Budo and Kwinn wee the easiest to find, the least expensive on eBay.....

Budo and Kwinn are the only wave 3.5 figures I have seen sitting on a peg at Rite-Aid and I left them there. And Budo is the only figure in the wave that I did not buy. I was 99% online for wave 3.5. Only snagged a few in a real store.

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The only way I saw the Ultimate Wave was by case ordering from Entertainment Earth. HTS had some figures form 3.5 & 4 later, but their stock almost instantly sold out. And I missed out on the NIght Vipers & Ninja Troopers there.
I haven't seen joes at retail, except for some Wave 1 Retaliation Fang Boats in the clearance section of walmart and a POC Hawk at a CVS, but that was over a month ago.
It'd be nice if Hasbro could figure a way to get figures to collectors for less than $35 a figure.

You're right. I'm lying. You caught me, Columbo.

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Tryin to bring this back on track.

The only peg warmers I ever saw was the gimp hand Roadblock, and wave 1 Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow. I've only ever seen one Kwinn in the wild, and I bought it. At Tuesday Morning.

Should Hasbro listen to us? I'd like to think we could bend their ear for things like Kwinn and Trakker, but they need to focus on making the brand viable. Not on us, specifically.

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Kwinn is still for sale on BBTS for 10.99



The problem with Kwinn and other fan desired figures is multple:

1. Execution: no matter how good something ends up being, some are always going to be disappointed and won't buy because it doesn't match what they were hoping/wanting/expecting

2. Lack of Mass Appeal: Someone like Kwinn, well appealing to us because of the story connections, has no appeal to the mass market. The design would be something that wouldn't necessarily appeal to the mass market. This is why figures like Kwinn usually end up as exclusives or something like the FSS.

3. Not that many of us: There are probably only 10k-15k Joefans online and maybe another 10k-15k adult Joefans not online. Even if there's more, it's still a small number. So if Hasbro makes 50k of each figure in Wave 3.5, there's still 20k Kwinn's that aren't selling (if everyone gets one). Obviously the numbers are made up but it's just to illustrate a point.


Every figure faces those same problems to a degree, but not as badly as such a niche figure as Kwinn.

While I agree with Darko's premise that Joe fans tend to demand figures like Kwinn and then don't follow through on buying them when said figures are released, I do feel the above reasoning factors in largely for this specific instance. I think a lot of people did buy Kwinn online, both because the combination of the unpredictability of retail availability and the wave 3.5 case containing twelve "new" figures made it a relatively easy decision to not wait. By the time the figure actually did trickle down to retail, the people who wanted the figure already had it. Additionally, as many people have stated, distribution is still as terrible as ever, and the Walgreens/Rite-Aid/Tuesday Morning distribution model means that some people won't see the figure even if any wave 3.5 figures reach their area. I didn't put much effort into looking for figures after I ordered a case aside from a few extra Combat Ninjas, but I know I never saw a Kwinn at retail (I think I only ever saw Roadblock, Firefly, Cobra Commander, and a Combat Ninja).

Just went out through the snow to ship a package, decided to stop at Marshalls because its been a while. Found some 25th anniversary figures. Bazooka trooper, Cobra paraviper , and tiger force duke. $4 each. I bought them just because. So in 6 years, you guys may stumble upon some wave 3.5.

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It's not our fault. It's Hasbro's for not picking a market they know they can please and producing and pricing product accordingly.

As long as they continue trying to force the square peg that is G.I. Joe into the round hole that is the mainstream kids action figure market without age-appropriate media support, they will continue to fail the line and their loyal-if-not-growing adult fan base.

Hasbro could sell Joe direct to adult collectors in a way not unlike Mattel did Masters of the Universe (but better run with the existing infrastructure of Hasbro Toy Shop to lean on), producing to meet demand and charging a little more per figure than they would at retail.

We wouldn't need a movie or a cartoon or wave after wave of core characters on pegs to keep our interest. We'd tolerate longer lead times in exchange for assurance that we could get what we want.

But we aren't enough for Hasbro. And they've repeatedly demonstrated that they would rather destroy the Joe brand than admit it's a line that really only has sticking power with adult collectors.

So if they in fact got burned on that half-arsed rendition of Kwinn because they overproduced him while following their preferred projections -- the ones that told them kids would ever buy him -- I can't bring myself to feel the least bit bad for them.

Only problem with that is that we're a shrinking market. Every year we get smaller and smaller.

So just staying with us is killing the brand.

The only way to keep it alive is to create a new market for it.

The problem is they are trying to hold onto us at the same time. I don't think they can have both. Or more accurately, we may not let them have both.

Currently, we still buy enough to keep the brand on life support, with occasional blips of larger activity. But the brand is not growing and we're a stagnant market.

Eventually we'll all stop buying and the brand will die off (probably sooner rather then later).

MOTUC was meant as a limited line. They're pushing it for all that it's worth, putting in obscure characters, and making it last as long as they can. But it's not a long-term line. It's meant to be short term and eventually end. It's not the same strategy as Hasbro wants to do with G.I. Joe.


Star Wars Black and Legacy is what Hasbro would love to do with Joe, a collector's line and a kid's line. Except Joe doesn't sell in enough numbers for that to happen.


I actually blame the movies. Hasbro has tied G.I. Joe to the movie and so has to follow that schedule and designs. Paramount doesn't have the same goals as Hasbro. Paramount just wants to sell movies (and the largest demographic for an action movie isn't kids most likely). They got blinded by the success of Transformers (the movie did great and led to a ton of toys being sold).

I expect to see a small line for the 3rd movie and then a re-evaluation of where Joe stands and a new direction post G.I. Joe 3.

Every time they make a new cartoon, they stop it half way in favor of a movie.
Sigma 6 reinvented the conflict between GI Joe and Cobra and brought it "au goût du jour" with an anime cartoon. They dropped it.
Renegade tried again to retell the story and they dropped it again and this time, they even failed to make the toys available as the show aired.

Hasbro will have to understand that while a big screen movie might have the instant wow factor, TV keeps the brand in the face of the audience week after week.
TV is getting pretty good these days, so perhaps a GI Joe TV show might do it. Strikes Back or Intelligence meets Arrow or Nikita. Dress the team like soldiers instead of X-Men rejects and get Harry Lama on the writing team. Get Snake Eyes in his original commando look and he will fit right in without looking like a super-hero.

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Renegades made no sense when it came out (timing not plot).

Rise of Cobra had just come out and been fairly successful. There was another sequel coming. Why do a cartoon of yet another version? Why not support the Rise of Cobra universe, if you're going to continue it with a sequel?

Pursuit of Cobra, that theme is tailor-made for a cartoon.

First off, this is a decent talking point, but let's tone down the rhetoric a bit. Nobody's calling anyone a liar, nobody's offended beyond their toy collecting sensibilities, and we (hopefully) all can keep that in perspective. Finally, we know from past distrobution issues, that not everybody's pegwarmers are the same. So continue to keep it civil.


I agree with this for sure. This point in general is also the only thing H can do to make the line kid-friendly. Without SOME KIND of sustainable media (not just a movie every 3 years), kids are not going to get on board. I've long praised the new TMNT model. The media comes first, then the toys have to be immediately ready to support it. Until that happens, Joe is just a niche toy line for now.

As for the Kwinn issue - I've never seen him peg warm. The few times I've seen him on a peg, I've bought him. I don't care much about the Joe IP anymore, and while Kwinn was a character that had some nostalgia for me, I didn't buy him for that reason. But he's a custom fodder gold mine.

I also have something better than dial up internet service, so I've bought many Kwinns online also. some at some crazy good prices via Hasbro Toy Shop, some as a online store pre-order, etc...

So I disagree with the premise from the outset, but that's from a personal perspective only. Plus, I never clamored for the figure anyway. I just buy what I can use, and move on.

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I bought the first Kwinn that I saw on the pegs. I'm doing my part.

Locally there are no GIJoe figures on the pegs at all in the big stores. Nothing at Tuesday Morning. There area few at the Walgreens, Rite Aid, and places like that, but that's sort of expected with their prices. But when Toys R Us finally got this last wave in, oddly enough everything including Kwinn was gone except a Night Viper and Budo that I found on the bottom shelf behind some stuff. I picked both of those up and there hasn't been a shipment since.

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