Blood for the Baron!

volleydan wrote:

The Baron wrote:Is the UK Night Attack the same as the Stinger? There's probably some sticker variances or something.

Nice collection! Can you tell us more about the Funskool stuff, please?

As far as I know, the mold of the Night Attack is the same as the US Stinger - except that the tires for some of the UK ones were rubber with nugget wheels while the US version got plastic tires with spoke wheels. The stickers were very different, but I can't string myself out collecting sticker variants because then I would be looking for VAMPs from every country around the world.

The Funskool jeeps weren't actually released under the GI Joe banner. Best I can tell, when Hasbro sold many of its molds to Funskool in the 90s, Funskool used them to not only make the Joe toys, but also to release several items that had nothing to do with the Joe line. In fact, the packaging on many of these items makes absolutely no reference to GI Joe.

Among these items were the MRF Jeep (MRF was a line of racing toys, and I think the Jeep was intended to be like a repair vehicle), the Police Jeep and its driver Supercop, and the infamous Superhero figure. They also used a Silver Mirage body and a Snake Eyes figure to make a set called "Street Hawk" (though later versions came with a repainted TARGAT figure) and they used a Crazylegs figure to make a figure called "Skydiver". Less popular, but no less interesting, is that they repainted a Cobra CLAW and released it as a Superman toy (why - can't he already fly?) and took the Stiletto and made it into a Batman toy.

Things like this are what makes collecting Funskool stuff the most challenging and occasionally frustrating area of all of Joe collecting to me.

airedevon 1 wrote: Sometimes, I wish I lived in the UK, so that I could just pick up the phone and talk to some of the guys on this forum - I bet we could have some great conversations!!! Is there a lot of talking on the phone amongst the collectors here?

Dave Tree wrote: Don't feel left out Aire, feel free to drop a line whenever you like
Dave.

paul463 wrote:Dave are these from the vault!!???

Sundance wrote:are those stickers from AF3 supposed to be on the orange one?

i'd guess the yellow one's from an unproduced Q Force jeep...

Chopper wrote:

These would be post Wave 2 then, Dave? So the Panther was probably the final result after the 4 forces were decided upon.

One thing I've wondered tho, did CPG know what was going to happen with Hasbro? It almost seems to me like there is a definite pattern to the merge. I.e. slowly introduce Hasbro figures and vehicles in wave 2 and then stop production of the older CPG ones by wave 3. After that it was all over and all was left was old stock. Just seems like it was well planned to me.

Mark