The G.I.Joe club is pumping out the stuff fast! I got my box with the AWE Striker and CLAW/Fang today. So now I gotta do more photos. I'll have them up between now and tomorrow if nothing goes wrong.

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The images uploaded to photobucket faster than I expected, so here are the boxed shots:

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Man, this stuff is really coming out fast.

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Yeah I was expecting the extreme environment sets before these, so I guess those will be showing up soon too. That's a lot of stuff all at once, but I guess get it now before the holiday shopping starts so I might can pay my card down eough by then.

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Yeah I just got an email from BBTS that they are expecting these in the next week or so. So much for my eating out money.

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The AWE Striker ... with "Special Mission: DISCO" Leatherneck.

I can't believe the club of all companies was the first to deliver these. I stopped ordering any non-exlusives from them because they charged more and were incredibly slow. I also had an issue with their bait and switch on the price of items they advertised for pre-sale. They would advertise one price as postage paid. Then when they charged you, it was more claiming that shipping charges vary. I explained it shouldn't be advertised as the "postage paid" cost but they still wouldn't give in. They lost my business over $3.00.

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I like that the AWE Striker illustration has Leatherneck sitting next to Gung Ho. All they needed was Cutter hanging off the side and they'd have three figures, just one head.

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yeahhh, that's some really weak effort there.


now how about a night black repaint with a 25th version of Pathfinder?

I like how the box art shows the pilots swapped on each of the Cobra air vehicles.

How is it different from any of the packaging art from repainted vehicles from the 80s? All of those use the same just tweiked like this.

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Out of package shots finally. I haven't applied the stickers to any of them yet:




































I figure they did a figure swap on the art for the CLAW and FANG due to showing kids that it's ok to put either one with each vehicle. I know when I was a kid, if it came with a figure showing he was the one that flies/drives it, that's who was always the one used. But who knows.

Leatherneck does a decent job of standing out on his own from Gung Ho. You can see it's the same head, but it works ok. I don't mind it that much. My Leatherneck's hat wasn't glued down all the way and came off with just a small amount of pull. It would sort of be neat to cast to use with other figures before gluing it on.

The CLAW does not have wings that slide in and out on the sides. There are no wheels. There are 2 empty pegs that do not have missiles to attach. I'm assuming they are insinuating that you would use 2 of the FANG missiles since there's some pegs holes in the FANG missiles that fits the CLAW. The pegs aren't used with it on the FANG. There's no removable engine cover on top and the flaps do not move. It looks ok and all, but it's not the original it's a completely new design. Some of the other features are missed a little.

The FANG I'm going to say is an all new design. I don't have my original handy to sit next to each other, but looking at the images online it looks like it's a little longer and has some minor added detail. It has a flight stick attached by a ball joint It's a pretty nice update that pretty well looks the same.

I like the pilots for both, but I wish they had the Viper's hands straight. The coloring with the red stripes and helmet are pretty neat on the trooper

The AWE Striker, well there's nothing more to say that hasn't already been said with all the other re-releases. It looks pretty good in tan. Other than that, there's nothing really different.

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Now that I was about to do the stickers on the CLAW, I see it's suppose to have 2 sets of missiles. So I got a factory error version I guess.

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Thanks for the pictures, J!

I can't believe they didn't use the trooper body with the improved leg clearance.

I just saw the Extreme conditions sets on eBay in Oregon. I can't believe these are out now too. I juts got Wave 9 last this week from bbts. Oh well, guess it's time to off load some stuff on eBay.

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