Is it a good time or a bad time....

[ender098]

...To be a GI Joe fan? On one hand, Hasbro is launching highly articluated figures and it looks like they may be putting 100% behind their marketing!

On the other hand, all the figures are 1980's remakes.....that have been remade....and remade....and remade...{ad nauseum}.

I'm still ticked about the pulling of the spytroops wave 7.5 (with the last "cool" version of the Viper and Alley Viper (in the same set!!) ) and the cancellation of DTC wave 4 after I was anticipating getting Munitia!

And this crap about the movie? WTF?





On the plus side, it looks like hasbro is listening to fans..they are trolling fan sites and asking for our input, but after all the let downs and cancellations of the best waves and shorting us on the coolest figures when they DON'T cancel the entire wave (Read: Torch v2 and Snow Wolf/Frostbite 2 packs), I kinda think they're gonna listen, take notes, look at us intently and then........rip the notes up, laugh at us and say

"Who cares what you guys want? We know what sells! We have college educated marketing analysts who never had toys as kids to tell us what America Really wants! Why take a chance on giving you what you want when we can run the line into the ground with stupid ideas and blame you for NOT BUYING the CRAP we manufacture? Silly Collectors, Toy lines are for Rich Executives who need to send their kids to private school, and if they don't make us rich overnight, we'll run it into the ground!! MUWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!"

Now that I've told you how I feel, what do you think? Are you smiling, or like me afraid to get hurt by big bad Hasbro?

:rolleyes: :eek: :D

[Stormer]

I think, relatively speaking, it's a good time to be a fan. Hasbro obviously cares about the brand, whether it's in a creative sense or just a moneymaking one, and they ARE putting in a lot of effort even if they're not necessarily putting out the products us first-go-'round fans would ideally like to see.

I'm happy that the figures they're going to be bringing out this year are still 3.75" scale (and they're even apparently being considerate of relative scale between figures), and do still feature the characters that have kept me loving the franchise for over 20 years -- it's not the almost-but-not-quite Sigma Six "universe," the who-you-trying-to-fool Sgt. Savage or the insulting, name-only Extreme.

I'm hoping that the heightened fan interaction pays off -- things like the Cobra Infantry 6-packs, VvV 2-packs proclaiming "Troop Builders!" and the DDP comic pack have shown a level of awareness of our "level" of fandom, and the new attention to fansites and Q&As are unprecedented -- I'll wait and see what comes of that before judging. The closest they've come to that before was probably the 6-pack poll which gave us the Viper Pit, with the added effort of retooling their thighs!

You can't deny that the Comic-Con PDD figure is purely a result of the adult collectors' market and not aimed at new kids or even the nostalgic ex-fans the Anniversary line is being geared towards. Sure it's a little misguided and much more a result of the sealed-in-cases end of the fandom than our playing-with-figures-that-actually-look-good end but when has Hasbro ever released an exclusive figure like this, for the wider geek-world and not just Joe-specific conventions?

*Edit/addition*
I'm glad that they've fielded questions on the "lost" DTC wave 4 so they can realise there's definitely continued fan interest (hell, I was counting on it to finally have an Outback figure...!) and if the responses can be believed, there may still be hope. I also find the poll for the 2008 mail-in to be quite intriguing -- it seems like they're testing the fan opinions on different aspects of the line:
Doc: Straight-up classic characters, regardless of "continuity"
Nemesis Enforcer: The more out-there, sci-fi/fantasy and possibly cartoon-fan side
Tiger Force Soldier: Something new yet still connected to the line, and an army-builder
Fridge: 80s childhood nostalgia ("I remember him, and sending away for his figure")
Billy: Comic continuity that's become integral to the Joe mythos despite a total lack of related toys
Snake Eyes as Cobra Trooper: Another version of the most-repeated character (do we mind multiple versions, can you get away with it with the older fans if you add army-builder potential...?)
-- looking at the choices like this, the poll could be a good marketing tool to see where the fans' interests lie most strongly...
*END EDIT*

A lot of what has been floating around about a movie has sounded worrying, but it's still a ways off and I won't get worked up either way until we see some designs, trailers, confirmed plot points, etc. And I think the Transformers in the movie look like utter crap but I'm glad that the franchise was deemed worthy of live-action movie status and it'll probably help keep TFs going strong for a while yet.

In summation -- it may not be a perfect life, being a GI Joe fan, but it's certainly a better time to be a Joe-fan than a Masters Of The Universe, Thundercats or Dino-Riders fan...!

[Urban Saboteur]

[FONT=Arial]Nope.. I aint afraid.. I aint afraid of hasbro.. put it this way.. they bucketed and bailed on me in 1994 and I kept going for many years.. and I'm still going.. I'm thrilled about the effort they are putting in.. thought wise the SE single pack 25th Anniversary figure looks very cool. The card art is fantastic and I'm looking forward to getting them... if they turn out to be rash gash then I'll BIN them on my store and get rid... if not and they turn out to be great and the next big thing since the 80s releases then I'll back them all the way!
Urban Saboteur[/FONT]

[Outrider]

As far as I'm concerned, it isn't a great time to be a Joe fan. I don't like the cartoonish new style figures, and twenty plus versions of some characters is a waste of plastic. So there isn't much Joe joy on the horizon from where I sit. :(

[LordRaven]

How do I feel about being a Joe fan?
I will ALWAYS be a Joe fan. I LOVE the Joes I already have, and love getting new ones, either from Ebay or Frank's care packages of "I have 30 of these, want one?". The "new" 25th stuff semi-intrests me. I still have ALOT of collecting to do with the classic stuff, and I'm not even really thinkin about the new 25th stuff. I love the America's Elite comic line, and soon Stormy is gonna have his own line.
For me, it's a great time to be a Joe fan, and I don't see when it would ever be a BAD time.
Hasbro is a company, and companies wanna make money. They don;t wanna just break even or make friends, they want the all mighty dollar ROLLIN in, and they are going to do whatever they think will make that money. On the other side of the coin, if they'd LISTEN, we'd give them our money like crazy if they made the stuff we actaully asked for instead of Snake Eyes version 63, now with Realistic Shoelaces! The cancelled DTC line would have done fairly well, and if we could get our grubby lil hands on NEW characters, or updates from ARAH characters long forgotten (LIKE DOC!), we'd be rollin in our figure stands.
We have to face facts, there's a suit at Hasbro that probably has no idea who Snake Eyes actually is, or why we're sick of him. On the other side, as was previous mentioned, let's be thankful we're getting anything at all. Poor Thundercat b@st@rds.

[General Scarlett]

Why in hell isn't this damned 'Flux Capacitor' working?!?!?!??

The good thing about being a 'Joe Fan' right now for me is the interaction that I have with all of you here and on JBL............but I won't be happy until they re-release the Skystriker!!!! ;)

[Urban Saboteur]

[QUOTE=LordRaven]if they'd LISTEN, we'd give them our money like crazy if they made the stuff we actaully asked for instead of Snake Eyes version 63, now with Realistic Shoelaces!
On the other side, as was previous mentioned, let's be thankful we're getting anything at all. Poor Thundercat b@st@rds.[/QUOTE]

:D :) [FONT=Arial]LMAO. This is so funny.. yet so true.[/FONT]

[ToneGunsRevisited]

To me is a bad time.

1st - Because we'll not see wave 4. I was waiting to get 2 or 3 Nite-Vipers, 1 Outback and a Munitia.

2nd - The new 25th got me excited when the first 10 pictures showed up. Now that we already will have a 25th v2 SE and SS I'm not that much. We don't even got the v1 and the v2 was announced. How can a line survive so? Where is Major Bludd that played a big role at the cartoon and comics? Cobra Viper? Let us get some new blood on the 25th line!!!

[lehsreh]

[COLOR=Red]honestly, im just ecstatic about there still being 3 3/4 line. i thought those days were over. even though i still like the old molds better, they are at least joes. im praying the movie will at least be watchable, if so, in my mind it will be the best movie ever, just because its a joe movie. now if they would only bring out a decent cartoon with all the joes in it like ARAH, along with some other oldies, maybe jem, smurfs (since theres 3 movies of them starting next year), and the transformers, i would feel like a kid again.

i have to agree with what ender said though. about the guys at top who know nothing about toys, who never owned a joe action figure thinking that because they have the money and power that they know what we want. i understand that their trying to bring new consumers into the fold, but they should please the old collectors first. its people like us who still watch ebay everyday to find figures, its people like us who buy 20 or 25 of every army builder, kids wont do that. please us first with what we want, then throw in some pretty colors, gadgets and a cartoon to get some new kinds onto it. heck, i want my lil cousins to be into G.I. Joe. that way i can borrow their figures or buy them cheaper then i could get them, or wait until there bored with them and they'll give them to me, lol.[/COLOR]

[Self-Modifier]

For me it's a great time to be a Joe toy collector, because I'm way more excited about the 25th stuff than I ever was for the JvC, SpyTroops, or VvV lines.

As far as a great time to a fan of the property overall... Well, I'm not as sure about that. If there was a quality cartoon on the air, and if the ongoing comic was being written by Larry Hama, then I'd say yes.

So overall, it's mixed feelings on my end. But don't let the second half of my answer detract from the first half, because I am definitely super excited about the new toys.

[Stormer]

I'd love it if Hama were writing America's Elite, too, although Powers seems to be doing okay so far. And at least there's the new Storm Shadow ongoing -- who knows, parhaps if that's a hit and Hama's still on it when Powers leaves AE, maybe he could be tempted to write them both...?