September 2024 – European Joe's

As a kid, I had a FisherPrice View Master with all kinds of discs. Mostly fairy tales or pictures from around the world. On one of my flea market trips, I came across these discs with a G.I. Joe story.

On the discs, the text is printed in Dutch, but on the actual 3D cells, the text there is in English. The discs tell the story of issue #1.5(?), where Scarlett, Snake-Eyes, Stalker and Rock ‘N Roll have to get out of Trucial Abysmia with a package.

I had seen these discs on eBay a few times before, but I never really had much interest in them until I saw them in hand on a local flea market. I had recently found my old View Master in one of the many boxes containing toys and memorabilia from when I was younger and it felt meant to be that I should come across these G.I. Joe discs.

I’ve had to put a backlight to the discs in order to get these images up. But they do look really nice. Each cell is about the size of my pinky’s nail, so not that big at all and still all these images are really sharp and looking good.

Kids these days have their phones and VR goggles, but back in the day, this really was some cool tech. You needed to aim the back of the View Master to a light source to see the images clearly, but you didn’t really need that much light to enjoy the pictures.

That’s all for now. I’ll be back soon, keep an eye out. Until then… Happy Collecting and YoJoe!

I went on a trip recently, spending 5hr on a plane. To pass the time, I downloaded several movies and series onto my iPad. One of them was the entire run of Netflix’ The Toys That Made Us. They have an episode on G.I. Joe which I had seen before, but now I also watched the episodes on Star Wars, Star Trek and Transformers. Since the 80’s Transformers and G.I. Joe have been sharing a universe within the Marvel comic book series. Rumor has it that a crossover movie is in the works for 2026. We’ll have to wait and see if this will be the next big thing for both Transformers and G.I. Joe, until then we’ve been getting some toys crossing over. This time around, I’ve got the Megatron H.I.S.S. and Baroness dropping in.

Straight of the bat, the box art is a nice split image showing off the robot form of Megatron and the Baroness in action with him transformed into a H.I.S.S. Tank.

The back of the box shows the actual toys in both shapes. It takes 28 steps to transform Megatron into a H.I.S.S. Tank.

Once you slide both parts away, you get the real manufacturer for all weaponry, Hasbro! The inner box, is not a simple brown box though. The back displays a Top Secret Dossier, while the top and bottom have a cool looking crossover logo.

Opening the inner box, we get most of Megatron already built and looking very menacing. On the left is the H.I.S.S. Tank canopy and swiveling turret mount, on the right are guns and a piece of the H.I.S.S.’ Armor.

Megatron is tied to the top part of the box. We can lift this one up to reveal the instructions manual depicting all the 28 steps needed to transform from Megatron into the H.I.S.S. Tank and back again. Alongside the little booklet, there is the Baroness figure, to my surprise, a fully carded figure!

On the front of the box, the outer sleeve really, is a print of the Baroness as if she was behind some plastic, reminiscent of the old 3.75” vehicle boxes. In the box, there was a small cardboard piece that held the figure with a plastic cover so you could see the figure that came with the vehicle. This time though, the outer box is just a cardboard sleeve, so I knew the Baroness figure would be presented in a different way, but I honestly didn’t expect to find a carded figure. She comes with her backpack and a sniper rifle.

The back of the card is showing the beautiful art from the sleeve again, this time with another crossover logo. The top of the card shows a familiar file card, less information than the good old days, but in 5 languages now.

That’s all for now, see you again soon. Until then, Happy Collecting and YoJoe!

Month: September 2024

Vintage three-dimensional hot potatoes.

More than meets the eye.