whats your favorite era of g.i.joe sculpts?

keep in mind there are several criteria, appearance, posibility, playability, accessories, durability

I'll probably be the minority here,.. but I voted New Sculpt era.

aside form being the easiest to customize. they kind of went all over the place with designs. most people see that as a bad thing, but its also a good thing. We saw some very diverse designs, unique sculpts, some very cool weapons and accessories(coats, webgear), and New characters and minorities added to the mythos. (something we hadn't gotten since 1994, and not again until this year)

25th scale looks cool, but thats all people can say,. "THEY LOOK COOL", but their playabliaty sucks, they cant hold weapons or even a pose for very long without the stands. So far the Movie lines are the first unique sculpts we've seen other than rehashed RAH figures & Vehicles, and anything you need a razorblade or a mallet to "customize", isnt customizing....

now the new sculpts are superior to the ARAH becuase they took the same concept and ran with them, the plastic is less brittle, adding tons of play value without broken thumbs. theyre just as easy to customize as ARAH, with the bonus of having unique backpacks, accessories, webgear and heads (with hair!) to add. not to mention the weapons and waists/ legs are still upward compatible with ARAH (VvV alley viopers with RAH alley viper weapons...)

...and I would pit the Vehicles RHINO, ROCC, Thunderbolt jet, Humvee, Quickstrike, and Ice Saber against any vehicles from the other eras with superior play value and styles.

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Ease of customization is a totally subjective thing. The new sculpts I've tried to customize have been totally unsatisfying and uncooperative.

Also, your example is sort of funny... Good luck getting the v1 Alley Viper's gun to stay in the VvV AV's baby hands

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ARAH mostly due to consistancy. Some people point to this as a flaw but I thought it was a blessing. Also there was just more "heart" (for lack of a better term) in those years than I am seeing now.

I agree with you 100% although I would still be customizing RAH if I didn't keep getting stripped screws, rusty screws, and cracked plastic.

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Exactly.

While I do like how 25th figures are sized different (like Roadblock being taller and bulkier), I do think it affects playability in the long run. As far as having heart, RAH will always have more heart.

Let's face it, times have changed. Forever. While we have always had a consumer culture, consumerism is more "rampant" now. So is instant gratification. Not to mention that things don't have the staying power they had back in the 80's. Just look at how many figures we get in one year right now compared to how many we got, say, in '85. The current design team has to turn out new product like mad these days. So we get a ton of repaints, repacks, reused parts, and figures with "problems" (i.e. Duke arms). Then you have the marketing side: hard to find figures and waves, chase figures, variants--stuff the old Hasbro would have never done. The toy business has gotten sleazier over time and the product and availability of the product has been affected because of it.

What Hasbro produced back in the 80's will always be superior, mainly because I think the design teams had more freedom, more money, and definitely a wider audience. This allowed them to play around with different concepts and produce things like the Terrordrome and Flagg: toys that were REAL toys, whose play features didn't rely on spring loaded, electronic gadgetry.

RAH had/ has something for everyone. 25 years later it still holds up, and holds up well, against modern toys. All one has to do is look at the Joe vehicles currently at retail: Vamp, Hiss, Skyhawk, Water Mocassin, Sharc, Firebat, AWE Striker. 25 years from now, does anyone honestly think we'll be seeing the Rhino or the ROCC on shelves?

Yeah, me neither.

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Well said, C_Spackler! What toyline can stand ground for, let's say at least five years now? Apart from Lego, Playmobil and videogames, that's a very short list. OK, time has changed and we're pretty spoiled these days, but still..........
I voted for for the first era too.

Tim 121RVC

I'm somewhat shocked by the results (so far)

The way people everywhere talk about it being superior, I thought 25th would be an overwhelming leader

No designs are quite perfect, but I prefer the ease of takeapartedness of ARAH

I can't deal with 25th because I'm not allowed to boil water or use sharp objects

then why are they BOTH being re released?

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Because Hasbro wants your money without having to spend their own on new toolings.


In any case, I went with ARAH. As much as I enjoy some things on 25A like extra articulation and removable gear, ultimately flaws like excessive abuse of mold reusage (I saw absolutely no reason why Beachhead and Firefly had to share a mold, making Wet-Suit a mere redeco of Torpedo is completely missing the point of what made Wet-Suit cool, and reusing Gung-Ho's torso for everyone bare-chested is just plain laziness) and the fact that they lack in vehicles and can't fit inside older ones, along with the lack of a screw construction which makes them very customizer un-friendly makes them come up short of their ancestors's versatility.

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I actually prefer the 25A figures.

The customization is harder, and a few of the figures proportions are off slightly, but I still prefer their proportions and construction.

As I haven't gotten any movie figures yet in hand (mainly because I won't pay the ebay prices for them) I won't cast a vote in this yet.
Although, that having been said based on the pictures I've seen so far of the movies toys my opinion is this:
The ARAH beginning will always have a special place in my heart. I did get some hand-me-down 12" Joes from my older cousin and a friend of mine had some of the Adventure Team 12" Joes that we played with and they were ok. But it was the 3 3/4" Joes that really got me into it. I got in with the Original 13 and road it out until 1994. They wew like little green army men but that were the same size and had the same articulation as most of my other action figures (like Micronauts and Buck Rogers) and then Swivel Arm Battle Grip came along...instant favorite action figures. Granted over the years I would get less and less because the Joes would get less military looking and the Cobras got sillier and brighter. I tried to get into the New Sculpt line, and while it did have some good figures and new characters, overall it was too hit and miss for me to enjoy like the ARAH line. And then along came the 25th line. These guys looks cool and once they got some bugs worked out were fun to play with too. And while most of the Joes don't have that nice uniform look like the Original 13 did, the Cobras were back to having a variety of Blueshirts that didn't have big melon heads along with some updates and remakes of the great villians from the 80's. And now the Movie line is about to hit stores. From what I have read about these figures Hasbro has fixed nearly if not all of the articulation issues which sounds great but I'll need to see it for myself to be a believer. From what I have seen so far, I am loving the black and gray camo mix (or just the full gray camo) as it gives the members a unified yet individual look like the Original 13 had. Unfortunately, so far the Movie line Cobra troopers have looked like crap to me. Those Viper designs with the skull like helmet just aren't winning me over. So at this point if I had to pick a favorite design era it would be 25th line for Cobra and Movie line for the Joes (this may change once I get some Movie figures in hand, though).

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Honestly I think so many fights break out when its said that people have a likeing to ARAH better that I think people keep silent to avoid conflict. I noticed the samething around the "New Sculpt" era as well. Although then things were rougher in alot of ways, but there is a stronger polerization with 25th so really it's kind of the same all around.

Like I said, 25 years from now. The fact that new sculpt vehicles are being re-released four years after the fact is insignificant. Hasbro is of course going to throw as much Joe product at us as they can nearing the release of the movie. They'd be stupid not to.

The fact that RAH vehicles, such as the venerable HISS, see release time and again (movie or not) and sell well, time and again, is a testament to what made RAH great. And though there are plenty of collectors who are tired of seeing the original HISS, they'll still buy the upcoming arctic HISS even though, besides a paint job and a few accessories, it's basically the same thing that's seen release something like ten times already.

Only time will tell if New Sculpt stands the test of time, but judging by the fly-by-night business that is toy making these days, I just don't see it happening. Guess we'll have to talk about it again 25 years from now. We can only hope that Joe, as a brand in general, survives that long.

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I can't believe I'm about to say this, but yeah, I voted for New-sculpts. Now, there were a LOT of stinkers in that line, but when done right, they were the best version of Joe ever.

When done right, they had realistic proportions, durable plastic (no broken thumbs), and great updated designs. On some of them we got swivel wrists. In the later years, they started to come with unique weapons and gear, and they started the whole removable web-gear thing.

As individual figures, I liked them best. Again, when done RIGHT (eg Cross-Hairs, Snake Eyes 23, Gung-Ho 16, Chief Torpedo, Bomb Strike)

As a toyline, nothing compares to ARAH though. Overall it wins hands down.

I never had any interest Extreme or Sigma Six.

25th, is a step backwards in terms of articulation, and design wise, they just rehash old figures. With a few exceptions, they don't look human either: tiny heads, skinny, gangly alien bodies. Most of them can't even hold their weapons right.

They are also extremely cheap and poorly made quality wise, and nowhere near as universally customizable as o-ring figs were.

It is my contention that the biggest reason they are as successful as they are is the retro packaging. We fans love it, and had been telling Hasbro over and over to bring it back. Well 10 years later they finally listened! Way to stay on top of your market demand fellas!

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I agree with the sentiment, here, but not the logic behind the comparitive statement. And here's why.

Let's leave aside the fact that many of the best vehicles of the 80s have not made their comebacks in the 25th age. No Skystriker. No Dragonfly. No Night Raven. No Tomahawk. The classic vehicles at retail today were mostly chosen for their economy of scale and ready association with the classic idea of Joe as when first introduced in 3 and 3/4 form. And almost all of those "re-released" vehicles have been retooled substantially or improved upon in some way, so it's not like we're getting the same HISS or RAM or VAMP or Water Mocassin. Just the same design and name. Again, it was the idea of the vehicle that was truly classic.

In the same way, I think the 25th versions of classic characters have picked up and run with the torch that was lit back in the day. And used it to light the fuse on an atom bomb.

I love the ideas that went into ARAH Joe in the 80s. They were visionary and iconic all at the same time. But the figures and vehicles released before 2000 paled in comparison to the ideas that inspired them. They were like cave drawings of these Platonic "perfect" ideas and, with a little imagination, they did the trick for me as a kid.

As an adult, I traded in all of my old-sculpts for new the minute they were available. Not to cash in on any fad or for any silly notion of true monetary value (sure, I did sell at a time when I made some money on my old collection and had enough to buy all I wanted of the new stuff plus fund a big part of a wedding, but that wasn't the point). I bought the new sculpt versions of my favorite characters because they were better toys. They had more detail, more character, more functionality and -- once they did away with the ill-advised t-crotch design -- more poseability. Plus, they were easier to customize. It was a win to the fourth power.

I would've been perfectly content with the customized versions I ended up with of all my favorite characters in new sculpt form if I'd never seen a 25th figure. But if the new sculpts were the invention of the internal combustion engine to the old-sculpts' wheel, then the 25th figures were the trans-warp drive. There would be no going back in terms of technology. Yet the closeness of the 25th toys to the inspirational images that had graced the cardbacks of my beloved first Joes was so near perfect that, instantly upon holding one, I was taken back to the joy and excitement I had as a kid opening up those first Flash and Snake Eyes figures. The difference this time being the lack of disappointment (however slight) I felt once I actually held those original old-sculpt figures and realized how limited they were in range of motion. I can't even tell you how many thumbs and crotches I broke on Joes in the 80s just trying to get them to look closer to the way they did on the cardbacks.

So, for me, it goes 25th > New Sculpt > Old Sculpt > Fisher Price adventure people.