(AKA GI Joe is Crucial!)
Something I'd like to dscuss is the sever differences between Power Team Elite toys and modern GI Joe toys. Besides the obvious qualities such as GI Joe having better detailed action figures, and PTE having worth while vehicles and playsets, I really feel one is over powering the other.
I feel that PTE stuff has been suffocating GI Joe toys out of the market for a while now. The reasons I feel this way is because they're available when they need to be and they're more than affordable. Even with the recent price hikes this year on humvees I think parents will still buy tons of these things for their kids this fall. PTE is also exactly what it NEEDS to be, a simple military war toy. GI Joe was originally meant to be a general use military toy and usually drew inspiration from the military, and it can still be that way even with the Joe versus Cobra stuff. Unfortunately Hasbro has this odd relationship with the hardcore fan base. When Hasbro experiments with the property they cry havoc, and when they do something traditional and appease them they're absolutely loyal. But I don't think older fans can keep this toy line going forever, it's a toy after all and children should always be the financial source of future goodness.
Basically I think Hasbro needs to make GI Joe toys more like Power Team elite figures, not in quality but in aesthetic. Characters like Charbroil and crocmaster don't fit the military aesthetic at all and don't serve as convincing spec ops and terrorists respectively. I see them as blatant attempts to appeal to old-school fans when Hasbro should be making Joes with a modern military aesthetic (like the new General Hawk figure). This also means cutting out brightly colored gimmicky character designs, weapons, and vehicles (I know hasbro has molds for normal military Humvees, they should take advantage of those always, like re-release them every year). The reason PTE appeals to kids so much is because it's a simple military toy for playing war, like a bigger and better version of the little plastic green army men we played with as children. Not because they all shoot lazers, miss, and fly around in jet packs wearing brightly colored uniforms shouting cheesy catch phrases (like a super-hero)
Unfortunately, Hasbro is still appealing to the hard core fan base, don't get me wrong, I love it when they make figures of characters like Low-Light, and I even think (as a nerd of course) that the new Lifeline and Sci-FI figures are cool, but most children won't get it and neither will their parents. And with a new Joe movie coming out that will potentially have more zaney experimenting with character designs I fear that GI Joe maybe digging itself into a deeper foxhole (HAR HAR HAR GET IT!!1!1)
I feel that GI Joe could easily compete with PTE and give it some real competition if Hasbro really tried to, but the fandom and the movies have really made things complicated. There aren't enough hippie parents to destroy military toys. Lanard, Unimax, and whatever the company that makes PTE is called, have been constantly proving that for years and still do, so why can't GI Joe be a military toy once more?
What do you guys think?
Something I'd like to dscuss is the sever differences between Power Team Elite toys and modern GI Joe toys. Besides the obvious qualities such as GI Joe having better detailed action figures, and PTE having worth while vehicles and playsets, I really feel one is over powering the other.
I feel that PTE stuff has been suffocating GI Joe toys out of the market for a while now. The reasons I feel this way is because they're available when they need to be and they're more than affordable. Even with the recent price hikes this year on humvees I think parents will still buy tons of these things for their kids this fall. PTE is also exactly what it NEEDS to be, a simple military war toy. GI Joe was originally meant to be a general use military toy and usually drew inspiration from the military, and it can still be that way even with the Joe versus Cobra stuff. Unfortunately Hasbro has this odd relationship with the hardcore fan base. When Hasbro experiments with the property they cry havoc, and when they do something traditional and appease them they're absolutely loyal. But I don't think older fans can keep this toy line going forever, it's a toy after all and children should always be the financial source of future goodness.
Basically I think Hasbro needs to make GI Joe toys more like Power Team elite figures, not in quality but in aesthetic. Characters like Charbroil and crocmaster don't fit the military aesthetic at all and don't serve as convincing spec ops and terrorists respectively. I see them as blatant attempts to appeal to old-school fans when Hasbro should be making Joes with a modern military aesthetic (like the new General Hawk figure). This also means cutting out brightly colored gimmicky character designs, weapons, and vehicles (I know hasbro has molds for normal military Humvees, they should take advantage of those always, like re-release them every year). The reason PTE appeals to kids so much is because it's a simple military toy for playing war, like a bigger and better version of the little plastic green army men we played with as children. Not because they all shoot lazers, miss, and fly around in jet packs wearing brightly colored uniforms shouting cheesy catch phrases (like a super-hero)
Unfortunately, Hasbro is still appealing to the hard core fan base, don't get me wrong, I love it when they make figures of characters like Low-Light, and I even think (as a nerd of course) that the new Lifeline and Sci-FI figures are cool, but most children won't get it and neither will their parents. And with a new Joe movie coming out that will potentially have more zaney experimenting with character designs I fear that GI Joe maybe digging itself into a deeper foxhole (HAR HAR HAR GET IT!!1!1)
I feel that GI Joe could easily compete with PTE and give it some real competition if Hasbro really tried to, but the fandom and the movies have really made things complicated. There aren't enough hippie parents to destroy military toys. Lanard, Unimax, and whatever the company that makes PTE is called, have been constantly proving that for years and still do, so why can't GI Joe be a military toy once more?
What do you guys think?
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To each his own. I'd take my 21st huey and supercobra over 50 of those "things"
