Ninja Strike As If A Force... Of Ninjas

The new Snake Eyes movie is coming out soon and with it new toys. The GI JOE Classified series has been running since last summer and has been a challenge for most to collect. Fortunately for me, I haven't been too concerned. Between the Dollar Tree figures and the Jada series my needs have been filled. Though I would like some new action figures and the movie tie in line is delivering exactly what I'd like.

When it comes to GI JOE, I like the more far out stuff. Included with that is the various ninjas. This new core Snake Eyes line pretty much a modern version of Ninja Force... and I couldn't be more happy. I say core line as it's not in the Classified series (don't worry, there's new stuff for that line as well), but more of a mainline set of action figures. 

Like Power Rangers and Star Wars toys I tend to prefer those (but I do get the occasional 'collectors series' figure). These are not 3 3/4, but 6" figures with what looks like a fair amount of articulation. Similar to core class Power Rangers toys by Hasbro. Which I've been loving. There's some fun stuff here. Of course Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow are there, as well as Scarlett and The Baroness. There's also Red Ninjas and Night Creepers which fills me with pure joy. I hope more characters follow suit in this new core class series. This is more what I look for in GI JOE toys than Classified. Not to mention... I don't anticipate having as much of a hard time getting these as Classified fans have trying to get their figures. Yikes.

GIJOE In Discount Missions

On my birthday last month, the Mrs. ended my quest for the new Dollar Tree GIJOE figures I had talked about before. Taped to each present was one of the much searched for figures (and some Tiny Turbo Changers, but we'll discuss those later) and I was overjoyed. Today seemed like a good day to talk about them. I hardly ever plan anything on this site ahead of time. It's complete anarchy. Just chaos.

These are mini figures of GIJOE characters sold at Dollar Tree and other similar stores for $1 each. They're small, about the size of a M.A.S.K figure without any articulation. The sculpts are pretty nice and so is the paint. Destro probably got the worst paint job, with his exposed skin being the same shade of grey as the trademark mask. It's not terrible though, just a little better paint detail would go a long way. 

I think my favorite is the Cobra Red Ninja followed closely by Snake Eyes. They just came out the best in my non- snaked eyes. I really like this type of mini figures sold at Dollar Tree and other similar stores. Basic inexpensive figurines of characters I like. They've got a particular charm about them and there's a thrill of buying a handful of them for $1 each. I hope to see more figures released. I'd love wacky colored repaints.

Bios: Warwolf

Primary Specialty: Manimal - Bounty Hunter/Mercenary

Secondary Specialty: Alien Arms Dealer

After mutating into his evil monster personality, this planet stomping alien will bite anything that moves, and almost anything that doesn't! His poor vision once led him to swallow a fallen meteor that he'd mistaken for a glowing mound of space algae. Soon thereafter, WARWOLF began to expel the contents of his stomach, coughing up an entire tail section of a COBRA helicopter. Talk about an appetite, when this guy get hunger pangs...RUN!

GI JOE Will Send Death On A Ski

Few vehicles can match the GI JOE Snow Cat in pure badassery. Essentially a half track truck, the Snow Cat is mostly used in snowy conditions as it's name would imply.

Make no mistake about it, the Snow Cat is being deployed to kill somebody in winter weather. It's a military vehicle so that's pretty much the assumption. With a missile launcher in the back and plenty of places a JOE could stand and shoot at some Cobra soldiers. The Snow Cat is perfect for some cold weather killing.

In order to kill you in the snow are ski based missiles. As in, in case the missile launcher wasn't enough, it has missiles on skis. Just rocket propelled missiles on skis flying across the snow. Right across some fresh powder and up some Cobra ass.

The Cobra Pogo And Suddenly Things Make Sense

There's times where you'll see the various weaponry Cobra hads and question just how GIJOE always wins. Then there's this commercial and things make sense. Here's Cobra Commander in his new Cobra Pogo. I'm trying to make sense of a hopping frog vehicle. The Pogo has two laser rifles on it's bottom and rockets. I'm assuming it would have to be hopping in the air to get aim with those guns. The rockets? They're pointed directly up. I'm assuming the Pogo would need to be on the ground to launch those... it'd be like playing Angry Birds to shoot those huh?

What's the JOE'S new weapon? The SLAM. What's the SLAM you may ask? A cannon on wheels. What's a cannon? A big gun. They just drive up and shoot either the rockets (pointed forward) or the big ass four barrel cannon. So Cobra has the Pogo, which just hops around and shoots it's guns with debatable accuracy. While the GIJOE's drives up and shoot a million shots at the bouncing thing until they hit it. It's even in the commercial.

The Mamba And The Mummy

THE COBRA MAMBA, a fast attack copter with laser guns and missiles on both sides. A giant purple and black menace featuring two detachable attack pods and twin rotor blades that looked amazing when they weren't hitting each other. In 1988, while on a spring break spent at my Grandma's house, THE COBRA MAMBA went on it's most devious mission yet. A museum robbery. Did I mention I was in the 4th grade?

Sometimes GI JOE fights monsters

G.I. Joe is the code name for America's daring, highly trained, special mission force. Its purpose: To defend human freedom against Cobra, a ruthless, terrorist organization who apparently has a ton of monsters just laying around. To be honest, I'm kinda at a loss at just how Cobra looses all the time. Even without monsters they have ninjas, punk rock pirates who's leader could just morph into other people. Some weirdo in a metal mask, a guy with a robot arm, a freaking mad scientist, a bootleg Dr. Strange, robot soldiers... and that's before you get to the secret city of snake people and the second (and better) leader who was a damn Frankenstein Monster with a portion of his parts coming from Dracula himself!

At some point Cobra decided to outright just start using monsters, because why the fuck not? The hell with those twins, we've got Mega Monsters! GI JOE had to make another special team called the MEGA MARINES to drive up in their Monster Blaster A.P.C to shoot a big ass rocket with. But not to be outdone, when Cobra took their antics to space, GI JOE had to utilize space robots. The Manimals would have come in around then, but something happened and they didn't see the light of day until the early 2000's. What are the Manimals you ask?

Freaking mutating solders that's what. I was lucky enough to score a couple on clearance at Kay Bee Toys and let me tell you, Manimals were freaking amazing. In case the Mega Monsters, snake people, and drug dealers weren't enough... mutant soldiers that changed into terrifying monsters should do the trick. With toys like Manimals, there's no rational reason for GI JOE not to still be on shelves. In the immortal words of Ronnie James Dio, it's always a mystery.

What if mutating soldiers and giant monsters STILL aren't enough? Well, just pull out the zombies I guess. Both Cobra and GI JOE have Eco Warriors teams. Utilizing things like toxic waste for evil, Cobra's cool Toxo-Vipers are awesome enough on their own.  Packing chemical sprayers and a shotgun... I just can't love these neon colored warriors enough. But you can't just go around squirting toxic sludge around and despite all the amazing stuff Cobra has, they have terrible quality control. Toxo-Vipers suits will eventually leak and create a new soldier called the Toxo-Zombie. I'm not kidding, they literally just call workplace accidents a new type of soldier. Somehow these new zombie soldiers were trusted with more chemical sprayers. At this point why the hell not?

At some point Cobra decided accidental zombies weren't enough and developed Zombie-Vipers. According to the bio-card on the back, Compound Z is a chemical that just turns Vipers into zombies. Zombie (a monster known for dragging it's limps) soldiers with big tentacles hanging off their arms. After ten years of The Walking Dead and people dispatching zombies with sticks, starting to understand how the Joes keep winning.

Sgt. Slaughter is a Real American Hero

It's the 4th of July! I can't wait for the cook out and shooting fireworks!

Battle Armor Cobra Commander

Cobra Commander is a unique character. By all appearances he's a coward who's nothing without his underlings. Though, once he donned his Battle Armor all bets were off and his badassness started showing through. Prior seasons he was evil and ruthless, sure, but once anything got serious he was sniveling. Once Serpentor came around, he was reduced to lackey and kinda in a non-sensible way. The underlings felt like he was no longer worthy to lead Cobra, so they made Serpentor to be the ultimate leader. Ok, I'm down (even though you had Destro right there), but they kept him around and still called him Cobra Commander. Shouldn't his title have changed? Though after the events of the movie and his return to glory, Cobra Commander got hardcore. I'd like to think his new costume at that point was part of his 'New Year, New Me' regime. I know I've always liked it better than his other outfits. Just looks awesome, you know?

Golobulus bio

 

Descended from the serpent kings of pre-history; Golobulus rules over Cobra-La, a hidden, secret valley in the Himalayas where the high priests of the Bio-Mechanical cult have created a technology based solely on living organisms. The buildings of Cobra-La are really crustaceans, and the clothes of inhabitants are as alive as the people who wear them. Golobulus has achieved immortality through symbiosis... at the cost of his humanity.

"The plates of Golobulus' body armor are living mutations of lobsters and crabs, each genetically altered to perform a specific function and bred for the tensile strength of their chitinous shells. Over the centuries, so much of Golobulus' body parts have been replaced or bio-mechanically altered that very little of the original is left except for his brain and his central nervous system."