Coming off the success of the JoeDeclassified booth in New Orleans, Gyre-Viper, Roshan, nova, and commandernchief kept the traveling exhibition going up in Canada. They were also able to have their first ever presentation. I got to be on the panel to keep track of time and failed because over the course of an hour we got two hours worth of GI Joe discoveries and explanations that even a long time fan like myself had no idea existed.

Up until now Larry Hama's panel by panel breakdown of classic silent issue 21 and David Lane's unproduced items presentation from San Francisco had been my favorite presentations to date. While those were very cool in their own right and give a better understanding of the G.I. Joe I knew, the Joe Declassified presentationed revealed not only some awesome discoveries but explained as much history and background info as possible.

Gyre-Viper led the presentation, acting as the voice for all of those who contributed from their private collections, with commandernchief a.k.a. Gary from the What's on Joe Mind hosting. They took us on a journey from the very first 3 3/4 inch mockup figure, that got the greenlight for Hasbro's Operation Blast Off which was the launch of the Real American Hero line, and took us straight on through to what would have been a part of Star Brigade, early mockups of GI Joe Extreme using X-Men figures, and samples from modern unproduced figures.

We got to see strange things like the proposed concept for Gnawgahyde, that was nothing like the Dreadnok poacher we know to a Cobra spider wrangler. Concepts so far out there that they make Raptor and Cryst Ball look like realistic military. They also showed us presentation art for Joe mechs long before we ever got them in the modern line. We also got to see characters that we know about that started off much earlier in the line then when they were produced. We not only got to see presentation art and turnarounds, but got an explanation for why those specific pieces existed and who created them. The best exmaple specifically was the unproduced War Dog animal and Goro from Mortal Kombat. We were able to see the development of the figure from what Hasbro planned to some presentation art, straight on to early developments of the figure and preproduction samples. In the case of Goro we even got to see the modified standard buck the figure would have been sculpted on.

By far my personal favorite pieces were the 94 (not 95) mutated Dr Mindbender and its two up companion that shows a lot more of the detailed sculpt. Although seeing some of the play features for the unproduced Replicators sub line was fascinating. I had dismissed the concept as a ripoff of Kenner's Aliens, which we found out it was exactly that. But it took that concept and blended it with the kookiness of something like the Real Ghostbusters line and of course the sci fi military of GI Joe. It totally changed my mind and opened my eyes to a world of GI Joe I never fully realized. That pretty much sums up the presentation as a whole. I hope they keep doing them because I got a lot out of it.

_________________

That sounds cool. Do they have this stuff listed at their site?

_________________

Not yet. We always wait until after presentations to update the site with the new stuff, but it will go up sometime in the near future.

_________________

The New Orleans setup was really cool. It sounds like with the added presentation, the Canadian presentation was better!

_________________

DANG IT!

Did anyone, by chance, record this presentation for an online showcase?

pluv, thanks for taking the time to write this up & add your perspective!

_________________

As with the booth, no one was suppose to take pictures or record anything. I'd love to see a nicely done video of a future presentation though. This was more of a test run for them. I think it went smoothly but there was still room for small improvements, like finding a guy to actually pay attention to the clock.

_________________

I'd be interested in seeing a professionally done video about this stuff.

_________________

It was my highlight of the con. As someone who thought he knew a lot about GI Joe (I took my second back-to-back bronze in the trivia contest this year), the wealth of insight and new information Gyre-Viper presented was staggering. It was like finding a whole new hobby within the hobby.

_________________

Its okay pluv. They run on the metric system up there so 2 hours of Canadian time equals 1 hour of US time.

_________________

As stated above, this was our test run for a panel. And we got some excellent feedback. As for a future video presentation, it is something I have considered doing as a video episode of our podcast. In fact, I'm currently working on planning other video episodes of our podcast (video interviews, etc) so it did occur to me to have the panel recorded for such an episode but there were a lot of factors that could not be worked out in time.

pluv was invaluable. Don't listen to him. He's top shelf in my book.


As others have put forth, there were definitely things at the panel that kind of... rearrange the history of GI JOE as we all have come to know it. And these are things that WILL be made public over the next few months. There was even something at the panel I could not go into detail with so even those who attended the panel still have a couple mysteries to follow up on as we go along. Joe Declassified is completely about transparency. But we do want to be responsible with the information. Every day next week there will be something from the booth or panel revealed or expanded upon on JoeDeclassified.com and JoeDeclassified.com/forum. So keep an eye on the sites next week as we unload, day by day, a few things that have never been seen before, at least by most of the hobby. Everything else will of course end up on an episode of the podcast down the road or through future issues of the Joe Declassified magazine.

The Canadian Joe Convention was fantastic. I can't speak highly enough about their team and everyone who attended. I was more than impressed. And meeting Scramble was definitely one of the highlights of my visit.

_________________

Here's another write up of the panel with some small pics. It does a much better job of highlighting specific items of interest. http://www.comicbookdaily.com/columns/k ... onvention/

_________________