#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'')