Month: December 2020

Well, I did it again. I was browsing through a local second hand marketplace app when I came across this vinyl record with cartoon tunes from the 80’s in French.

This time, not just a 7″ single, but a full 12″ album with the tunes for G.I. Joe, Jem, Transformers, Bravestarr, Clair de Lune and Guerres Secretes.

The A side contains the tunes.

The B side has 2 stories, one of Clair de Lune and 1 of G.I. Joe.

The story is a 14 minutes radio drama where Cobra is making ships disappear with some sort of magnetic weapon. They have a huge base underwater and in the end G.I. Joe comes along and attacks it from all sides. Cobra Commander and Destro need to flee to try and terrorize the world another day. Sounds familiar, right? They stole this story and turned it into part of The Rise of Cobra script.

It may not be the best of stories, and certainly not the best voice acting, but even then, this vinyl album is a great little gem showing the international appeal of G.I. Joe. I’m very glad to add this to my collection. Now If you’ll excuse me, I’ll go and listen to the rest of the album and maybe this holiday, I have to introduce my girls to Jem…

Happy Collecting and YoJoe!

It has been a while since I added something new to my collection. Today these four little Funko Mystery Mini Retro Pops have arrived.

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I got these figures through an eBay auction and actually scored them for a nice price. The little Shipwreck has both his grappling hook and Polly, something his bigger version is lacking (see this post). The Snake Eyes figure is all black. That’s always a good look, but on this figure, it does seem a bit cheap. At least there is some glossy black to make some details stand out. He comes with no accessories whatsoever. Strange if you ask me since his hand is shaped like he could perfectly hold a sword or UZI…

The Leatherneck figures are nice. A simple repaint, it’s not like we haven’t seen that before in the G.I. Joe universe… The 3.75″ figures had nine iterations. Still, it’s a bit odd that they have chosen Leatherneck. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a cool character, but if you ask a hundred Joe fans to list their top-5 Joes, I don’t think he’ll be mentioned a lot.

These little figures do have me thinking back to the Sunbow cartoon episode ‘Once upon a Joe’. Mind you, I haven’t seen that cartoon as a kid, but we had a sticker book from Panini in Belgium and The Netherlands that featured this story. There were other stories in the book as well, ‘Cobra’s Creatures’, ‘Jungle Trap’, ‘Haul down the Heavens’, ‘The Phantom Brigade’, ‘Spell of the Siren’, ‘Excalibur’& ‘Ninja Holiday’.

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Disclaimer: While I have the original sticker book in my collection, it’s currently somewhere in a storage box. The pictures above were scanned by gijoe.nl, the official G.I. Joe fan page of Belgium and The Netherlands. Check out to see what goodies we got over here (you’ll have to learn Dutch or use a translation app to get the full experience)

That’s it for now. See you around and until then…

Happy Collecting and YoJoe!