Swords and Spaceships

Ahhh, Serpentor. If you're a fan of GI Joe, you either love him or hate him. I'm in the camp of the former, as I came into GI Joe in 1986 and this dude was awesome to my five-year-old eyes. I received Serpentor and his Air Chariot in 1986, which is quite some time ago. He ruled over my meager Cobra collection with an iron fist. Which, for a guy in a snake costume, was quite an accomplishment. But he didn't have many guys to boss around- just some Vipers of different flavors and Cobra Commander. I wrote about Serpy at length earlier, so if you poke around the archives for the last few months, it would be there. This is just another tribute to awesome stuff I got for Christmas back in the day.

There’s an annoying little thing that happens as you get older- Christmas loses its “oomph”, as it were. Sure, now I can drink heavily and not sit at the kid’s table, but there’s still something gone for me- not getting those great toys of yesteryear. Today, we’re going to take a look at something I got nineteen years ago this Christmas- the Masters of the Universe Snake Mountain. I got my NES that same year. I’m not going to lie and say I ignored it for my Snake Mountain. I got right into Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt, but I did tire of having my ass handed to me by Goombas and having that fucking dog laughing at me when I missed a duck. So I finally got around to Snake Mountain. The box was huge to my seven year old self. The painting gracing the front of the box was awesome. They don’t make packaging like this anymore, let me tell you. It was dark, and Skeletor clearly had the upper hand over He-Man and poor Man-At-Arms, who was chained up to the side of the mountain. The face on

Yeah, it's GI Joe related. What can you do? Anyway, here's some comic packs that may or may not make the shelves at your local big-boxer: GIJ COMIC 2 PK STORM SHADOW VS FIREFLY GIJ COMIC 2 PK SHIPWRECK VS COPPERHEAD GIJ COMIC 2 PK COBRA COMMANDO VS TRIPWIR GIJ COMIC 2 PK DESTRO VS GRENADIER GIJ COMIC 2 PK FALCON AND NEMESIS GIJ COMIC 2 PK DUKE AND RED STAR I'm liking the Copperhead, Falcon, and Nemesis (I suppose it's Nemesis Enforcer) ideas, but a pack with Storm Shadow and Firefly just has "skip" written all over it.

And for the absolute-most-awesome-i'm-gonna-shit-my-pants thing you're going to see all week: I could do without the Snake Eyes/Storm Shadow pack, but if I need it to get another Doc, so be it. I love seeing all these great pictures of toys I can't buy because I simply can't find them. This situation SO reminds me of the early days of Hasbro/Kenner's modern Star Wars line in 1995. I suppose the Indiana Jones line is going to be the exact same situation, so, have courage, geeks.

and that's unlikely to change for a bit. Good news for us poor bastards unable to stand out front of Target and TRU every morning to buy all the GI Joe 25th Anniversary figures- starting January 24th 2008, Wal-Mart stores that aren't carrying the line currently will start doing so, making it quite a bit easier to get one's hands on these. Hell, I just found a Beach Head at retail this weekend, the only wave 2 figure I've seen at retail besides Buzzer. Anyway, finding it was like a transcendental experience, something only kids in the 1980s who grew up in the Midwest can feel. Here in the Midwest, you were practically issued GI Joe toys. By the way, rumor has it that waves 4 and 5 are getting out there already. Wave 5 is full of all sorts of awesome. It's going to suck not finding those.