THE POP-EXPOSE ‘G.I.Joe 1993’ By Mitchell Smith!
The 1993 line up of G.I.Joe figures was a pretty potent one. The vehicles were not plentiful, but there were a few nice ones, and there were several sub groups and upgrades that made this year one of the great years for GI Joe (I’m considering the 1982 to 2017 years all great years in my opinion. Except the couple of years were it died off.) I do want to take a few minutes to take a closer look at some of the vehicles and figures from this year. The first sub group I want to talk about is the Star Brigade. This is such a great sub group and I’m not sure why Hasbro hasn’t gotten it together and moved this into the modern day.
I’m not sure if they don’t want to compete with Star Wars, but I think they always have. And if they want to move away from a military based toy, the Star Brigade is the perfect sub group to do so. But what do I know, I’m just a dumb kid from the sticks. Outside of the Star Brigade, this year also featured a brief glimpse at another sub group that could be pursued to restart the Joe world in a less military fashion, the Dino Hunters. Another way Hasbro could jump start the franchise and get back into a more retail mindset. The $60.00 figures have forced me to get out of Joe collecting modern Joes. Either way the Dino Hunters was just a sniff of what could be, but never materialized. There were also Mega Marines, Street Fighter, Ninja Force and many mail away sub groups that year. Most of the regular carded figures came with a spring loaded weapon. I did not have any of these as a kid because I had other things I was chasing in 1993, but I was recently able to get pretty much every figure from this year with the exception of the mail away figures. They are pretty cool, and the spring loaded guns and Mega Marine moldable Bio Armor were the big draw for kids.
Firefly and Law were a couple of my favorite upgrades from this year. There were several other nice upgrades plus great new figures such as Colonel Courage and Long Arm. Not a potent year for vehicles but there were a couple nice new ones. I love the realistic military vehicles but some of the futuristic stuff I just didn’t take to all that well. The Ghoststriker is a cool jet, the Starfighter is a nice 1 seat space ship, and the Detonator not overly complicated, but kind of bad ass looking. I do have 10 out of the 17 vehicles from this year and the Shark 9000 is probably the coolest of the ones I have in my collection. Not a Whale, but definitely a cool vehicle that holds a good amount of figures. All in all without counting up every year I would say this was one of the highest amounts of released figures, and little did anyone know, just a year away from a huge crash. All in all I love this year and I’m glad I was able to come across these figures all in one lot to see them first hand. I don’t really care if they make any of them in a modern style, I wont be buying any of their price gouged figures, but I will enjoy the classic one I have.
Are you a fan of 1993 Joes? Share your thoughts with us AFTER THE JUMP!
