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09-12-2017, 09:12 AM | #1 |
Banned
Join Date: Feb 2009
Location: Georgia
Posts: 1,698
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WHY NINJA FORCE SUCKS: You know what the worst idea the brass ever came up with was? Let's take a bunch of highly-capable individuals, snag their guns from them, and just give them a bunch of ninja stars and katanas and nunchucks and shit. Let's completely disregard thousands of years of historical research and make a unit of guys into a caricature of a romanticized historical warrior popularized by 1970's and 1980's movies, and arm them with gardening tools and a sword that will shatter if it strikes human bone hard enough. Maybe give them some throwing stars so they can mildly annoy the enemy with a half-inch puncture wound. And let's make their vehicles melee-capable, except the motorcycle- let's just strap a damned Hellfire missile to that sucker.
WHY NINJA FORCE WAS AWESOME: Because not long after, we got Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat figures. And there's no way you can tell me you didn't like the idea of Guile and Chun-Li working with GI Joe to take down the Cobra/Shadowloo alliance... and then dealing with Shao Khan when he declares a new Mortal Kombat tournament. Admit it- you want to know what Snake Eyes' Fatality is. WHY JOE AND COBRA VEHICLES SUCK: A few of them were pretty practical, but in real life if Congress saw GI Joe's motor pool, they'd yank their funding so hard the team would be lucky if they could afford slingshots and Spam. Half of them had no concept of 'back blast area' when firing rockets, and on the subject of rockets- it seems like the engineers just said "Yeah, strap a missile out in the open just like, on the side of this truck. It works on jet wings, right?" And the guys just jumped on the side of those trucks and rode around, hanging on with one hand and shooting with the other. I suppose if fatass Refrigerator Perry can be their PT instructor, Stevie Wonder can be their safety inspector. WHY JOE AND COBRA VEHICLES ARE AWESOME: I honestly thought bicycle helmets were for mentally handicapped kids until about 1993 and we used to throw lawn darts and try to chase them, so these insane concepts of 'safety' didn't register. This kind of shit was just normal for us in the 80's. Yeah, a guy hanging off the side of a truck laden with explosive warheads- big deal, my cousin Raymond drove a lawnmower on the interstate drunk for seven hours with a gas can bungee-corded to it. WHY NEON GUNS SUCK: Because it's a neon gun. It was the 1990's, and it looked like the worst idea from the 1980's made manifest. You know what isn't intimidating? A pink laser gun. I don't care if you have ten of them, it's a pink laser gun. You've gotta get caught playing with your dick during Serpentor's speeches to be 'the pink gun guy'. Nothing in this world can bring a man comfort if he shows up to formation in his hi-speed combat gear, and the armorer just says "Here you go, here's your pink laser gun, you putz. Try not to piss your matching panties." WHY NEON GUNS ARE AWESOME: Because at the time, half the toy guns we got were neon colors anyway. Somewhere between 'cop doesn't know that Imperial Blaster looks like' and 'idiot kid pointed fairly-accurate toy gun at someone with a real gun'- but probably more along the lines of 'moms think their sons are retarded and will just kill a shitload of people unless the guns are stupid colors'- we kinda lost the right to realistic toy guns. Maybe it was a ploy by the Joes and Cobras- "Guys, let's make these guns look like damned toys, and they might not shoot at us and think we're just horse-assing around". But on the bright side, if you could find a figure with guns that weren't neon... you got a whole sprue of them. I'd love to see THAT again. WHY STAR BRIGADE SUCKS: Because it's GI Joe in Space. What the hell are they fighting over up there with rifles and handguns- a sattelite? Shoot that sucker with a rocket from a TOC and drink coffee. I mean, yeah I guess there's a few reasons to fight up there but how does the GI Joe Space-Man get together with other Joes for a beer and tell war stories? How many does he have? Two, three? Way to be useful, Yawn Solo. Also everyone knows you poop and pee in your suit all the time. WHY STAR BRIGADE WAS AWESOME: I never got those stupid-looking alien things, but I kinda wish we'd had some cooler ones just to give GI Joe and Cobra a threat to team up against. Maybe an alien invasion on earth would have been awesome. Plus, some of the ones that didn't look like Rock'em Sock'em Retards had bulky armor that made for good juggernaut/strato-pilot and skydiver suits. Plus, Sci-Fi had a damned MINIGUN as a forearm. Top that. WHY ECO-WARRIORS SUCKS: You know what's going through every Soldier's mind when he's faced with ruthless terrorists that want to dominate the planet and enslave humanity? Littering. Eco-Warriors had to be those Joes that were always bitching because someone threw a plastic bottle in the trash can or didn't ride bicycles to the pit. To teach them a lesson, General Hawk says "Fine, you nerd. Here's a water gun and a hazmat suit that stands out like a turd in a punchbowl. Go play Captain Planet and try not to die when that Phil Collins-looking maniac with a chainsaw comes at you like you owe him child support". You know what environmental guys do in the real military? Fine people and shut down operations to give classes. I bet Joes just love that. WHY ECO-WARRIORS WERE AWESOME: Because it was kind of a Haz-Mat team that could deal with CBRNE threats, if you pretended that. That, and you had the Cobra equivalents that were just downright nasty Chemical Warfare guys. Spraying chemical weapons is basically like shaking your penis at NATO and saying "Nuke me then, bitch". It took a serious set of Cahones to do this, and I kind of admire it. Also we got Toxo-Zombies which were kind of cool if you had a lot of them. |
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09-12-2017, 10:42 AM | #2 |
Devil Viper
Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: MD
Posts: 1,529
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This is probably the best thing going on the 'tank right now. I know it's *my* favorite. Excellent writing. Oh yeah, and some valid points!
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09-12-2017, 12:16 PM | #3 |
Crimson Guard
Join Date: Jan 2008
Location: Iowa
Posts: 4,254
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I don't think about that in modern terms of what sucks about vintage ARAH.
I think about broken thumbs, broken crotch strips, cracked elbows, broken knees, discolored/yellowing plastic, aging brittle plastic....stuff like that. |
09-13-2017, 12:51 AM | #4 |
Instigator of Intensity
Join Date: Jun 2008
Location: California
Posts: 3,981
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Excellent take/analysis. I'd like to add my own in terms of my favorite subset, the D.E.F.:
WHY D.E.F. SUCKS: Missile launchers were unnecessary, there were only six figures that were part of the actual line(Headhunter Stormtrooper and Gristle don't count since they were part of Battle Corps instead), Headman looked like Zorro, the message on not taking drugs felt phoned in. WHY D.E.F. WAS AWESOME: Shockwave unmasked, the inclusion of new character Bullet-Proof, awesome upgraded uniforms for Shockwave, Cutter, and Mutt, had some interesting cartoon with GI Joe and COBRA working together against the Headhunters(and comic book episodes, though I can't recall if GI Joe and COBRA worked together in those or not), Headman shown as quite the devious villain(and interestingly the only villain in the cartoon to die, unless you count the movie where a Motor-Viper(or was it a Viper, I forgot) got shot down by a laser.
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09-13-2017, 01:45 AM | #5 |
Cobra Interrogator
Join Date: Aug 2015
Location: Undisclosed Military Installation in Kentucky
Posts: 1,466
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ON NINJA FORCE: A mixed bag. I absolutely LOVED the Ninja Force Storm Shadow with his black-on-white splash pattern. To this day, he remains my favorite Joe of all time and my go-to when I think of Storm Shadow. I also really liked Slice and Dice, and the Night Creeper Leader. Some of the others, like T'Jbang and Dojo were just absurd. What's the point of being a 'ninja' who wears bright yellow? Makes no sense.
ON STREET FIGHTER AND MORTAL KOMBAT: This was GOLD. When I was a kid, I used to fantasize about how cool it would be to have Street Fighter toys. This was before video game toys were really common. Then when I went to the toy store one day and saw them on the shelves, I literally screamed to my brother to come and look because I was so excited. Not only were they Street Fighter, but they were GI JOE at the same time!!! WIN!!! As an adult, I think the sculpts were weak and inauthentic, but I still love the idea of GI Joe and Street Fighter. I've made a few Joe-SF Customs because I think the characters fit together like peanut butter and chocolate. I've also written to IDW begging for Ryu, Guile, and Cammy to become permanent GI Joe members. (Fat chance) ON GI JOE VEHICLES: Quote:
if Congress saw GI Joe's motor pool, they'd yank their funding so hard the team would be lucky if they could afford slingshots and Spam.
ON NEON GUNS: Even as a kid, I didn't like the trend towards crazy neon colors. It could sometimes be okay in moderation, but towards the end of the line they just went crazy with it. ON STAR BRIGADE: I'm not inherently against the idea of Star Brigade. Things like Battlestar Galactica and Call of Duty have proven that the concept can be solid (and don't get me started on mil-sci-fi literature). The Planet Green Valley figures look amazing. But GI JOE's implementation of the idea was not mature. It could have used some more R&D time. It didn't help that by this point the line was basically over and Hasbro was just grasping at straws. The wacky aliens and dumb vehicle designs were just a bridge too far. (And I would still love a 1:18 scale Viper, but the only one I'm aware of cost like $2000) ON ECO WARRIORS: Pass. ON DEF: Some of the figures were really not bad. The drug message was dumb as shit, because it basically told kids that drug dealers were terrorists in pimp suits rather than... You know... Their friends and neighbors. But that's a whole 'nother topic... As figures, I actually thought they were pretty cool. Headhunter was a neat figure, and my brother's personal favorite. Headman was goofy, but no worse than any other 80's badguy. On the JOE side, the idea of expanding into LEO characters is not bad at all. Mutt and Shockwave were quite good figures. They could have done more in this vein with SWAT teams, border patrol, FBI agents, etc. (Then again, this was kind of before the police started buying their own MRAPS, so maybe it set a bad precedent ;-) Last edited by solosam; 09-13-2017 at 02:08 AM.. |
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