Zartan v1 - GI Joe '84

Zartan, the leader of the Dreadnoks is often considered to be the greatest GI Joe figures and has even been near to top of  lists of the greatest action figures of all time. Zartan may be tied with Sgt. Slaughter for the most popular GI Joe vehicle driver. He did not come on a card back like many GI Joes, Zartan was released in a small box that included his Chameleon Swamp Skier vehicle.

Zartan was a very important character in both the GI Joe comic book and cartoon. His figure doesn't quite match his appearance in the supporting media, but is close. Zartan included several accessories as well as an interesting action feature. Zartan's skin changes colors when exposed to sunlight. He turns a bluish color rather quickly when taken outside. Zartan also came with armor and color change stickers that were to be placed on the armor. He has a chest plate and thigh pads. In addition to his armor Zartan also came with a black pistol, black back pack, and a mask. Pictured above is a vintage Zartan with a weapon pack version of his gun and a Funskool mask from India. No other vehicle driver in the GI Joe line came with so many accessories.

In the photo above on figure's chest plate has the color change sticker while the other does not. I have an extra Zartan as a back up in case his o-ring ever breaks. As part of the color change plastic process Zartan's torso is fused closed. Removing the screw from his back doesn't allow you access to o-ring inside.

I didn't have Zartan as a kid, I bought my first one in High School from a toy dealer at a local  in-door flea market. I don't really have a great about when I bought Zartan, but I have two pretty good stories about times I didn't buy him.

As a kid I was able to buy one GI Joe at a yard sale and I looked through the bin of figures and was debating between buying Zartan and Lift-Ticket. I bought Lift-Ticket, thinking I might never get the Tomahawk. Well, little did I know that I'd get that helicopter that year for Christmas and that Zartan was an out of production figure and rather uncommon.

The second time I passed up on Zartan was when my Mom toook me to a "huge GI Joe yard sale" according to the newspaper ad back in the 80's. They had just about all the figures and vehicles from 1982-1985 for sale at this yard sale. I wanted Zartan, but I kept asking my Mom to get me the Flagg. I only picked out a few figures and just held out hope that my Mom would talk it over with my Dad and call them back, as she promised. How crazy would it have been if she bought me a Flagg with it's box for $20 back in like '89.

Star Wars Rebels: The Movie

I finally got to check out the CGI animated movie that kicks off the new Star Wars cartoon series. Often times refereed to as Spark of Rebellion the Rebels movie seems to be on Disney XD constantly. This new series is animated similarly to the most recent Clone Wars show.

Odviosuly this show is aimed a kids, most likely 8-12 year old boys.So I have to give some aspects of the show a pass just because I'm not in the right demographic. Some shows for kids, like the Nickelodeon Turtles are incredible, this show seems okay at best. The movie had a lot of action in it, but not a whole lot of story. Spark of Rebelion does little more than introduce the new characters and have them all coincidentally meet up.

It's hard to identify the "main character" because the show seems to have an ensemble cast, but Ezra, the Force sensitive youngster that has been crafted for the kids to associate with instantly reminded me of Disney's Aladdin. At on point during the movie he was even refereed to as a street rat (just like Aladdin).

Bascially the movie sets up Ezra as a steal to survive kid who meets up with a crew of people, aliens, and droids who act like Robin Hood. These guys steal from the Empire and give food to people displaced by Imperial activities. Most of their adventure in the movie involves the crew trying to free some Wookiee prisoners.

The Crew of heroes that Ezra joins up with includes a human Jedi, an alien tough guy, a female Mandalorian, a female Twi'lek and an astromech droid named Chopper. The Alien, Zeb, looks a lot like a character from some of the early production art for the original Star Wars film.

Zeb, Ezra, and  Kanan

 Things I like about the show...

I like anything that tries to keep the Star Wars brand moving. If you aren't putting out new media the brand is dying. This is a problem with series like GI Joe. Star Wars and Transformers seem to get that.

I loved the music in the show, it was fanastic. It took all its cues from  John William's original Star Wars score. I love hearing those themes.

To go right along with the music, the sound effects also scream Star Wars. The speeder bikes, TIE fighters and blasters all have audio straight from the Lucas Archives. There is something magical about the hum of a speeder bike that takes me back to seeing Return of the Jedi for the first time.

Chopper the astromech droid is entertainig, although his sound effects aren't as enjoyable as R2-D2.

Things I don't like about the show...

I felt like the voice acting was kind of disappointing. Just about every character has a British accent. Pretty much all of the aliens also spoke normal English without even an interesting voice. I understand not wanting to use sub-titles in a kids show, bu don't have the aliens sound like generic British guys just like the imperial officers and heroes.

Multiple times Stormtoopers were called bucket-heads or their helmets were called buckets. I can appreciate having nick names for the bad buys. Cartoons always seem to do that type of thing with their bad guys, but Star Wars never really did it. The Stormtroopers were always shown some level of respect even if they couldn't hit the broad side of a barn. I wish they would just sort of easy in humor like that. If they called them Bucket-heads once during the movie and then slowly brought the term in I probably wouldn't have minded it so much.

There was a scene where a Star Destroyer was hovering within the atmosphere. I understand a large ship sort of floating in space, but it doesn't work at all having a ship "parked" outside a building.

Ezra also seems to be really good at using the Force for someone who has received no training.

Martian Manhunter - Super Powers

Martian Manhunter was a DC Comics character I knew little about as a kid. I wasn't real big on the design of his costume either. It wasn't until much later that I came to appreciate this shape shifting alien. At Retro Con I saw a loose Manhunter at a good price and had to grab him. He includes his cloth blue cape with high collar. My Super Powers collection is slowly growing.

Marshmallow Mess Ray Stantz

At Retro Con I was able to score a carded Marshmallow Mess Ray Stantz figure. This repaint figure was the Club Ecto Exclusive figure for the Ghostbusters subscription. I only paid $10, which is a steal. Since I already have the clean Ray figure I think I'll leave this guy carded.

Ray comes with a Proton Pack, Neutrino Wand, Ecto Goggles, proton stream, and marshmallow covered figure stand. All the marshmallow mess on Ray is paint work, there is no new sculpting on this figure.

Guardains of the Galaxy Mystery Bobble Heads

Not too long ago I showed off Rocket and Star Lord from the Funko Mystery Mini Figures. These little blind box figures are actually bobble heads. I was given 10 blind boxes to review for Super Exciting Outrageous Toy Review. Out of the 10 packages I got 6 unique figures of 5 different characters.  Check out the video review to see who I got.


I gave one of the Rocket figures to a young cos-player known as the Little Doctor at Retro Con. I knew he was planning to attend the show dressed as Doctor Who on Saturday and Rocket Racoon on Sunday.

Spydor & Stridor - MOTU

I picked up some cool vintage Masters of the Universe vehicles at Retro Con. First up is Spydor. This mechanical spider vehicle features long red legs that when powered by batteries really walks. The guy I bought it from said it didn't work, but I might tinker with it a little. Spydor should also have two red guns mounted on each side of the drivers seat. They are both missing.

Stridor the mechanical horse was one of my favorite He-Man toys as a kid.  I bought this complete Stridor off my friend Nick at the show. It's a shame that his legs aren't articulated. Imagine if Stridor was battery operated like Spydor. That would be incredible.

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Super Exciting Outrageous Toy Reviews kind of got off track two weeks ago, just after we got started. We're back to posting videos this week and one of my videos was featured today. Feel free to check it out.

Realm of the Underworld @ Retro Con

If you've been following Action Figure Adventures for a while you've probably seen my posts about the Realm of the Underworld toy line by Zoloworld. These retro style action figures recapture the magic of 80's toys made by Mattel and Remco. A few weeks ago at Retro Con I got to hang out with Mike, the owner of Zoloworld.. Mike showed me a bunch of prototype figures as well as some sneak peak photos of upcoming items.

Mike sold me one of very few remaining variant Achrterrus figures. When this Skeleton Sorcerer when into production Mike has shipped a bolt of 100 year old fabric to be used for his robes. Unfortunately there was not nearly enough fabric so the rest were made with a white new fabric that doesn't have the coffee scent or aged look of the original material My particular Achterrus has an unpunched card as well as a factory error. His name sticker was placed on his bubble upside down.

Here's a close up of the old fabric hat was used to create his robe. I have a loose figure of the more common white fabric Archterrus. This guy is going to stay carded with my "white-haired" Kry-sis variant.

Mike was also kind enough to give me this Test Shot helmet. It's pretty cool to have a pre-production piece. This helmet is molded in a white-ish plastic. It has officially been released in silver and glow-in-the-dark white.

New Adventures of He-Man @ Retro Con

I'm a big fan of Masters of the Universe, but the New Adventures can't hold a candle to the vintage or 200x toy lines but that doesn't mean I write it off completely. I give Mattel credit for trying to reinvent the brand. I have a handful of loose figures that I picked up at yard sales. I also have a few vehicles form the line with their boxes. At Retro Con I picked up a few carded figures to display as examples of this toy line.

I like these two packs that were put out to help introduce the line. This set includes He-Man and Flogg. The card back isn't perfect but it's still a neat piece.

I also picked up a boxed Sagitar the Galloping Battle Beast. This centaur like alien is one of the coolest figures from the line. I'm tempted to open him up. I might just look for a loose one on ebay so I can leave this one sealed.

Silverhawks & Thundercats @ Retro Con

At Retro Con I picked up some more Silverhawks. I've been slowly collecting figures from this line. They are hard to find in nice condition. I bought two figures and three birds. Copper Kid is one of the original characters with the spring open wings feature. Condor is a later character who has a spring-loaded missile launcher built into his arm.

Talley-Hawk (Gray) came with Quicksilver. Rayzor the blue bird came with Steelheart. Slybird who is orange came with Stargazer.




Three Thundercats voice actors were at Retro Con. Peter Newman and Larry Kenney were also voices for Silverhawks.

COPS 'n' Crooks from Retro Con

I picked up some awesome stuff from Hasbro's COPS 'n' Crooks line from the 80's. I bought three carded action figures from the line. The cool thing is that these are 3 of the first four COPS figures I had as a kid. Two of the three cards are unpunched... which is kind of cool.

Rock Krusher - Crook

I always liked the card art on the back of he COPS cards. The little file cards at the bottom were written by Larry Hama the man behind the GI Joe file cards. I always thought it was interesting he didn't write the comic book. Doug Moench wrote the comic, which meant it played an important role in my child hood. I grew up playing COPS with Doug's son, Derek, my best friend.

Dr. Badvibes - Crook

Officer Bowzer & Blitz - COPS

I also picked up this huge lot of figures towards the end of the 2nd day of Retro Con for $30. I already have all these figures, but the lot included a ton of accessories. I need to sort out this lot and my collection to figure out what I can use. I think this Big Boss is in better shape than my childhood figure. The real selling point for me was that Buttons McBoom Boom has his chest guns. He was always one of my favorites that I never had. I used to always try to play with Buttons and Longarm when I'd play with Derek.