Black Friday Deals!!

OH MY GOD I HAVE TO HAVE THIS!!!

I think I first became aware of this yesterday through a Facebook post. A check of my email confirmed it. The Zombie Initiative set was going on sale as one of the Club's Black Friday deals.

I've got to admit, that's a damn good deal! Yes, the Club is expensive. I know that. Everyone knows that. But this deal brought the price per figure down to basically regular retail prices.

Fifteen figures for $150 plus shipping! Sweet! 
Dang, I'll take this as my whole Christmas!

This would be a great set to display and I've got a bunch of Zombie Vipers already and I've got Cesspool and he needs Toxo-Vipers and the Eco-Force guys are cool and Tj'Bang looks great! And I NEED THIS IN MY HANDS!

But then I started thinking. I needed to read through some reviews , get some other opinions. In my opinion, Justin Bell does some of the best reviews of GI Joe figures out there in the interwebs. Sure, there are others. Fred Meyer does some good work as well.

I decided to plow through Justin's review of the whole set again. Justin is pretty honest with his opinions and I appreciate his views on these silly ass toys.

A quick read though of all of the figures began to question my enthusiasm. The Eco-Force crew was pretty well done by the Club. Tj'Bang looked really well done; he would be a great addition to my martial art crew. Outback and the Steel Brigade Commander were less than desireable. I had done a very similar custom with the same parts that the Club used to make Outback, so I really didn't care too much about the new one.

The bad guys all looked pretty good. The Toxo Vipers and Zombies looked really great. Even Repulsor looked well done. Lab Rats? Not so much, but they would work as background scenery.

Justin's review didn't really tilt my opinion as whether to buy or not. At around 11:00 pm last night, while watching my kids play video games, I just really had to consider the value that this set would bring to my collection. Yes, I know it would be really fun to get ahold of and play with and make dios and photograph, but did I really need it?

Want and need have become important as I have gotten older. For so many years, I bought figures and toys mainly out of "want," I don't need any of them.

I decided that I don't WANT them enough. There are other GI Joe items that I WANT and needed to make a choice. None of us NEED any of this stuff. All of it is just pure WANT.

I guess it's probably pretty obvious by now that I'm not buying this set or any of the other Club Black Friday items. There are figures that I want in the future and who knows what Hasbro's plans for GI Joe are.

Hell, maybe I'm just getting older and becoming more reflective of this stuff. Contentment is a big issue. And STUFF... how much STUFF does one person need? Check online or the news for all the insanity regarding Black Friday for just a bunch of STUFF.

I am content with my collection, I have enough stuff right now, and that's good enough with me.

The Dilemma of Discounted GI Joe

Discounted toy lines are a fact, I understand that. It happens all the time. Toy sales slow down and it's time to make room for the new stuff. No problem, I get it. Kay-Bee Toys and/or Toy Liquidators were some of the earlier stores that I remember throughout much of my adult collecting years. Although Kay-Bee had some "questionable" markdowns at times.

I know the GI Joe line has gone through those pains as well and I get it, I really do. One of the biggest events in recent memories was the Rise of Cobra disaster. Stores were flooded with merchandise, mostly the first wave of somewhat mediocre figures. Later waves showed much more promise, but it really couldn't save the faltering sales. 

Even before RoC, the line suffered due to lack of sales. The later waves of the 25th Anniversary figures, including the few Resolute single figures, made their way to stores like Family Dollar and an odd little regional chain called Ollie's. Oh, I loaded up on those cheap BATs found at Family Dollar. Ollie's was a mythical place to me, many states away, never to be visited.

(Just a reminder, I'm a hack. This crap is based mostly on stuff I've read over the years and my own opinion. For what it's worth.)

Ross, TJ Maxx, and Marshall's turned into treasure troves as extra and unreleased RoC merchandise flooded those discounted chains. It was a wonderful time to be a GI Joe collector despite cries of "Deth of teh line" from across the fandom.

GI Joe recovered somewhat with the release of the Pursuit of Cobra and 30th Anniversary waves of figures. The vehicles didn't fare too well and the few that were released were often found at the discount chains not too long after the release in the big box stores.

Sometime during the course of this retail nonsense, a new store appeared - Five Below. Nothing in the store was sold at a cost over $5.00. Nothing. 

I checked it out, thought that they had some pretty cool stuff, but nothing of real interest. I thought to myself, "If they ever get GI Joe figures, I'm screwed."

And eventually, they did...

I actually found out about GI Joe showing up at Five Below from the "What's on Joe Mind" podcast. The crew reported that there had been some sightings of Joe figures at Five Below sporadically across the country. As soon as I could, I hit my local store, and there at the front of the store was a wheel-barrow loaded down with brand new Wave 4 GI Joe Retaliation figures. You know, the Night Viper wave? I should have whipped out the credit card and bought every damn one of those figures - for two reasons - to help out a few Joe buds online and make some serious profit on the 'Bay.

But I didn't. I bought just a few, meaning to come back later. Once I did, the Night Vipers were cleaned out.

Sometime during the past year, Ollie's makes its way into my area. Once I saw this "new" store, I remembered those tales from before.

I stopped by a while back and noted that the store was getting in the smaller vehicles and those lame-ass 12" figures. Were the 4" figures on the horizon?

Sure enough, the ad came out for this year's Black Friday sales and there they were - the action figures on sale for $3.99 each! Damn!! As I read the ad, I began to consider if I really needed more figures. This was an awesome wave with some really amazing figures.

I really only would have bought some of the Cobra Combat Ninja Troopers and maybe a few of the "Ultimate" Duke figures - both of which were great as troop builders. The more I thought about them, the less I discovered that I cared.

The Cobra Trooper was nothing really impressive. The figure was actually kind of lackluster to me. I just wasn't impressed. Same goes for the Duke figure. Awesome load-out of gear and the figure looks great, but it really suffered due to the bulky vest and the bulky arms inhibiting arm movement.

Would it really be worth it to get up and on the road at around 4:30 this morning? Brave the cold and the idiot crowds out there? Hadn't I learned anything from my nine plus years at Walmart? Ultimately, I decided that I really didn't need more figures and I slept in and I'm okay with that. 

Tomorrow, I've got to take the dog to Pet Smart to get her nails trimmed. Maybe I'll swing by and see if there's anything left. Or maybe not.

I want to go back to my original point about discounted toy lines. I get it, I really do. I'm sure collectors were jumping all over these figures and I don't blame them at all.

This discounted line is different, this one hurts a little bit more. These amazing figures barely had a chance at stores like Walmart and Target. Both of those stores dropped the line before these waves had a chance to show up. Toys R Us was the only "loyal" retailer - sort of. They usually had a shitty location on the side counter for GI Joe, even the 50th Anniversary exclusive line. Hell, I was buying some of this wave of figures from Walgreen's and Rite-Aid.

Somewhere, someone really screwed up GI Joe. Was it the big box stores? Were they burned by the overstock from Rise of Cobra and the scheduling screw up of Retaliation? Had Hasbro lost confidence in their flagship line that saved their corporate asses at least twice in the past 50 years? How does a line go almost from the warehouse to the discounter?

I don't know the answers to any of these questions, but these discounted GI Joe figures seems to be a pretty crappy end to the 50th Birthday of GI Joe.

Happy freakin' birthday, GI Joe. Dammit.