G.I. Joe Minimates!

[elhonez]

[elhonez]

[elhonez]

These do kinda feel like spiritual precursors to 80s Joes, in that they are big, colorful and at least partially inspired by super heroes. 

[buttheadsmate]

I was hoping for a Private Parts box set along with Quarter-Master Bates ,Seaman Staines & Corporal Suffering .....

Unfortunately GI Joe has been promoted  demoted to General-Lee Boering .

 

Seriously I have little idea about these characters but that original Luminos toy above looks stunning ,replicate that guy properly & you have a winner but I am underwhelmed so far.

 

 

 

[Shanester]

You young pups and your tiny GI Joes...  I believe Super Joe did not do well for Hasbro back in the day.  I was so used to the 12" figures (and I had quite a few) that I didn't even acknowledge the 8" Super Joe line.  I think it was cool for its day and has quite a following in the modern collector world.  Regardless, I think the line looks better in the Minimate format.  Maybe the other Adventurers or the specific accessory sets like Magnum Power will come next.

[DSTZach]

As far as I know, they will be exact reproductions, minus the light-up features. So Luminos will be translucent. We tend to do clear prototypes in white, but we should really have some extra clear bodies made so we can prototype clear Minimates. I'll suggest it.

Checked with my Hisstank contact to see if I have sent him anything, but it's possible I may not have. I will get him samples. YoJoe seems to be largely inactive, I'd love for them to create a MM database, but unlikely. Luckily there is Ivan!

Glad to see there are some fans out there. I never had Super Joes, they were a little before my time, but they were always fascinating to me being around Mego scale. I think we had a couple in the toy library at ToyFare. Ditto the Adventure Team, there was a guy in my area who used to take great realistic photography of those bearded dudes doing different stuff, so I have a fondness for them. 

[nandoninny]

someone mentioned Cotswald (sp?).  i didn't know they were still around but back when i sold toys they were huge for GI JOE collectors.  they did a lot of reproductions and a bunch of new designs as well.  i haven't thought about them in 20 years but if they're still around doing what they did then you should look them up too.  

i reached out to YO JOE but haven't heard back.  when i sold all my joes they were what i used as my resource for putting all the figures with the correct accessories.  

[Navaan]

If I remember correctly, and please understand I very well may not, but Yo Joe is effectively dead.

 

 I believe the story was that it was sold off to a group in effort or hope to get it grow or when the owner had financial troubles or something, but that group stopped working on it and there was a bunch of drama behind the scenespirit it is no longer owned by the founder, again if I recall correctly. But that's why you don't see any real updates on it. Something about an internal power struggle between the founder and the owner or something.

[DSTZach]

Checked out Cotswold, as I remember they used to be very into retro Joe. Now, they seem to specialize in very high-end 1/6 scale, with some 1:12 from Mezco and some 1/18 Warhammer stuff. It's possible they may be interested, maybe I'll send them some hints. THanks!

[nandoninny]

well, they carry this which is pretty cool:

https://www.gijoeelite.com/Super-Joe-Unlimited-DarkonBRBCOTSWOLD-EXCLUSIVEBBRSuper-Joe-ScaleBRPRE-ORDER-ETA-April-2023_p_32592.html

 

[Swarm198]

RIP GI Joe Minimates.

[thereasonsy]

3 hours ago, Swarm198 said:

RIP GI Joe Minimates.

I think this is a wee bit premature. I mean, Let’s get this straight. They didn’t sell through the toys they announced 2 years ago that were a significant price jump AND deviation from format so they are going to put the next two waves of one aspect of the property on hold so that they can make their decision by focusing on two box sets that mainstream audiences don’t know about. What could possibly go wrong?

[SCW]

21 hours ago, DSTZach said:

Checked out Cotswold, as I remember they used to be very into retro Joe. Now, they seem to specialize in very high-end 1/6 scale, with some 1:12 from Mezco and some 1/18 Warhammer stuff. It's possible they may be interested, maybe I'll send them some hints. THanks!

Cotswold is not just into high-end, they are the #1 source for retro Joe stuff. Most of the stuff they promote is Adventure Team style stuff, they just carry the other 1:6 stuff as well. This is the website: https://www.gijoeelite.com/

Their Elite Brigade brand is where all the AT-inspired stuff is. They had made so much stuff in recent years.

There is a big market. Estrela is making Falcon sets again, Geyperman is making stuff and Action Man is back as well. Strike while the iron is hot!

 

[Mattallica]

[Navaan]

2 hours ago, Mattallica said:

I'll HAPPILY take a Commando Snake Eyes.

[NerdyTrev]

5 hours ago, Mattallica said:

I'm lost. What's the context here?

[youbastards]

While I am old enough to appreciate the dipping of toes into pre-ARAH territory (my older brother had many of them that I played with including Bullet Man), I can't help but scratch my head at the logic.

If ARAH Minimates aren't selling as expected, the course correction move was to develop obscure characters that the majority of the people buying GI Joe merch in 2023 have never heard of?  This feels like a vanity project of someone at corporate before DST drops the license.

The diversity and variety of the 80's characters is what has kept the brand relevant for 40 years.  Embrace it!  Stop producing back-to-back duplicates of characters and deluxe packaging for regular releases.  Save the unique packaging ideas for SDCC and NYCC.  Instead, get as many iconic characters out as quickly as possible.  Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow may be the Wolverine/Sabretooth of the GI Joe Universe, but there are so many other characters beloved by fans.  Firefly, Zartan, the original Green Shirts.  Shipwreck, Dusty, the Dreadnoks.

Remember the cardbacks for the ARAH line?  Here are the other action figures to be on the look out for in a store near you.  Show confidence in the line by soliciting multiple products at once, every 2-3 months.  Keep an active production cycle so it gets on collector's radars.  The line needs momentum to thrive, 8-10 months between releases is not working.

Embrace the weird and unique.  Do a color changing Zartan.  Vac-metalized Super Trooper.  Golobulus,  Mutated Cobra Commander.  Cold Slither.  Boxsets focusing on the original animated Mini-Series and the movie. 

"Crowd-fund" an exclusive DST website Footlocker carded (resealable!!!) boxset of all of the original 13 figs, Add the three Cobra figures and some of the other early vehicle drivers as backer tiers.  Hasbro hasn't released the original 13 in one set since they updated them to "swivel arm battle grip" in the 80's.  That's the kind of nostalgia you want to capitalize on.  Plus the mold and tampo reuse could potentially reduce development costs.  This is a pretty comprehensive look at the reuse from the original 13:

http://www.actionfigureinsider.com/looking-back-g-i-joe-rah-wave-1/comment-page-1/

DST is sitting on a gold mine with this line.  Figure out what you need to do to make it work.

 

Edited April 17, 2023 by youbastards

[fwoosheyman]

[thereasonsy]

1 hour ago, fwoosheyman said:

Amen.

I’d actually look at how the FCBD and Ninja Force sold to see the health of the line since those were more in line with what the collectors were expecting from price point and collection consistency.

I liked the footlocker in execution but still hated it from a strategy standpoint. It’s an irregular box, so that adds more to the production costs as does the single carded figures. It also was blamed for delays. Maybe it’s the villains in one set/heroes in another. I’d hope that someone is doing market research. Either way it was a beautiful experiment and we’ve learned the mainstream fan base doesn’t want it. 

I’m a broken record but the coms and marketing for this, and several lines, really let it down. Perhaps I’m the pettiest but I’m still irked I went into the FCBD box set thinking and being told it was my only way to get these characters to find out a year later that wasn’t the case. 

[AugieWargo]

I'm old enough that I had some of the Action Team Joes. While I do think these are an odd choice, I will at least order one set and continue to hope the line stays alive to give most of the people what they want.

[buttheadsmate]

2 hours ago, thereasonsy said:

 

 

I’m a broken record but the coms and marketing for this, and several lines, really let it down. Perhaps I’m the pettiest but I’m still irked I went into the FCBD box set thinking and being told it was my only way to get these characters to find out a year later that wasn’t the case. 

Anybody remember the AFX ,Web-Armor Spider-Man exclusive ?   November 2007 & you could only get that exclusive minimate by placing $$10s worth of orders with AFX .

June 2009 & Web-Armor Spider-Man was available in Marvel TRU Wave 3 . 

[DSTZach]

I don't remember us marketing the FCBD set as being the only place to get those characters. If that was ever presented as a fact, I apologize. I don't know that I knew full details about the carded sets at the time, but I certainly thought future variants of those MAJOR characters were possible. 

And again, this is not a "course correction." We didn't develop these as an alternative to ARAH, but as an interesting exclusive at some point in the line. But with ARAH not selling well, we are TRYING these instead, to see if it is Joe in general, or just ARAH fatigue. Between Hasbro, Ultimates and ReAction, there is a lot of ARAH out there. If they do well, great, maybe we can revisit ARAH at a future date. I certainly hope so. 

BTW, I have corrected an oversight on my part and requested Joe MM for HIssTank. I honestly thought I had sent him Series 1, but now he will have everything. Thanks for the heads up.

[thereasonsy]

37 minutes ago, buttheadsmate said:

Anybody remember the AFX ,Web-Armor Spider-Man exclusive ?   November 2007 & you could only get that exclusive minimate by placing $$10s worth of orders with AFX .

June 2009 & Web-Armor Spider-Man was available in Marvel TRU Wave 3 . 

My biggest DST pet hate: exclusive does not mean exclusive. 

[DSTZach]

46 minutes ago, thereasonsy said:

My biggest DST pet hate: exclusive does not mean exclusive. 

Aside from this one example, which happened before my time and I'm sure has a logical explanation, are there other examples? I cannot think of any times we released an exclusive MM/set then offered it somewhere else. 

[buttheadsmate]

23 minutes ago, DSTZach said:

Aside from this one example, which happened before my time and I'm sure has a logical explanation, are there other examples? I cannot think of any times we released an exclusive MM/set then offered it somewhere else. 

No argument .