#255 HERACLIO FOURNIER – ANTIGUO TESTAMENTO / NUEVO TESTAMENTO (1969)

These two decks of cards are the oldest toy-decks by Heraclio Fournier I own. I bought them the summer of 2012 in a flea market for around 6 Euros each. Not very cheap, but these decks are worth having.

First and most notable is the theme of the decks: Sacred History. The first deck covers the Old Testament from Genesis, 1 to the Birth of Jesus, while the second deck covers the New Testament from the Annunciation to Ascension.

Both decks have 4 families (white, yellow, blue, red) of 12 cards each. Cards are numbered 1 to 12, and there are two jokers for each deck.

The instructions explain the game, which is very similar to “sevens” or “Elfer Raus!”, that’s each player must try to get rid of all cards by playing them in order. The first card played must be a seven, and then, in the same colour the 6 or the 8 (or another 7) until the rows are finished. The first player that lay all cards wins, the rest add so many points to their account as they have in their hands. And a new game starts until all player except one are over 100 points.

These are all the cards of the Old Testament's deck:

Genesis and Patriarchs

Exodus and Judges

Kings

Exile and Restoration

The game is not the most important thing in this card deck, but the drawings. There are 48 cards with 48 different passages of the Bible. The selection of the passages as well as the texts in the cards were written by Andrés Ibáñez Arana, Professor of the Northern Spain Divinity school (Vitoria). The two “jokers” are indexes of cards, and also include a chronological list of events.

These are all the cards of the New Testament's deck:

Life of Jesus (I)

Life of Jesus (II)

Origins of the Church

Doctrine of Jesus Christ

FACTS AND FIGURES

• Name: ANTIGUO TESTAMENTO / NUEVO TESTAMENTO
• Alternative Name: OLD TESTAMENT / NEW TESTAMENT
• Year: 1969
• Company: Heraclio Fournier (Spain)

#254 GI JOE – TIGER FORCE (EUROPEAN RELEASES IV): TUNNEL RAT and HIT & RUN (1989)

TIGER FORCE UNPRODUCED FIGURES

Among the many catalogue and promotional images that were made to promote this figures, in some of them appeared other figures that were never released and some prototypes as well. In this entry, I’ll try to summarize all those figures, and at the end, I’ll present Tunnel Rat and Hit & Run, the last two Tiger Force figures.

One of the earliest promotional images we know is a diorama depicting 6 tiger force figures which were not the ones that Hasbro produced. Only three of these six were actually produced, but not in the same colours. Let’s check them one by one:

Preproduction Duke:

Quite similar to the released figures, the black stripes on its trousers are wider than the ones in the actual figure.

Picture taken from yojoe.com

Preproduction Dusty:

Almost identical to the released figure, just in slightly different colours.

Picture taken from yojoe.com

Preproduction Recondo:

This figure was produced and sold together with the vehicle “Tiger Fly”. The colours, however, are completely different to the ones show in this picture.

Picture taken from yojoe.com

Additionally, a second picture of the prototype figure appeared in the European catalogues.

Preproduction Lifeline:

The only difference here seem to be the black painted belt and black leg accessories, which were silver painted in the released figure. The stripes on the shirt are also different.

Picture taken from yojoe.com

Preproduction Ripcord:

This figure was never mass-produced.

Picture taken from yojoe.com

Preproduction Sabretooth:

This figure was never mass-produced. It is a repain of Firefly.

Picture taken from yojoe.com

Preproduction Thunder:

You need good sight to see this, but the figure inside (or the head at least) belongs to Thunder. In some British catalogues, the Tiger Rat was announced to include figure “Thunder”:

Picture taken from yojoe.com

None of this figures seem to have its corresponding weapons in its corresponding colours.

Preproduction Torpedo:

Again, this figure is difficult to see, but it could be the Tiger Force version of Torpedo. The figure was never mass-produced.

 

Preproduction Wild Bill:

This figure was intended to be the pilot of the Tiger Fly (what had been logical, since Wild Bill was the pilot of the Dragonfly), but at the very end it was replaced by Recondo, but none of the “Recondos” above.

 

Preproduction Outback:

This prototype appeared in European catalogues show a different t-shirt that the finally produced. The mouth of the tiger is not painted. Additionally, the camo pattern on trousers is different from the one in the produced figure. A couple of shades darker?.

Preproduction Psyche-Out:

This chest plate with the silver gadget is placed over a black harness in the preproduction sample, while the produced figure has a grey harness.

Those were the prototypes/unproduced figures, and now let's finish with the last two figures I wanted to show:

Tunnel Rat:

Similarly to the previous figure, Tunnel Rat was one of the best figures in 1987´s wave and now it was available again in completely different colors. The original release had black trousers and green shirt, but now it is quite a colorful figure in blue, red and orange. The story of my figure is quite cool, since I found the upper body at school and a friend of mine the lower body. Somebody brought the figure to school and it broke somehow and got lost. My friend gave me the lower half, and here it is!

The figure came with a big green backpack, two small green flashlights that could be attached to the backpack, a green pouch and a black rifle.

Hit & Run

Hit & Run is a extremely cool figure from 1987, re-released two years later for people who missed it back then. The color scheme is not like the original one, which had a very realistic camo uniform, but something a bit more fantastic in light blue and orange.

The figure came with a black rifle, a green knife, a two pieced bag, a hook, a handle (also working as a "reel") and a string putting these two together. These three parts were built in the bag, were there is also place for the knife. The accesories are exactly the same (even the colour) of the original Hit & Run v1 figure. I forgot to take pictures of the figure with its weapons, I’ll try to fix it as soon as possible.

FACTS AND FIGURES:

• Name: TUNNEL RAT and HIT & RUN
• Alternate Names: TOPO and ACANTILADO (Spain)
• Toy Line: G.I.Joe: A Real American Hero
• Year: 1989
• Company: Hasbro (U.S.A.)
• Size of the figures: 11 cms or 3,75’’

#253 GI JOE – TIGER FORCE (EUROPEAN RELEASES III): BLIZZARD and SNEAK PEAK (1989)

The second wave of Tiger Force figures (released in Spain around 1992) comprised 6 figures: four of them were brand new: Blizzard, Sneak Peak, Tunnel Rat and Hit and Run; the other two were Psyche-Out and Outback. All of them are European exclusives, so most people forget the last two were part of the first TF wave, and refer to the Euro exclusive figures as the “2^nd TF wave”.

This one above is the promotional picture that appeared in the “official” catalogue (the one that came with every vehicle). The figures are numbered 53 to 58 because the catalogue frame was decorated with miniatures of the card artwork of each figure.

 

The new figures were sold, as the previous ones, in blister packs with the characteristic artwork of the figures, but this time, the orange background was changed for black and orange rays. The backcard is more interesting in that wave because there were differences depending on the figures: 

• The re-releases of Outback and Psyche-Out still included the old figure assortment (starting with Red Dog, Avalanche…) including the 6 “old” Tiger Force figures. As said in the previous article, re-releases can be identified by the grey filecard, instead of the yellow one in the first release.

• Blizzard, Sneak Peak, Tunnel Rat and Hit & Run came with the brand new assortment (starting with Muskrat, Budo…) and included the six new tiger forces.

• The rest of the figures in the new wave came with the new figure assortment, but the 6 “old” Tiger Force figures. The last two lines in the message in the orange box says: “SOON new TIGER FORCE characters. LOOK FOR THEM!”

Blizzard

The original figure was released in white in 1987, while this re-release in yellow came two years later. The yellow outfit doesn´t really fit a ski troop, but who cares? This one was also one of the people´s favorite 

figures in 1987 and had amazing accessories.

The figure came with a yellow helmet, a yellow gun, a yellow UZI, two black skies, two black snow shoes and a black backpack (three pieces, including two detachable handles).

The filecard is interesting, because there is an evident mistake in the text. Blizzard is supposed to be born in Leipzig, Austria, but Leipzig is in Germany. I guess you are already familiar with the fact that the toy line’s name was changed in Europe from “A Real American Hero” to “International Heroes”. Within this change, many figures were released in Europe with changed "file names" and “places of birth”, other examples are Psyche-Out: born in Munich, Mutt: born in London…

Tiger Force Blizzard - Spanish Filecard

Sneak Peak

The fourth new figure in the second TF wave was a new release of an older figure (from 1985), that I had never seen before, because Sneak Peak v1 was never released in Spain. It was the only one from these four that I bought at that time and I have it complete ever since. It came with a lot of accessories, and is very difficult to find complete because of the mouthpiece and the fragile hook on his waist were you hang the walkie-talkie. The original figure was almost completely grey, while this version is more colorful with light blue and orange parts.

Sneak Peak's original mouthpiece, VHTF!

The figure came with a black mouthpiece, a black rifle, a green three-pieced observation device, a black walkie-talkie that could be attached to his waist and black binoculars. The rifle was different depending on the country of release. In Spain, all figures were packed with a "Night Viper" model rifle while in other countries; it came with the "Footloose" rifle model. In the promotional pic above, the figure is depicted with the “night viper” rifle, which finally was not the one that came with my figure, and that got me thinking if that had been a factory error of my figure.

Tiger Force Sneak Peak - Spanish Filecard

Another interesting fact about this figure is that it is one of the few figures whose name identifies a living person. The original name is Owen S. King, who is the son of Stephen King. He was a great fan of this toy-line and his father wrote the filecard for Crystal Ball. In Spain the file name was changed to Ferny Falgas (!?).

Article continues HERE.

FACTS AND FIGURES:

• Name: BLIZZARD and SNEAK PEAK
• Alternate Names: VENTISCA (Spain)
• Toy Line: G.I.Joe: A Real American Hero
• Year: 1989
• Company: Hasbro (U.S.A.)
• Size of the figures: 11 cms or 3,75’’

#252 G.I. JOE – TIGER FORCE (EUROPEAN RELEASES II): OUTBACK and PSYCHE-OUT (1988)

To finish the first batch of Tiger Force figures, I will show Outback and Psyche-Out today. These two are "European Exclusive" figures; as we mentioned in the last entry, but we didn't specified what does this exactly mean: The "euro excl." figures were only available in: Great Britain, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium, France, Greece, Germany, Sweden, Finland and Denmark, with only one curious exception: Duke and Lifeline were not available in Germany, Sweden, Denmark or Finland. For some reason, these figures do not appear in catalogues and promotional leaflets. As a proof, I include the following two pictures:

German promotional leaflet

German catalogue included in vehicles (blueprints on the back)

It is very interesting to see that the figures Outback and Psyche-Out in the previous images are actually prototypes. If you know the figures, you'll probably notice that Outback’s T-shirt is slightly different from the released one: the mouth of the tiger is orange, while in produced figures, the mouth is black. The difference in Psyche-Out is more difficult to see: the harness in his chest has black background instead of grey. These same prototypes also appear in the catalogues for the rest of European countries, see for example, next picture.

Also interesting is that in the last picture, all figures are mirrored, while in the German edition they’re not.

A further difference about these two catalogue images is even more obvious: German catalogue depicts the figures WITHOUT weapons. The reason for this is that laws in Germany are very restrictive with violent games and toys, and it is forbidden to display weapons of any kind in toy packages. As a result of this, a lot of blister artwork had to be redone only for Germany (plus Sweden, Finland and Denmark, although I don’t know if in these countries weapons are allowed in toy packages).

And finally let's go to the figures:

Outback (v2)

The survivalist and jungle specialist is one of the most beloved figures in the whole collection. It was originally released in 1987, and it was the figure I always wanted to have, but for some reason, I never got. When the new 1988 wave came, the figure was available in this other decoration and I got it a a birthday present from my aunt. Now I am even gladder than then, because if I had to buy it now, I would need a lot of money for that. The two versions have similar camo trousers, but the t-shirt changes its color from one to the other.

 
The figure came with a brown backpack, a brown belt, a green torch that could be attached to his leg and a black rifle with strap. The torch in the picture above is not the original, but the one from Outback v1. In this version, the lamp of the torch should be painted white. The strap of the rifle (Hekler & Koch) is also broken, what is very common in this particular accesory.

Tiger Force Outback - Spanish Filecard (Jungla)

 
Psyche-Out (v2)

The expert in deceptive warfare was another figure from 1987 re-released one year later in a quite different outfit. While the original had a bright green jacket, the new one came in orange, giving a complete different aspect to the character. This figure is also an Euro exclusive figure, but it is not so popular as Outback, and that´s why its price is not so high today.

 
The figure came with a grey antenna attached to his head, a black pistol, two antennas (2 pieces each red/grey) that would fit his wrists, and a grey communications device with a red antenna (2 pieces)

Tiger Force Psyche-Out - Spanish Filecard (Psico)

The filecards of some european figures are available with yellow or grey background. The figures in the first batch (that's all I have shown until this point, released in 1988) were originally available in yellow. The following year, the four new TF figures plus Outback and Psyche-Out (re-releases) came with grey filecards. The filecard above is Psyche-Out, 2nd edition (1989).

Article continues HERE.

FACTS AND FIGURES:

• Name: OUTBACK and PSYCHE-OUT
• Alternate Names: JUNGLA and PSICO (Spain)
• Toy Line: G.I.Joe: A Real American Hero
• Year: 1988
• Company: Hasbro (U.S.A.)
• Size of the figures: 11 cms or 3,75’’