Weekend finds

I confess, I do love to shop. This Saturday I drove into Salem, Oregon, to see my niece's last high-school play (she's about to graduate) and managed to slip in a few hours of shopping time. Not only did I find the solar yard lights and the new TV stand I was looking for, but I also snagged a couple of good 1/6th deals.

The first was a Goodwill find, a huge set of plastic bags taped together which obviously had all or most of a Power Team lookout tower. I've been looking at these for a while, but they've never quite seemed worth the expense to me. But when I saw this bag marked at $12.99, I obviously couldn't pass on it. I grabbed it and ran for the checkout without examining it further. There were clearly some helmets and weapons and other items in there, but I just considered it gravy and didn't inspect closely.

Only later did I untape the two bags for a closer look, and discovered that, not only did I have the tower, I also had a Power Team "Military Life" play set! While the tower seems to be missing a couple pieces (the weapons, which I probably wouldn't have mounted for AT duty anyhow), the Military Life set seems complete, and many of the accessories were still in unopened bags! The bunk had never been assembled, and a clear rubber band still held the locker closed (with the bag of soft-goods still inside). I already have two Military Life sets and have been thinking about getting another, so this is excellent. The local AT now has a serious bunk-room available.



My other find was at Big Lots. Most of the Power Team (except for some Trailwalker sets on a high shelf) stuff was gone, and Joe was missing in action. But I did spot a stack of boxes, and the name "Dennis Miller" caught my eye. Sure enough, it was a stack of 12" talking Dennis Miller figures, all marked at $5. The figure looked like crap (a decent head on a sub-Ken doll body) but for $5, the suit looks good. I took home two.

Add this to the "Unknown Soldier" and Donald Trump I picked up at Tuesday Morning, and suddenly I have a bunch of excellent suits available for kitbashing.

The Dennis suit isn't as nice as the Donald's (not quite as crisp, Velcro closures, and the shirt has no sleeves under the coat) but it's decent, and unlike Donald, Dennis has real socks and shoes (Trump's are molded on). But both are excellent for the bucks, even if you toss the figures straight into the trash.

Overall, a good Joe day.

A V-22 Osprey for Joe?

Today I've decided to talk about the scaling of Joe-sized vehicles. In more contemporary terms, this is a source of great controversy. Many fans of accurate military Joes have complained about vehicles sold as "1/6th scale" which are in fact a good deal smaller. Some of the more notorious are the 21st Century Bradley Fighting Vehicle, the Hasbro M8 armored car, and the 21st Century Little Bird. Most of these vehicles were 1/8th scale or smaller, and that made a lot of people unhappy.

But the fact is, most military (and civilian) vehicles are simply too large to be practical as mass-market items in true 1/6th scale. An F-22 Raptor scales over ten feet long. An M1A1 Abrams tank would be over five feet long and two feet wide. A Chinook cargo helicopter (including rotors) would be sixteen and half feet long! You aren't going to find these on the shelves at Wal-Mart any time soon. So something has to give. Either the vehicles have to be made smaller than scale, or they don't get made at all.

Fact is, shrunken vehicles are part of the great history of our hobby. Yet there's more than one way to shrink a vehicle, as we'll soon see. Other than just anal attention to scale, one of the major complaints about the not-quite 1/6th vehicles I mentioned above is that they didn't work well with figures. Pilots have to be jammed into the front of the Little Bird (which didn't even have room to include the pedals). The M8 really doesn't have room for a driver with legs attached, and troops don't fit well in the Bradley.

Fact is, near as I can tell, these vehicles are more or less scale, just not the scale people wanted. They were reduced, in all dimensions, to fit some arbitrary specification (to fit a box, or to be produced at some price point, or to fit a shelf, or to be shippable).

But that isn't the only way to do things. The other way, the better way I think, is "selective compression." Selective compression reduces dimensions individually with an eye to both the requirements and the intended use. For instance, if the goal is to make a vehicle fit in a box 48" long, the engine compartment might be reduced in size, leaving the cab area unchanged and large enough for a full-scale figure. Of the dimensions of the vehicle might all be reduced, and then the roof-height increased enough so the figure will fit.




When done well, one can hugely change the dimensions of a vehicle and still capture "look and feel" of the original. One classic example, even if it takes things to extremes, is the vintage Irwin Panther jet airplane seen below, along with the real-life Grumman Panther jet on which is it based.

Mind you, not a single dimension or line of the jet remains unchanged. In fact, a scale Panther jet would have a length and wing-span both over six feet! I don't have the dimensions of the Irwin Jet, but I'd guess it's under a third of that. Yet there is no doubt that one plane is based on the other. Irwin designers boiled the panther down to a form that preserved its essence, but that a child could pick-up and fly around the room. On top of that it would hold (just barely) a 1/6th GI Joe figure.



Let's try applying these principles to a modern military vehicle that seems very Joe-worthy, the V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor. The Osprey is a cutting-edge hybrid vehicle combining some of the best features of a helicopter and a fixed-wing cargo airplane. It can fly rapidly and smoothly to a distant target, hover or land vertically to deploy or recover troops, and then fly rapidly back to base. It's an ambitious aircraft that's had it's share of problems, but if the bugs can be worked out its truly revolutionary.

Trouble is, for Joe purposes, it's just way too big. Each rotor alone would be over six-feet in diameter! The fuselage would be nearly six feet long. The span, including rotors, would be almost 14 feet! Young Hercules himself couldn't lift this monster and fly it around the room, even if he had a room big enough.

So, how to make a "kid friendly" version that would fit Joe and still be recognizable ? Well, my first move is to drop the V-22 entirely, and go to its predecessor, the experiment XV-15. Though the two vehicles look a lot alike, the XV-15 is already 20% smaller. Still not nearly small enough, but that 20% is something we don't have to cut.



Here's a 3-view drawing of the XV-15, courtesy of NASA. I used this (specifically, the top view) as the basis of my compression. My first move was to load it into my paint program and chop it into individual parts: cockpit, wings, rotors, tail-cone, tail surfaces, rotors.

Then I started eliminating anything that wasn't necessary. The straight sections of the fuselage fore and aft of the wing were cut out and discarded. The tail was still too long, so I shortened it a bit, and then shrunk the tail surfaces. The wings were made smaller as well. The engines weren't reduced quite as much, but the rotors were made much smaller. The original V-22 has a large cockpit for two flight crew sitting side by side, but I'm assuming the Joe version will have a single seat in the middle. Suddenly, things overall can be MUCH smaller.



What's left still has the recognizable flavor of the V-22, but it's a fraction of the size, I'm guessing about three-feet long. That's still big by kid-standards, but perhaps not impossibly so. (A Sigma-6 or 3 3/4" version would make a very attractive retail product.) The tail and wings would be removable for storage (or for the retail box).



Of course, by now the question that must be burning in all your brains is, "Steve, what does the Adventure Team version look like? Glad you asked...


What's the point of all this, designing a toy that will never be made for a line that no longer exists? I'm not sure, really, except that it's in the spirit of the toys I loved as a kid. Maybe I can't be ten again, and find this thing under my Christmas tree, but I can at least imagine...

Minions! We got minions!

It's been a while since I posted here. Sorry about that. We had a new front door installed last week, and that's put me on a bit of a home improvement kick. I put up new curtain-rods in the living room (and curtains, that my wife picked up), installed new fire alarms, and have been doing some serious reorganization of the clutter, much of it Joe-related.

You see, while I was in deadline hell over the last year-and-a-half, one of my few escapes was retail therapy. I'd go out and hit the local Goodwill, looking mainly for Joes or 1/6th scale props and accessories. Several times a week, I'd find something and bring it home. Once I got home, it was straight back to work, meaning that the thing I'd bought just got tossed somewhere. I also did trades and shopped on-line. Same deal. Get it home, put it -- somewhere. Ignore it.

This stuff if the cholesterol of our household circulatory system. My wife didn't know what to do with it, her attempts to do something with it just made things worse (lots of poorly packed boxes of unsorted stuff), and then we got into double deadline-hell mode with both of us on book deadlines (me on Conan and Mechwarrior, her on Alias). With Chris also working a full-time office job, housework around here has become more rumor than fact. For the most part, we couldn't even afford the interruption to pay somebody to come do it. So the place is a disaster area, mostly thanks to me and Joe. The worst areas have been my office and the dining room, which have become catch-alls, and look more like warehouses than rooms in a house.

So, we've given away some over-large furniture to make some maneuvering room, bought a new, smaller dining set that I haven't had time to assemble yet, and I'm just tunneling through the clutter. I've made huge strides in the office ("look, there's floor under there!") and the dining room, and I'm finding stuff I'd forgotten I'd bought. Through a process of sorting and repacking, I think I can probably halve the volume, and hopefully I'll get the construction materials out of the garage so I can put most of this stuff out there where it belongs, not in our living space. That's my goal for the summer anyway.

Of course, that doesn't mean you can't take a few minutes out to play with your Joes. As one pauses, looks around at all the work to be done, one starts to think, "I could really use some mindless, expendable, and interchangeable minions..."



What world-dominating super-villain, be they Goldfinger, Darth Vader, or Cobra Commander, can get by without minions? Darned useful they are, and as any hero can tell you, they make better targets than ducks in a shooting gallery. But minions are hard to come by in the 1/6th world. Oh, there are some troops in Hasbro's 12" Cobra lines, but it was hard to put together enough of them to really be effective as minions. Maybe better you should make your own.

Here's the thing about minions. Minions don't need to be cool. In fact, a bit of dorkiness is a good thing for the drones that keep your secret missile silo or nuclear reactor going. They don't need the best gear, because most of the time they're seen only in passing, or from a distance, or in a crowd, or flying through the air because the missile silo/nuclear reactor just exploded thanks to our hero. What's more important is that they be somewhat uniform. Heck, if they had much in the way of individuality, we might actually have sympathy for them as we blow them away, and that's not a good thing in this formula.

So, my suggestion when making minions is to look around and figure out what it is you have too many of, and especially what you have too many of and don't like or will never use. Not realistic? Looks goofy? Doesn't matter. If you've go multiples, it's minion material!

First, you need base figures. Just about anything will do, and you could use the cheapest Action Man knock-offs you have laying around, but I went a different way. I had an number of G3 Power Team bodies with black gloved hands and less-than-wonderful head-sculpts. The gloves were a good minion accessory, and there was a good chance I'd be hiding their faces anyway. So my minions sacrafice nothing in the way of articulation.

As for the rest, during my clean-up, I realized that I'd bought a lot of storms Shadows at Goodwill. I mean a lot. At the moment, I count eight nude storms Shadows stacked up in my office closet waiting for some unknown future project (or trade).

Why so many? Well, ask Rudy. Hasbro made huge numbers of those Snake Eyes/Storm Shadow two-packs and they were sold as loss-leaders. For the last six to eight months, those have been cycling out of kids rooms and into thrift stores. Mind you, you may find an occasional Snake Eyes, but they don't show up in equal numbers. At some point the kids pick their favorite, and Storm Shadow has to go. Good move kids. What kind of idiot ninja dresses in white anyhow?

So anyway, enough were dressed that I have five or so jumpsuits, and several of those still had their gun-belts, so that became the basis of my minion uniform. For boots, I picked the basic, early release Power Team, black combat boots. I just don't like the looks of these, but for minions, they're fine. Finally, all but my "officer" get black balaclavas, another thing I have lots of and rarely use. Minion often have their face covered anyway. Beyond that, several of them have been issued gas-masks of various sorts so as not to be killed by the fumes from the rocket fuel/reactor coolant.

The minions are still a work in progress. My officer could still use some kind of head-gear (maybe headphones, I like his widow's peak and hate to cover it), and none of them are armed (still looking for my box of pistols, though I suspect this will be a good use for over-sized Hasbro .45s). I may add a few other accessories if I can find the right stuff in bulk, and it would be nice if they all had matching gas-masks.

So, got any minions? Want to make some? Send me pictures, and I'll post them here.

Temple guardians (a how-to)

If you read my writing blog, Multiplex of the Mind, you may have seen this recent post about my intention to build an interesting garden feature as a tribute to my departed kitty-friend Banzai. My idea is to build a (roughly) 1/6th scale "lost tomb of Banzai" out of paving stones, earth and plantings. It actually will be built over his burial-place, currently just marked with some old bricks.

Some friends of mine bury all their cats (and they've had lots over the years) in

their yard, and mark each with a special plant. But plants die (as they discovered to their distress recently when the plant marking a favorite cat's grave went south on them). Besides, a plant is just a plant as far as I'm concerned. I'm thinking about the far-future here.

So I've been staring at various kinds of stone and brainstorming what this would look like and how I'd build it. Once thing I wanted was for it to have some statuary and carvings. But how to do that? There are all kinds of lawn statuary, but most are the wrong scale for my tomb, and most are painted in a way that I'd have to undo anyway. I also needed something that looked like it could have been carved thousands of years ago by some lost civilization of cat-worshipers. Here's what I came up with:

I think these look pretty good, but I'm almost ashamed of how little they cost. In actuality, my stone statues are actually a couple of cheap and garish resin-cast statues that I bought at a dollar store. See the second picture for what I started with.

I almost passed on these, but something about the shape caught my eye, and I gave them another look. Resin, cheap or not, should be durable enough to last a good long time outside, and the scale was good. I bought six of them, thinking that would allow me to mess things up experimenting on a few of them, but the first pair turned out pretty well I think. Here's how I did it, in case you'd like to turn some cheap resin of your own into ancient statuary.

First, I sprayed them with gray primer to make sure the shape was as good as I thought it was. I was quite satisfied with the result, but it looked nothing like stone. So after searching around, I got some camouflage color spray paint in a color called "Khaki."

A good coat or two over the gray gave it a much better color, but it still didn't look like stone. To do that, I took a can of brown spray paint and sprayed it into the air several feet over the cats. A cloud of brown particles drifted down, adding dark flecks that suddenly make them look like stone. New stone unfortunately. They needed to be aged.

I boiled up some water in the kettle, threw a couple of Lipton tea-bags in a cup, brewed up the thickest, nastiest cup of tea you've ever seen, and broke out a small paint brush.

First, I washed a coat of tea over the entire cat and set it aside to dry. I repeated it, with a special emphasis on the crevices and folds in the statue. Then I repeated it several more times, concentrating on cracks, folds, and imperfections in the resin. Sometimes I'd slop the tea on, then wipe it off when it was partially dry. Finally, I had the ancient look I was searching for.

The cats you see here aren't quite through though. I'll give them a final clear coat of spray matt medium to protect the tea stains while keeping it dull. Then they'll be ready to decorate the steps of my temple, whatever it looks like.

That still leaves me four cats to play with. I'm thinking about taking a saw to one and find out if I can cut the head off. If so, I may be able to embed it in a mortar wall, or use it to top a pole or column.

I'm still trying to think of other decorative touches that are appropriate. We used to call Banzai the "monkey cat" for the way he'd swing down his cat ladder rather than jump, so adding some monkey figures to the temple would be appropriate too. I'd also like to work in his name somehow, disguised in some kind of ancient writing. I'll keep you posted on my tribute to my little friend.

Banzai always enjoyed sneaking into my Joe photos, so I think he'd like being able to stay in them for years to come.

Real Life AT

From time to time, I plan to post some photos of real-life Adventure Team vehicles.

This very nice gyrocopter was photographed by my wife in Tillamook, Oregon a few years back. Not only is it an interesting little aircraft, somebody (consciously or not) has already painted it AT yellow!



For those who don't know, a gyrocopter, or gyroplane as they're sometimes called, is not the same as a helicopter. A helicopter has a powered rotor (or two) that is powered to lift and propel the vehicle. (There are also "compound" helicopters which may add auxiliary propulsion from propellers or jet engines, and sometimes auxiliary lift from small wings, for better high-speed performance, but these are rare, and I don't think any have seen actual service beyond experimental programs.)

A gyrocopter has a normally unpowered rotor. It simply turns in the airflow like a windmill, and in the process generates lift in the same way a conventional wing does as wind flows over it. The propulsion usually comes from a conventional airplane motor with a propeller. To get its rotor turning fast enough for flight, a simple gyrocopter usually will simply turn into the wind and taxi until the rotor is turning fast enough.

Unlike a helicopter, a gyrocopter generally can't take off vertically (though with a good head-wind, some can come close), but they can land with minimal runway, and fly slow. And they can land almost vertically, though it's a rapid decent with no hovering.

That's another rule for gyrocopters that doesn't apply to helicopters. No hovering.

So why would anybody want one? Well, they're very simple and rugged. They cost a tiny fraction of what a helicopter does, are far easier to maintain, and can do some of the same jobs (scouting, observation, aerial photography, access to short, rugged fields) almost as well.

There's one other thing that I've saved until now, just to avoid confusing the issue. Some gyrocopters cheat a bit on the vertical take-off business. They use a power system (either a separate gasoline motor, or a drive shaft connected to the propulsion motor with a clutch) to power the rotor up to flying speed. Then the motor is disengaged, the rotors are quickly turned to "bite" the air, the throttle on the propulsion motor is gunned, and the gyrocopter uses the stored energy in the rotors (which act like a bit flywheel) and "hop" into the air. In some designs, all this stuff is coordinated through the operation of one lever. The pilot waits till the rotors hit proper speed, activates the lever, and then fly for all they're worth.

You may be asking, if there's a system to drive the rotor with a motor, why not keep it connected in the air? The answer is: torque. Real helicopters (single rotor ones, anyway) have a tail rotor that counters torque. Without it, as the helicopter tried to spin its rotor, torque would cause the rotor to try and turn the body of the helicopter, until you're quickly flying a human Cuisinart and crash. As long as the body of the helicopter (or qyrocopter with powered rotor) is sitting firmly on the ground, torque isn't much of an issue, but the instant it leaves the ground torque takes over.

Why not add a tail-rotor to the gyrocopter? Because then it becomes a bad helicopter, and by the time you add all the things it needs to become a good helicopter, it's just as expensive, complex, and hard to maintain as the real thing. In fact, it is the real thing.

One last reason that the Adventure Team should have a gyrocopter is that it has a solid place in the Adventure culture that spawned it. Gyrocopters were all over TV in the 60s. Jacques Cousteau used one on occasion in filming his TV specials, and his son Phillipe was badly injured when one crashed on Easter Island. James Bond use a rocket firing gyrocopter in You Only Live Twice. And of course, there's a late comer in the form of Mad Max's "Gyro-Pilot."

So, Joe never had his gyrocopter, but it seems reasonable that he should have. Why not? Perhaps the AT was so well financed he never had to cut corners. Perhaps AT logistics were so good that maintaining and supporting actual helicopters in isolated jungles and deserts was never a problem. So look on this little craft as a missed opportunity for the AT.

Voyage to the Bottom of our shared past

In the March 2nd post on his blog, author and film-historian John Muir writes an interesting appreciation of movie and TV tie-in books (a good part of my "day job," for those who didn't know) in general, and a beloved childhood "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" novel specifically. But there's also a bit about what is clearly the GI Joe Adventure Team, Sea Wolf submarine. Check it out.

Moving past Angry Joe Day

Well, Angry Joe Day 2006 was a great success. Thanks to everyone who participated, either by entering the contest, donating prizes, or just in spirit. The plan for now is, if Joe isn't back on retail shelves by March 1, 2007 (and right now, there are no prospects that he will be), then we'll do this again next year.

Remember, this isn't just me, this is all of you. Feel free to take Angry Joe Day and make it your own. Find your own ways to celebrate. Start your own contests, whatever. All I ask is that you keep it in the spirit of fun in which it is intended. We don't want to piss Hasbro off, we just want to remind them that there are people out here who still care, maybe make them smile, and hopefully one day have somebody in charge say, "what the heck, let's give it another try!"

I also wanted to take a moment to talk about "Tanker" Dave and his great 1/6th vehicle contest. If you haven't gone over to his site to check out the winners, you should. Dave asked me to help with the judging, and let me say that it was hard. The quality of all the entries was very good, and the top finishers were just amazing. Congrats to them all, and a big thanks to Dave for sponsoring the contest.

Well, the good thing about the AJD photo contest is that it saved me from a month of posting much of anything of my own. The bad thing is that it's been forever since I posted anything of my own. Time to change that. Several new items have arrived here lately.

Most significantly, I found some thrift-store trains for my friend Eric, who buys, sells, and restores toy and model trains. When I called him, Eric reported that he'd seen some Joes from an estate being unpacked at a place he knew, and that he was going back that day. He was a little vague about what they might be (he really doesn't know GI Joes), only that they were 12," old, and some had fuzz. He set off to the store to see what he could do.



I live 60 miles across a mountain range from Eric, so I couldn't just bop over there to see what he'd found, and in fact, I wasn't able to pick them up for about a week. What I found was a grocery bag with five, nude, fuzzhead Joes in various states of disrepair. Several had pretty good fuzz, one had intact kung-fu grip hands, and among them was a decent looking talking astronaut with a semi-working talk-box. There was also a bag with an assortment of uniform items (some AT, some home-made, some undetermined) a few accessories (the silver astronaut boots, a mystery tape-recorder), and a bag full of incomplete (but mostly dressed) Megos. I don't recall exactly what I ended up getting these all for after we were all done, but I think it was about $25!

You see two of the guys in the picture. The sweater and shirt are GI Joe from the bag. The pants are from the bag and may be from the same Jungle Survival set as the shirt, but they have a zipper, not a snap. I'm speculating that mom put the zipper in, since some of the other uniform items included were (nicely) home-made. The faded camo pants are childhood vintage from my spares-box. The boots are all modern.



This is may Talking Astronaut, pulled apart for cleaning and repair of the talker. I still haven't figured out how to remove those nasty stains on the body, but they shouldn't show when he's dressed (I need a white jumpsuit though). I seem to be making progress on repairing the talking mechanism using instructions I found here. I'm really looking forward to getting him fixed and back-together.

I am a total novice, by the way, at the business of cleaning and repairing old Joes, so any tips and advice would be appreciated.


Finally, while I was in "the big city" to pick up my new-old Joes, I hit a few Goodwill stores in search of 1/6th stuff. The first store (one where I almost find something) came up empty. The second turned up only a Storm-Shadow from the two-pack minus missing everything except his uniform. I was standing in line at the checkout when I happened to look up near the front of the store, where some baby strollers and similar items were displayed, and was amazed to see a Hasbro M8 Scout-car!

I jumped out of line and trotted over. It was missing the turret and cover for the crew compartment, but that was okay. It saved me from any temptation to keep it stock, and not convert it into an AT vehicle. Question was, how much? My wife was waiting in the car (working on her ALIAS novel on her laptop like a good writer with a deadline) and I'd already spent Joe money that day, so I didn't want to press my luck.

I rolled it around, looking for a price tag. Finally found it under the nose. $3.99! Score! Well, she might justifiably use the "where will you put it?" complaint, but price would not be an issue.



Oh, and let me leave you with one last bit of kitbashing. I was doing some reorganization today, and spotted this guy in a box looking 85% as you see him here. I barely remember throwing him together a few months back. He was just a bunch of stuff thrown together with no real plan. The major armor pieces are from a Hasbro 12" "Batman Forever, Mr Freeze" figure, the same one who provided the head for my infamouse "Der Governator" figure. The base figure is a Max Steel Ultra Action body with a HOF Storm Shadow (I think) head in a black jumpsuit of unknown origin. Tonight, I swapped the black combat boots he'd original been wearing for some sci-fi looking Max Steel boots, added the arm armor, and fiddled with his headgear (he's actually wearing an Action Man helmet over a Spy Troops hard mask over Storm Shadow's molded mask.

No, I can't tell you who or what he's supposed to be, but he looks kind of cool.

Angry Joe Day Photo Contest Winners!

Well, it's the moment you've all been waiting for, the winners of the Angry Joe Day photo contest! As I said, this was just heck to judge, and many worthy entries were cut in the selection.

There were simply so many good entries, that I had to make some kind of major cut, so my first determination was theme. Did it address the themes of the contest: the loss of GI Joe, wondering what happened to cause his retirement, wondering what has happened to him since, and how he might return? That was a nasty cut, as it made me throw out some simply wonderful pictures, technically great photography, wonderful customs, and some pretty good humor. But ultimately, this had to be about theme for the contest to be meaningful, so some nice stuff went out the door.

Next, I determined to spread the prizes around as much as possible. That meant one prize per customer. There were several people with multiple entries who might otherwise have been in the running for prizes more than once. But as soon as I found one entry by a person I liked more than the others, out went the rest.

That still didn't trim things down enough, so I had to make some tough calls. Did I make the right choices? Heck, I don't know. Probably not, but somebody had to win!

Finally, I had some help on judging with the donated prizes. Sean Huxter picked the winner for his Target Talking Sailor, and Murray Corrigan provided a list of his favorites (with far more than two selections). I compared Murray's list with mine and applied his prizes to one choice that was totally different than mine (but that I still liked) and two one of two others that were close-calls on my list. I had two that I liked equally well, and Murray liked only one of them, so it was all good! My prize went to one, and Murray's to the other.

So, with no further delay, let's get onto the winners!

First, the "It isn't a photo and he didn't draw it but I darned-well like it anyway award" goes to OmarS for "GI Joe Saves the Leopard."


As you'll recall, Omar did this with an on-line applet for creating game characters called HeroMachine V.2.0. Think of it as virtual kitbashing. Before judging, I went over and spent some time playing with this thing,k and decided that never in a hundred years would I have come up with this perfect little piece of Adventure Team art.

This could have come from a "lost" Adventure Team comic ad back in the 70s. It's easy to imagine the set and its contents. One wonders what the strange lines radiating from Joe's head are? My speculation: The Adventure Team had a chrome-plated super-hero and an Atomic Man. Why not cash in on the other 70s craze, psychic powers? Maybe telepathic Joe could talk to the animals. A hidden mechanism in Joe's chest would emit an echoing growl to indicate when he was communicating with the beasts.

Ah, the things that could have been!


For his creativity, Omar wins a signed copy of my novel, Mechwarrior, Fortress of Lies. Thanks for entering, Omar!

Though it wasn't my intent, it's just inevitable that some Sigma 6 guys were going to have to take it on the chin in some of the entries. The irony of course is that, in order for these people to bash Sigma 6, they first had to buy Sigma 6! Keep in mind that the spirit of this contest is all in fun. I wish Hasbro well with the Sigma 6 line. I just want my classic GI Joe as well!

Well, as I said, we got some, and they were pretty funny. This one just sucked me right in. We now present the first ever "Barbarian Owie Award" goes to John Romano for this toasty little item:


John is the winner of a signed set of my "Age of Conan" trilogy, "Anok, Heretic of Stygia." Thanks for the laugh, Joe. It's the "I love my job!" that makes it.

By the way, looking at this again, I wonder if John actually bought a Sigma 6 Duke, or if he just took a piece of clip-art and Photoshopped it in? John, you sneaky devil!





As I said, theme was a very important consideration in my choices, and it shows up strongly here. The first every (and maybe only ever) "He's Dead Jim," award goes SailorDude for Joe's Funeral!



What do I like about this one? Oh, start a list. There's the wonderful visual pun of the "Coffin Box." There's the fact that the Joe in the box actually is one of the last one's released, and probably the most iconic of that last bunch. There's the crowd of onlookers, representing 1/6th figures from many manufacturers. There's the horrified reaction from Dragon Natalie, and the maniacal grin of Construction Jack (I still think he did it!). It's sad, it's funny, it's fun, it works on lots of levels, even if it's not the most intricate or kitbashed of the entries. I just like it.



SailorDude is the winner of a Valor vs. Venom Wild Bill, one of my favorite figures from this under-appreciated line. Thanks for entering!



Here's another winner that plays straight to theme, and straight to my funny-bone. What's poor Joe doing now that he's out of work and down on his luck? Several entries had interesting ideas, but I think this was one of the best. The "Pardon Me Mister, But Can You Spare A Dog-tag Award" goes to Justin O'Hogan for his "homeless Joe" series.



Justin wins a 10th Mountain Division GI Joe, whose backpack, canteen, knife and stocking cap will doubtless prove useful down at the hobo camp down by the railroad tracks. Thanks for entering, Justin!



Ah, poor Sigma 6, thy spirit of production-excellence seems to have failed you in this next entry. Once again, one of the new guys is in trouble, but this time, it seems certain somebody bought him just to loot his gear and throw him to the lions. Okay, not lions in this case. The first Corrigan Holster Award goes to Daniel Edwards for "Feedin' Time!"



Daniel wins a pair of fabulous Corrigan Holsters, made to order, sent directly from the master himself! Congrats, Daniel!



Next, our second Corrigan award goes to a winner that shouldn't be a huge surprise. You might suppose that Murray would have a special weakness for something with a western theme! Actually, it's plays well to my themes as well, so lets hear it for Blaine Jacobs" and his entry, "Old Joe Rides Away!"



You know what they say, if you have to go out, go out with style. Riding off into the sunset certainly is a classic. Blaine will be able to fix his riders up with a couple of custom-made holsters courtesy of Corrigan Holsters! Thanks, Blaine, and a huge thanks out to Murray for his excellent contributions.



Next up, another special guest award, this one presented by that most-excellent Joe, Sean Huxter. For his winner, Sean has chosen ScottE's "Angry Joe."


Keep in mind that this is an animated GIF file, which I can't directly host here, so you'll have to follow this link over to Joe World Online to see it in its full animated glory!



Scott is the winner of a Target-exclusive Talking Sailor sent directly from Sean. (Note to puny, Hasbro lawyers: all in good fun! Just a joke! Ha-ha! Aaaarrrrr!) Thanks for your entries, Scott, and a big thanks out to Sean Huxter for digging into his stash for the Talking Sailor.

Well, it's time for our final prize. This one was an early favorite of mine, and while many wonderful entries have arrived since, I just kept coming back to this one. It's about the theme. It's about the clever and original kitbashing. It's the great dialogue, and that goofy expression that sells it at the end. The "Ya Can Blow Me Down But Ya Can't Keep Me Down" award goes to David Eden for "Heah'’s whut the baoys down to th daock waz asayin."





David is, appropriately enough, the winner of a GI Joe Navy Dolphin Handler, pried from my reluctant fingers by your overwhelming response to the contest!


My apologies to all the great photos and contributors that didn't make the prize list. You're all winners o me. I'm trying to come up with some consolation prizes for the rest of you, so don't give up on your mailbox quite yet. I'll see what I can do for you.

Thanks to everyone who entered and made this the best Angry Joe Day ever! (Okay, so it's only the second one, but it's better than that other one by a mile!) Happy Angry Joe Day to you all!

Afterword: My apologies to John Romano. I've fixed it, but when I initially posted this, I had his name as "Joe Romano." Now, I know better than that, but as John said in his email pointing out my mistake, I probably had Joe on the brain while I was typing this post.

Of course it could also have been that I was thinking of a big car dealer in Eugene, Oregon, where I used to live, named Joe Romania. When I think of his name, I'm reminded of the annual "Tour of Homes" they had there.

Every year there were tours of high-end houses that had just been built. We'd go and admire the nice ones, but some of them we felt were ugly, poorly designed, and poorly built, made for people with more money than common sense. When we saw houses like this, we never failed to heckle, much to the builder's displeasure.

One year the biggest and most expensive house was one we didn't like much. The cabinetry cut-corners on the details, it was too big for the lot, had no privacy, and it was badly laid out. (There was a second-floor balcony overlooking the bed in the master bedroom! What they heck were they thinking with that one?).

So we laughed when we heard that Joe Romania had bought the house, and made jokes at his expense now and then. It kinda seemed like the kind of house a car-dealer with too-much-money should buy. So we remembered it the next year when some houses on the tour were on the street right behind the Joe Romania house. We ended up parking back there, and walking along his tall, back fence. Again, we joked about the house as we walked, and a turned to the fence and loudly said "hi, Joe Romania!"

From directly behind the fence a confused voice said, "hi."

My friends and I scrambled like spooked rabbits.

And that is my Joe Romania story.

Thanks, John. You're still a good Joe, whatever your name is.

ANGRY JOE DAY 2006 is here!

Well, it's finally here. Angry Joe Day 2006, the day when we all shout to the skies out defiant cry, GI JOE LIVES!

Last year, when I declared the first Angry Joe Day, it was out of a sense of despair that 12" GI Joe was gone, possibly forever. But this year, there's still quite a bit to celebrate. There are the great 40th Anniversary Action Man sets on the way, the GI Joe Collector Club's continuation of the GI Joe 40th series, the flood of cheap 40th sets that have show up in various liquidation outlets, and the great "Foreign Adventurer" membership figure just announced by the club. That, plus the great response I've gotten on this contest give me great hope for the future.

Speaking of the contest, I have decided the winners, and I'll announce them a little later tonight when I have more time. Let me just say that it was VERY hard. All of you who entered did a great job, and you all deserve to win, but there just weren't enough prizes to go around, so I had to draw the line somewhere.

However, I'm pleased and excited to announce a last-minute adjustment that makes it just a little easier. Murry Corrigan of Corrigan Holsters has decided to donate a PAIR of custom holsters (made to order) for each of two lucky winners. Thanks, Murray. You do great work. Now I'm jealous of the winners!


Add this to the Target Talking Sailor previously donated by our good friend Sean Huxter, and three fewer people are going away empty-handed. Thanks, guys!

Sean chose his own winner for the Sailor, and Murray gave me a list of some of his favorite entries. I mingled it on with my own and awarded the holsters to two people on his list.

So stay tuned. Prizes tonight!