Night-Viper!!!!!!!! Okay, I'm a bit excited.

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tni has press photos up for waves 1-5. Kinda liking the CG and Night Viper, but they also seem just shy of the mark. Bummed that there don't seem to be any pics of the second wave of three packs. I really want to see Mouse and whether the Airborne in the same pack actually uses the Kwinn mold like the tni panel recap says. Also curious to see the parts/decos on the Cobra pack. Oh, and wave 2 is a 4 figure wave. Looks like it's just going to be the Hard Master, Jinx, and the throwback wave 5 figures that are 2 figure waves.



Actually, now that I count it up, we've only had 42 regular and vehicle driver figures revealed. Maybe 43. So if there's a total of 50 figures including vehicle drivers, and excluding SDCC stuff, there's a handful of figures left to be revealed. Interesting.

Other than the 5 point articulation junk, I like just about all of it. Including the guns! This time around, it'll take a bad screw up for G.I.Joe to not go over well. The 5 point articulation stuff is a downer, but I don't think it would be an issue with kids. I feel they might chunk them aside in favor of the single card stuff, but we'll see.

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Does anybody buy that freakin roleplay crap that crowd the shelves? Maybe they could cut costs on that production and put into actual toys.

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Yep, exactly. The amount of swords I see bashed to heck and back due to teenagers raging their epic battles through a store (said with sarcasm), you'd think there's so much money lost there. I know at KB Toys we'd have to box that crap up regular to ship back for credit.

Then the masks, costumes, etc. I saw a few kids here and there getting this stuff when I worked retail, but the main amount didn't sell until Halloween. But yet Hasbro goes all out there and then says they have to cut back on figures... Ok, let's approach the line as if it is going to fail and cut corners and cost. Makes a lot of sense.

I mean over all I'm not really complaining. I'm pretty much just stating really. The big companies have been doing this for so long now. We'll have bucket loads of I told you so to throw at them as we have had before when mistakes were made and ultimately crumbled the ideas they had.

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So... I've been gone most of the day, so I'm just finding everything all at once...


Can anyone tell me if the figures in the two Ninja 3-packs have their characters revealed?

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Not that I've seen anywhere. The lineup for the second wave has been revealed, but there are no pics of them, the actual characters in wave 1 haven't been named anywhere I've seen. Who cares? They're all ninjas! Buy them dammit!

Well, they're labeled as ninjas, but Roadblock and that Beachhead-esque fella sure don't look the part. :p

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I think everyone is a ninja this go around.

Also, mohawk trooper.




















Also, RZA.

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As it is, my opinions haven't much changed. I'll get Cobra Commander and the HISS tank, but probably not much else.

The only cut articulation looks to be on a few of the gimmick vehicle drivers and maybe CC's ankles, but it's hard to tell from photos, what with the shiny black feet and it seems a lot of the camera men at the show didn't really take any hi-res images. Does seem odd though when the other new figures get full motion that he'd have no ankles but I'm not going to fret. I just wish there were actual photos of the HISS CC figure, not with him shoved down in the back and obscured.

I guess the Shockwave tank is nice enough but that giant cut on Soundwave to pop tapes from seems a bit... well, it seems like a bad design choice to put a big cut in it like that. There had to be a better way to do that.

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Yeah this is going to be Ninja Force the movie... and that's a good thing. Maybe not for ninja haters, but ninja haters are gonna hate.

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Just need to customize CC into The Shredder...

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Posted over at JoeDios on the articulation....

posted in G.I. Joe, G.I. Joe 2, G.I. Joe 2: Retaliation, G.I. Joe Retaliation Toys, G.I. Joe Toys, G.I. Joe: The Movie, Toy Fair 2012 |

It was immediately obvious when I approached Derryl DePriest and began speaking that they knew articulation was an issue that was going to arise today. Between Mr. DePriest and designer John Warden, there were a lot of articulation questions flying around, and as many of us suspected, it all boils down to cost.

Yes, of course there are costs associated with new tooling for figures that are 5 points of articulation, but as explained from Mr. DePriest, it’s more than just the new tooling. Manufacturing costs for figures with that many joints and movement points are extremely expensive above and beyond the tooled parts, so even using existing tooling was cost prohibitive in most cases.

They weighed this fact with the idea that many of these vehicles were being geared for children, who would do little more than slam the figure in the cockpit and drive it around, and the decision was made…if they had to cut articulation, the drivers were the best place to do it. It is a constant battle between quality of the product and the costs that can be absorbed creating that product, and in a year when they are trying to build the brand back up, they have to be extremely prudent.

John Warden also brought up some interesting discussion points in regard to costs of vehicle production. As a fandom, we’ve been complaining pretty heavily about vehicle size, and they’ve taken that into consideration. By reducing articulation and reducing costs associated with the vehicles, they can balance things out and end up producing vehicles that are a bit larger than we might be used to. The Ghost Hawk II is a perfect example. This vehicle was surprisingly large I thought when I was in the showroom, and I honestly didn’t think Hasbro would be able to make it the size I would have wanted, but they did, and some of that is due to costs saved with reduced articulation.

So even though it seems to many of us that the trade off isn’t worth while, we are getting a somewhat larger vehicle, and some other very nicely designed vehicles to go along with it. Mr. Warden confirmed that the heads of the driver figures are totally swappable to normal figures and he even name dropped Rock n Roll as being an inspiration for the Clutch figure. It sounded to me like there was much careful consideration and financial analysis done, short term and long term, and the articulation changes are going to save money, which could mean better things in the future. I’m not happy with the way the driver figures look, but the vehicles are excellent, by and large, and the toyline is very nice as well.

As for the single pack figures…John Warden also confirmed that some of those figures have reduced articulation, but as I deduced on a recent episode of What’s on Joe Mind, it’s due to form and function. Articulation is given on an “as needed” basis, so generic troopers might not get the full range of motion, but the ninjas do. Another example was that the first release of Roadblock won’t have double knees or ankles, but the Wave 2 “Battle Kata” version will, because he’s got more training.

Cutting articulation is not something anyone wants. Not the fans and not the Hasbro designers. But financial justifications seemed to warrant it in this case. Don’t worry about it overtaking the line, that is not a concern.

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I'm perfectly fine with ditching rubber treads on the HISS. No one has to worry about the rubber splitting or degrading in a few years. I think there can be such a thing as "too much detail" and not ever square millimeter needs to have a texture or a line on it.

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Trust generalsjoes to have the answer. The good guy pack is Beachhead, Roadblock, and Kamakura, and the Slice looking guy in the other pack is just a Red Ninja. Though he's obviously intended as a Slice homage. The press photo version with the gray and red color scheme is pretty dead on to his ARAHC look, the black and red look from Toy Fair, less so.