Most likely, I have already mentioned a bunch of things about 1986. My first post was about 1986 and how my GIJOE team looked. And I may have mentioned how 1986 was really my "big year" when it came to how things started with my GIJoe toys.Compare the above picture with the photo I took in 2009, and Iceberg is no longer present now since I shut down my arctic operations, otherwise everything else is still the same as it was nearly a year ago. Check out the Yojoe.com archives for more on 1986.
In some ways after getting a lot of these guys out for this go-around of pictures, I gotta say the backpacks and gear got a lot more detail and volume (size) to them. Consider Leathernecks M-16 to Footlooses M-16, much bigger, even without considering the grenade launcher.
As I look at this year as a whole, there are some neat colors that work amongst the figures. Lift-ticket is right in the middle, to his right that same green is on Beachhead and Dial tone. And then Lift-tickets tan is also on Dial tone and Leatherneck. Then from Lift-ticket to the left the red pretty much sums up Lifeline, but that red is also on Low Light and Cross Country.
Hawk takes on green, which is sort of like Leathernecks base green, but not exact, but then Hawks brown is present on Slipstream, who in turn shares a very similar gray with Lowlight and Cross country's pants. Then Cross country's hat is a lighter gray on top, which is really close to Mainframes gray.
The inter-figure color palette is really kind of neat I think. Wet suit and Sci-fi didn't seem to have much in common color-wise with anybody, though. Wet Suit seems more suited to match the Devil Fish in my mind, and that makes some sense as he's pretty much in dive gear, ready to go. Also, orange is present as a detail color on the HAVOC.
Sci-fi is still a lot more light green than Cross country's vest, though. Other than that, I see no color connection to Sci-fi, or vehicle connection for that matter.
Also as I look at these more, there's just as much of a divide between the traditional looking "army" style figures and the more technical/ non-traditional figures.
Consider Beachhead, Hawk, Leatherneck, Sgt. Slaughter, and even Dial Tone have very battlefield dress qualities to them. Even Low light does, too, it's just not green.
On the technical/ specialty side of things, Mainframe, Sci-fi, and Lifeline really stand out. They have some nicely detailed gear between them, as well as most of the rest of the figures up there.
Of Course, Slipstream, Cross Country, Lift-ticket, and Wet suit really feel more geared toward their respective areas of battle as drivers, pilots, and a diver.
But really, with all these figure out I kind of remembered how I had the tremendous trio of Hawk, Sci-fi, and Low light taking on Cobra back in the day. Sci-fi was the big gun, and Low Light really filled the role of his best bud taking on Cobra.
Going forward, figures that most likely going to be in my collection for sure, is 1986 Hawk, 1986 Lift Ticket, Lowlight, Mainframe, Dial tone and Lifeline.
I may go with 1988 Sgt. Slaughter, then possibly the Battle Corps Cross Country and Beachhead. I may even go with the Battle Corps Leatherneck since Leatherneck (1986) isn't really grabbing my interest that much right now, but we'll see. I'm heavily leaning toward keeping my 1991 Sci-fi right now, too..., the 1986 figure is cool but hasn't been pulled out of my storage system that often in recent years.
And with almost no air superiority fighter now (the X-30 is gone), Slipstream may be out of a job. Pretty plain and simple decision making with that reasoning.
And almost the same with Wet-suit, with limited aquatic-based adventures (no WHALE now) in the near future, do I need a diver? I am considering the Devilfish coming into my collection at some point, it is a nice small mobile strike force asset and would fit on the shelf nicely. But I have to consider many of the other "sea squad" Joes.