh? Would it be effective as an attack vehicle in the snow? The weapons included several machine guns and two missiles.

So complex as it seems, the vehicle is really easy, it is basically one big piece, the harness, two big wheels and a few bits. These bits (all in orange/yellow) have an uncomfortable property, as it is, that they decolour. Most of these vehicles in sealed box would have the following problem: the yellow bits decolour and the white body become yellow-stained. But stained in a very ugly way. It is not that original snow white any more, but depending on the exposition to the yellow parts, it might become really yellow. That’s why I opened my box as soon as I got it, to separate the yellow parts in an extra bag and prevent further damage to my Artic Blast. I don’t know if the American version have this same problem, but in any case, all European Artic Blasts have it.

No matter what, I own this vehicle in its original box and, of course, its driver Windchill. This figure is truly great. It cames with an assault rifle and two skies (these have little guns at the tip of the figure toes).

The box illustration is, as usual, excellent and the picture at the back is also great with that slope and the great scenery behind. Fun that the driver is outside the vehicle.

 

 

FACTS and FIGURES:

• Name: ARTIC BLAST with WINDCHILL
• Toy Line: G.I. Joe (Wave 8)
• Year: 1989
• Company: Hasbro (U.S.A.)
• Size of the figures: 9,5 cm (3 3/4'')