Tag Archives: GI Joe Classified

SpartanNerd Unboxing and Review…Animal Warriors of the Kingdom Weapons Loot (gold)

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I ordered the Animal Warriors Of The Kingdom gold weapons loot pack from BigBadToyStore, as I was looking for weapons packs and weapons, weapon racks, and other related items for 6-7 inch scale figures. I was specifically looking for things that were cheap, but probably would work with my growing collection of MASTERVERSE. This weapons pack caught my attention because I thought it might go well with the Super7 Ultimates! Conan the Barbarian: Battle of the Mounds figures and King Conan with the throne of Aquilonia that should be arriving within a couple of months

Animal Warriors Of The Kingdom (AWOK) is a line of action figures by a company, Spero, that I am not very familiar with. There are named characters apparently, but I am unaware of the story at all. In my mind, it’s a little bit like the Mythic Legions, where the figures could be any generic fantasy Idea. Most of these figures look like they fit well with the ThunderCats. There are several different colorways of these weapons, as well as variations of what weapons you can have in a “weapons loot”. It was the gold weapons that stuck out the most to me. Below are pictures of the package.

These weapons came in a wonderful window box…it was really very nice. Maybe I should have videoed this box because it is hard to do justice to the effect of holding it and looking at it. When my wife saw the package, she said “That is a terrific shadowbox.” It’s true. There is an orange Sunburst in the background and the weapons are suspended in a blister that allows light in and shadows to fall behind. It’s a boring window box otherwise, but the main idea here the weapons inside are very apparent. These weapons are just attached in a blister. There is no kind of weapons rack or other storage solution, which is just too bad. (Almost my only complaint!). The character on the back is apparently named “Pale,” (Question? ”pronouced “Pail” or “Peh-Leh?”). which is information readily available if you look at the other offerings from the line. He is some type of simian.

The weapons included are: a large mace similar to some weapons in Elden Ring, a broadsword with a jewel in the hilt (very original), two guns (one a shotgun and the other a muzzle-loader type of pistol…both in the safari hunter style). What first appeared to be two pieces- a scepter/magic staff and a short sword, are actually meant to combine to be a long spear. I suppose you could technically keep them separate. And my favorite…a battle axe.

The SpartanNerd has been working on his photography game little bit. You can see that I have a new light box set up. I’m also working on diorama pieces and so here are weapons racks that I made homemade. I found many of tips on the internet about making weapons racks for G.I. Joe classified guns, and also there are racks available to buy. Mostly these are for guns that come with G.I. Joe classified or Marvel Legends. In my case I want a more barbarian, Masters of the Universe congruent look, so I just made an A-frame similar to what we got with Castle Grayskull in the 1980s, and also a square one similar to the Masters of the Universe Classics version. 

I won’t lie to you. I thought about buying the Classics version again, but there aren’t that many of them out there for sale and what is for sale is well over $50 used. I remember when I had this, I wasn’t that happy with it. It seems to me like I could not get the weapons on there the way I wanted, and sometimes the tight pegs would rub the paint off of the weapons. I resorted to rubber bands on it also. Looking at old pictures of it doesn’t bring back great memories. Why aren’t there more diorama pieces readily available to purchase to help fans like the SpartanNerd and the Hub City Geeks out?

I decided to break out the She-Ra from the San Diego comic con exclusive 200x from I don’t know, 2003 or 2004. I keep her in her window box but take her out on special occasions. Her style of sword and the gold motif on her armor match up very well with Movie He-Man and the golden AWOK sword. Now is a good time to point out that none of these weapons will work with 7-inch scale female figures. In the case of this sword and also the guns below, you feel like the fingers are stretching even on larger hands.

I like characters that are like walking weapon racks. Case in point, Two-Bad here can run with the whole mercenary motif. I need to talk about the size of the handles of these weapons. In order for Two-Bad to hold the rifle, I had to face it into his body first in order to wedge the handle into his fingers, and that twist it around. Even this way that handle is so thick it does not want to give me the desirable Sergeant Slaughter type of pose I would want. These weapons were terrific with other toy lines, case in point the redeemer here holding that golden Mace just seems perfect. (The Redeemer can’t hold the guns. His fingers are too stiff. Too bad, because he only has trigger fingers.)

Vikor fending off a Mythic Legions skeleton army builder. A good test case for a future Conan model. From this picture, don’t you think that the handle looks too big? Because Ultimates Conan figures are basically Masters of the Universe Classics figures, I wonder if there will be drama. This sword looks great otherwise in Vikor’s hand.

I’ve had terrific fun posing and taking pictures of my figures with the Animal Warriors of the Kingdom gold weapons loot set. The weapons look great in the hands of male MASTERVERSE, MOTUC, Mythic Legions, and even Spawn figures. The shadowbox packaging is a neat trick. Be careful with the hands as the handles on some of the weapons are a little thick. I am curious about how well they fit in the hands of the AWOK figures. Spero offers plain army builder figures out there for low prices. Maybe I will get one someday and see. Of more interest to me is the set of armor I saw on Big Bad Toy Store. 

I am rating this set 5/5. The weapons look great and that is really the whole point for me. They can add a new dimension to figures like Two-Bad or Barbarian Skeletor. I don’t warrant subtracting a point about the handles…after all I did get the weapons into the hands of the figures and nothing broke and no paint scratched or peeled off. (But it is worrisome.)

Do you agree with my 5/5 score, Hub City Geeks? Let me know in the comments!

Super7 Ultimates B.A.T. SpartanNerd Unboxing and Review

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Deck the Halls will Boughs of Cobra. Cobra La la laa, la lah la laaa.

Beautifully done, chorus teacher SpartanNerd. I ordered this as a part of the Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales on Super7.com. It had been a long time since I ordered one of the Ultimates. Back when they did the Masters of the Universe Classics, I got Ram Man, and if I reviewed him, the post has been deleted because it got NO VIEWS. Come on, Hub City Geeks. Send some love! Ram Man was nice, but I don’t have him anymore. He was given up with the great purge that got me into the Mega Bloks/Construx/MEGA figures.

But I saw this figure earlier in the year and wanted it immediately. I didn’t bite then, though. Same problem as before. Where is the room? My sad little shelf is way overstuffed now. And I surely can’t go into collecting GI Joe’s. (I think if I did, I would go for collecting the vintage ones.)

But I bought it anyway. It was on sale. I figured to keep it in box beside Cobra Commander. (A similar thought pattern went into purchasing GI Joe Classified Series Sgt. Slaughter from GameStop.)

The Cobra B.A.T. came in a very nice package. I was totally floored at how nice this was! After opening Sgt. Slaughter, no comparison. This sleeve leaves me with a dilemma. I want the figure on display. But this part of the box, wow! It has this foil coloring, with Cobra blue camouflage designs, and silver outlines. Just this much did it for me. This puts Mattel’s MOTUC packaging to shame, and definitely puts the Hasbro windowless box to shame! When you remove the sleeve, you can see the figure still in a nice box, and you can read the details on the back. The back has this cartoonish robot feature with a screen that gives us what serves as a bio card for the Cobra B.A.T. Not a single person who purchased this would not know what the B.A.T… is about. But I paid $36 for this figure, and felt right away upon opening it that I was receiving a premium treatment. (Recently, the MEGA Snake Mountain box has underwhelmed me.)

As we continue, it becomes apparent that this is a collector-friendly package. You just slide out what turns out to be TWO LAYERS of blisters. This guy has alternate hands, a pistol, a machine gun, two backpacks (one traditional and another a barrel-shaped container), an alternate damaged head, and a spark damage effect.

He stands tall with no problem. He is tall and posable. In fact, it is just about exactly like the Masters of the Universe Classics figures. The pistol pic below was no problem to pose him into. His damage effects are also really cool…On the cartoons Cobra’s disposable army were really easy to beat up. I will say that I had trouble removing the clear chest piece in order to plug in the spark damage effect. Turns out there is a tiny little tab for your fingernail hiding behind the grenade strap. (Those grenades are not removable as far as I can tell.). The traditional backpack has holes that you can use to store his arm attachments or extra hands. The barrel has room for stuff, but contains some purple spark things. There is a silver feature on his right thigh that I am unsure of the function. It isn’t a holster. (He has a holster for the pistol on his right thigh.). I think this must be from the vintage designs or something. Nothing seems to peg into that, and I haven’t found any pics on the internet showing it used for something. I like to think it is a communicator or a charging station or battery or something.

His arm attachments are a futuristic gun, a claw hand, and a drill. He comes with open hands, trigger fingers, and fists, and these are in a detailed style as well as in a more plain cartoon accurate style. These are alot of hands! I will say the peg joint in the neck is slightly loose, while everything else is very tight. The pegs on the arm attachments and hands might be too tight….

The backpacks attach by pegs that resemble straps. They peg in to the shoulders. I always feel that I have to force them just the tiniest bit.

The plastic on this guy feels pretty good. Maybe a little soft, which is surprising because the joints are so tight.

Here I have him posed with the GI Joe classified figures. You would think the scale discrepancy would be jarring, but in this case it really isn’t. Maybe Cobra Commander is a Napoleon type? Maybe Battle Android Troopers should be on the taller and bigger side. Sgt. Slaughter’s beefy sculpt offsets the tallness of the B.A.T. (What are the sparks in the barrel backpack? They are like sharp “devil-heads” and can be removed). The photos don’t show it much, but the Super7 figure does have larger feet and legs. I used the box background card (also removable!) to take the classic pic that looks like a vintage cardback. By the way. Why don’t GI Joe Classified figures contain this feature?

Below shows two more comparisons. Here with the few MOTUC figures I have left, you can see he really does fit right in as far as size is concerned. Of course he would fall to the barbaric awesomeness of Vikor and Despara. Check out how close he fits with Sir Lazer Lot.

Just for fun, I put him with the Snow Cat and Frostbite, and you can see how big he is compared to the vintage stuff. You get a “frost giant” kind of story.

I was having so much fun posing him and swapping the parts and taking pictures. And then it was time to put him back in the box. I thought to put the hands back the way they were when I opened it. And then…SNAP.

Just like that. I had another childhood memory. How many GI Joes, Corps figures, and others suffered such a fate? This really stung. After all that positivity, something had to go south. Maybe I wasn’t careful enough? Maybe it’s something more problematic, like cheap soft plastic. These pegs are really tight. But the hands are supposed to be swappable as a feature of the toy, and I can’t say for certain, but I bet they swap with other ultimate figures or MOTUC figures like Trap Jaw and Roboto who have a similar gimmick. (Edit: probably not). I was able to soften it with a hair dryer and dig out the peg with a tiny screwdriver. But man. This really burns. He came with other hands, so it isn’t the end of the world. Only a little sad. And sadness should not go with this hobby.

I had my eye on an Ultimate King Conan the Barbarian with the Throne of Aquilonia. I mean, this made me think twice. (I caved and ordered it just before typing all this even though this tragedy is in my mind.)

So, it is time to grade.

My chorus teacher self wants to give this figure an A-. A 91. I wanted him earlier in the year. Waiting paid off as I got him much cheaper. His packaging was stellar. He went right back in the box and that sleeve went right over for future fancy feeling. He has tons of accessories and posing options. The joints feel good. He looks good.

The only negative would be the breakable nature of the peg on the forearm. Still, I am giving him a 5/5. It would have to be like 4.8/5, though. Do you agree or disagree, Hub City Geeks? Have you had similar issues with Super7’s ultimates figures? Do you think my issue should sully the experience of this guy too badly? Should I cancel my order for Conan? Let me know in the comments.

GI Joe Classified Sgt. Slaughter…SpartanNerd unboxing and review

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Jingle Bells! Jingle Bells!

The SpartanNerd got some new goodies!

First up is a “second”…that is, a second GI Joe Classified figure. (I already had Cobra Commander.). And now, I have Sgt. Slaughter, a figure of a person I actually met in person at the Retro Toy Con in Greenville last year. (Sgt. Slaughter is a real-life character.)

My history with the Sarge. Well, as a child I used to watch GI Joe. But we didn’t have many of the figures. Like Transformers, they were on the more expensive side. Which wasn’t to say we had none. Me and my brothers eventually accrued a small army, but we usually didn’t remember the names of the characters, and some of ours were of the more generic but WAY CHEAPER “Corps” variety. As the older brother, I always gravitated towards Cobra and the Decepticons in these rare but cherished acquisitions. The other issue…my mother didn’t want us to go into the army. I have an uncle who was eventually a colonel. And he of course encouraged us to join up. (Just a note. The character of Sgt. Slaughter would be a Marine before becoming a GI Joe.)

Anyway, Sgt. Slaughter was one of the few official Joes that we had. I remember specifically that he had a removable hat, that I remember specifically getting lost. So most of the time he didn’t have this. Some light research on YoJoe.com tells me that we must have had the version that came with the Warthog AIFV.

But this isn’t all, is it? Sgt. Slaughter was a WWF wrestler. I remember watching him. I didn’t watch wrestling that much. It was what came on after the cartoons on Saturday morning, so…BUT, (Confusingly, the sarge seemed to switch to our enemy Iraq sometime in the 1990’s for his wrestling kayfabe. Nobody’s perfect…). Sgt. Slaughter also appeared as a Saturday morning cartoon host and in commercials for GI Joe toys. And finally, the most memorable thing about Sgt. Slaughter for me was the 1980’s movie appearance. In this version, which I got to see dozens of times because we had it on BETA tapes hooked to our Nintendo TV, Sgt. Slaughter shines most of all. Without using a curse word (unlike Beach Head), he let us know what a drill sergeant is all about. “The only way your going home is in a ditty bag. An itty, bitty, ditty bag.” !!!!!!!!!!

(I asked the Sarge what this meant when I met him at the Retro Toy Con last year. The “ditty bag” is a small cosmetics bag that a soldier stores his razor in. At the con I was SO TEMPTED to get an autographed poster of Sgt. Slaughter saying this to hang in my classroom!)

On to the toy review!

WHAT? SERIOUSLY? I ordered my figure from GameStop…I got an e-mail blasting a sale. And so when I clicked, I saw it at a reasonable price of <$25, and ordered it. Having a Cobra Commander already, I knew this would be a pretty cool toy to display beside him.

BUT NOPE. REALLY!!

I had heard of “windowless” packaging for Hasbro’s toys. I might have seen a Star Wars black series Battle Droid hanging on a tab when I visited the store. I didn’t put it together that THIS WAS WHAT I WOULD GET. No window showing us the figure. I did not and still do not appreciate this. OK so there is virtually no plastic in this package. I guess that’s a win for the environment. But the environment has to take second place. We are talking about serious business here, Hub City Geeks.

What we get is a nice picture of Sgt. Slaughter in different situations. The top left is the GI Joe TV host (I think,), the top right is the comic book appearance. Next on the left is a person holding the action figure who is holding a micro action figure which is an included accessory. The right is the image of the Sarge from the movie. The bottom left is a picture of the toy posed holding the machine gun. And in the center, nice and tall, is a modern illustration of the character. If he seems less muscular in this depiction, this is what he really looks like in real life today, only an illustrated version. When GamesStop advertised that this figure would be Six-In-One, what they meant was the six versions that surround the illustration. And they are counting the micro figure.

The back shows us another picture of the machine gun pose, and also a picture of everything in the box along with a ruler showing us how big everything is in scale. Those symbols…

I didn’t pay that much attention to them on Cobra Commander’s box. I guess I just thought it part of the design. But with Sgt. Slaughter’s box next to it, I see that there is more going on here. Something deeper. These are the character’s stats! You can see a whole page about that here. Finally, it makes sense. Cobra Commander has strong leadership, light weapons, “psyops” (psychological warfare), and a mastered skillset for coercion. Sgt. Slaughter has strong leadership, great hand to hand skills, great strength, and a mastered skillset that is too secret to reveal!

The other side has nice art, comparable to Cobra Commander’s.

BUT…Trying to save the environment by removing the blister is a poor excuse for not getting to see the figure we are getting. AND…it looks dumb next to Cobra Commander who has a windowed package. Hasbro. You deal in plastic. Do it right.

Let’s open this up.

This is what you open. The figure is strapped to the open box with paper rope. The other box contains the accessories.

We get what my son in the army says is an AK-47, but you have to assemble it. The magazine and the flashlight were not attached. A pair of sunglasses. A “baton” (is this the right word?), a whistle, a micro action figure on card WITH BLISTER. Three alternate left and right hands, and that hat I remember so fondly.

I think the only couple of things I would add here are a figure stand and a pistol or grenades. But I don’t miss these that much.

Here I have Sgt. Slaughter posed as best as I could to his comic appearance.

I tried to do the pose of the big image on the box…the problem is that the baton will not stay securely in his armpit. Another one you can’t do is the arms folded. His plastic muscles are just too much!

He looks like an 80’s action star holding his AK-47.

In a future post, I will open this micro figure. Why did they include this? Do the recent GI Joe Classified figures all come with this? I really enjoy it, though!

The sergeant must be taller than Cobra Commander. With another upcoming review, you will see that it must be that Cobra Commander is supposed to be on the shorter side. More research needed, I guess. But I kind of like it if he has a Napoleon complex. Seems fitting. The Sarge looks like he could roll up Old Snake and throw him at some BAT bowling pins.

So what do I rate this GI Joe Classified Sgt. Slaughter? No question. That package is a disappointment. I was underwhelmed when I opened the shipper box. And that isn’t what you want in a hobby that is supposed to be about awesome fun. As a teacher that box gets a D+. The contents are clear and the pictures are nice. Blah blah blah. Less plastic. Blah blah blah. I. Want. To. See. What. I. Have. In. The. Box. for display purposes. I am a grown up. Are kids buying these figures? I don’t think so. They have no connection to them.

As far as the figure, it is excellent. 5/5. Hooray! It is a great representation of the classic GI Joe. He looks cool, is highly posable. Looks good with Cobra Commander. No issues with sloppy paint or anything like that. The joints feel right. The swappable hands kind of worry me, but they work just fine…just be careful.

If the figure gets a 5/5, and the package gets a 2/5, I guess I am giving this a 4/5. Do you agree or disagree, Hub City Geeks? Let me know in the comments!