[Joeness]

Repeater carried his steady-cam Browning through Grenada, Cobra Island, Panama, Iraq, Somalia and the Balkans. The big gun was last seen at a joint urban warfare exercise in the late nineties before he finally downgraded to a SAW, just in time for the next war.

[Joeness]

I decided not to change Repeater's gun. It's a silly conceit and a nod to Aliens, but without it, there wasn't much point to the figure. There was also nothing resembling an M249 with carded figures in the eighties anyway. Always liked his uniform though as it nudged a little toward real-world functionality.

By this time, I was growing out of toys and the GI Joe heyday was ending. As time went by the sci-fi look and equipment of new figures was getting sillier and fewer examples like Repeater could be found. By 1987 I'd only buy Joes that had some 'real-world' element to them. Cobras of course, were what they were. I have a few more examples of 'what-if' to post but they're all from that era.

[Joeness]

In the seventies, Outback spent some years volunteering in African brush wars against communist guerillas. He served with distinction and honed his survival skills in the harsh terrain, though how he managed to finagle his way back into the US military after serving foreign governments that were under sanction at the time is, well...classified.

***This one's a vanity project I thought of only recently and I believe fits the character: I started by splicing and fading a print from the internet which looks awesome (see right), but likely beyond the ability or budget of factory tooling in the 1980s. So I hand-painted a simplified version over it which at least looks like it could have been mass-produced in a Kowloon sweatshop!

[Joeness]

Well, I did this camouflage entirely with an overlay. Doesn;t save much time over hand painting and loses that "toy look". Concept-wise, ditching all the colors made him look more believable, but less fun.

[shishi]

Cool designs.

[Joeness]

Just playing with Dusty here - a what-if for the nineties, also layered on from a pre-rendered background. Back to hand-painted eighties figures next: more fun, more challenge and looks more like it would have been made if only.

[Joeness]

Flint stole Falcon's shotgun because that was all he had ammo pouches for. He still loves his cowboy belt, though the General isn't too fond of it...

[Joeness]

Law and Order retired after many years of service when his beloved dog finally passed away. He opened a shelter for retired service animals in the northwest with another bereaved ex-Joe who had not been as fortunate.

[Joeness]

Rather than my overlayed print earlier posted, I sought to make the above figure look like a more attractive toy, painting an approximation of standard US patterns at the time in vibrant shades.

I kept the white helmet and flak jacket as a sort of signature for the character and gave him what I imagine to be some kind of flare or colored smoke canister for raising the alarm. Again the cheat I used for the two desert patterns above was simply to remove the darker brown layer and the stones layer from the 6-color to leave the light brown trim on the same pattern for the 3-color. This is what I imagine an expedient production line would do.

This also more or less how the US military went from the older pattern to the newer one: studies showed at a sensible combat distance the stones couldn't be seen at all and there was a tad too much brown; and that three colors would be cheaper to print en masse than six.
Though the military was outfitted with existing stocks of the 6-color "Chocolate Chip" uniform for desert storm, a few examples of the newer 3-color "coffee stains" pattern were seen in theater: General Schwarzkopf's cold-weather jacket and his bodyguard's pants being some examples. By 1993 in Mogadishu it was much more common and by 2001 almost everyone had the 3-color.

[Joeness]

Being a ginger, Spearhead fit in well on exchange in the UK armed forces. He acquired several sets of DPM camouflage from the SAS, and thereafter took them on campaign wherever he went. He served until the early nineties but retired from the military when his bobcat met an unfortunate accident with an Army water truck. Since then he has run a sanctuary for retired service animals with an old war buddy.