Being a short time after Christmas, I was hoping to find some clearance goodie for the Joes. There really isn't anything out there that I've been burning to have, and I've only really casually been hunting in stores while accompanying the "junior" Joe of house doing some browsing, too.
Of course, I went right to Target. Target is THE hotbed of GIJOE activity for this area, and it remains the most ample supply source of GIJOE until one starts to drive all the way over to the Twin Cities of MN.
Surprisingly, GIJOE was really sold out it seemed on the usual side aisle location. I saw the new Cobra Deviant mech and about 15 Arctic Threat Destro figures. I was glad to see the 2009 Cobra Night Raven finally NOT present in the store, the $14.99 price finally sold those.
On the way out of Target, my "junior" partner found the new Joes of 2010 on their own little display box on the bottom shelf of an end cap. If it weren't for his height advantage, I would have missed these completely. I had my pick of that whole wave, and I even could have grabbed SIX of those Shock Vipers. I was really tempted, these are almost the Cobra version of that Pit Trooper, loaded with gear and they could be anyone. But I just couldn't see me doing much with these, so I left it all.
Next Stop was the Toys R Us Express. I've posted about my initial thoughts on the store, which it is nice to have the store on site as the nearest Toys R Us is a 2 hour drive. But, still not impressed. It really didn't look like they stocked much more stuff since the last visit, and as the store was much more visibly empty, the prices were still WAY too high (compare $1.19 Hot Wheels car to Target's $.77!!!). But, mostly there wasn't really that much interesting stuff to begin with, and the little Joe that was there was sold (to my surprise). So nothing here at the mall.
BIG LOTS is a store I started to hit up around 2004/5 at the height of my brick and mortar Joe hunting, never finding anything here, though. On this trip there were some of those little combat heroes, and one Comic pack with Wild Bill and and Scrap Iron. It was nice to see, but, not something I wanted. I can't recall the price now, but I do remember it didn't seem that good.
TJ MAXX was the next and final stop. The shelves were in a somewhat disarray, but this was the most fun stop because of this. I could pass by the shelves on different angles and found different single packaged Joes sort of hiding behind things. The bulk of what was there was under the Rise of Cobra packaging. Night Adder and Red Fang Ninja were there with a few Storm Shadow variations and a couple of The Doctor and a couple different Snake eyes figures. Some of these were tempting, as they were price at $4.
As I hunted a little more, though, I found a single Wraith ($3), Python Crimson Guard ($3), and a Tripwire ($2), as well as one comic pack set of the Iron grenadier and Viper. There was one $7 Sky sweeper jet, that I'll probably be kicking myself for not getting someday. (I have to wonder if the guy who thought the Mole Pod would be a big seller wasn't getting picked on for all of 2010?) There were more Mold Pods than figures here, and at $7 I know I wasn't going to by any. Oh, and a Sharc Tooth at $12, that was neat to see.
What did I buy? The Tripwire and Wraith figures.
For a 1983 Figure, the original Tripwire is still pretty decent. Here is the 2000 release of Tripwire, which I have no reason to want a 1983 figure with this very nice release. He's got just as much detail as that 1983 Flash figure, and really fits in with the "original 13." I originally had a Tiger Force Tripwire growing up, and he didn't get much use.
The new 25th Tripwire isn't doing much more for me, but for $2 I thought I would try. If I weren't a semi-collector I wouldn't even know what that yellow element was. The figures belt is a little sideways, the joints are a little more unconcealed than I would expect, and the darn detector got curved in the package. For $2 I'm not too let down though.
Wraith is a guy I kinda wanted to add, especially in variant form. I did see the figure at retail at full price previously, but with the somewhat dismay of slight articulation problems pointed out online, I wasn't too interested in taking him on. At the $3 price I couldn't pass this guy up now.
I see how the wrist guns were a little bit of a let down, though, I already broke one hose!
Oh well, kind of a neat figure still and I'll have to think about how to integrate the figure into my Cobra verse.
That's a shopping day for me.